Portside

A new analysis supports the hypothesis that viruses are living entities that share a long evolutionary history with cells.

Both candidates have been mislabeled as populists. The movement of that name was a genuine people’s rebellion that reinvigorated democracy. We can do it again.

Movement activists discuss strategy and tactics in #BlackLivesMatter.

We are now at an important crossroad in the long term struggle for sustainable electronics. It is clear that Apple and Samsung are the global kingpins and both have been severely challenged by mismanagement and human tragedy in their manufacturing supply chains. The future of technology development hangs in the balance.

Seattle teachers went on strike for a week this month with a list of goals for a new contract. By the time the strike officially ended this week, teachers had won some of the usual stuff of contract negotiations — for example, the first cost-of-living raises in six years — but also less standard objectives.

In the second such episode in recent months, U.S.-trained Syrian rebels are reported to have handed over their weapons to al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra. The supposedly well-vetted fighters of Division 30, the “moderate” U.S.-backed rebel division, surrendered to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after entering Syria on Monday. Last July, Jabhat al-Nusra routed the first group of Division 30 fighters to re-enter Syria, seizing their weapons and their commander.

America’s rental housing crisis will worsen over the next decade with millions more struggling to make their monthly payments. According to a new study by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and Enterprise Community Partners, the rental population in the U.S. will climb by 4 million over the next 10 years, and the percentage of Americans who are severely rent-burdened (paying 50 percent or more) will increase by 11 percent, to 13 million people by 2025.

Last week the Los Angeles Times obtained a secret 44-page proposal drafted by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and other charter advocates, that according to one critic would "do away with democratically controlled, publicly accountable education in LA." With the aid of a billionaires’ club of supporters, the plan is designed to charterize 50% of LA public schools.

What is notable about the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal is not that corporate executives lie and cheat, but its environmental scope. By rigging the emissions tests, Volkswagen cars may have added nearly a million tons of air pollution to the atmosphere annually – roughly the same as combined annual emissions for all power stations, vehicles, industry and agriculture in England. And, according to the New York Times, VW executives might not face any U.S. criminal charges.

As commodity prices tumble, thousands of South African miners with HIV stand to lose access to treatment if the mining companies’ proposed 11,700 in job cuts go through. While HIV treatment is technically free in South Africa, according to the National Union of Mineworkers many of the workers who lose their jobs could lose access to antiretroviral therapy when they return to their rural communities that may not have adequate healthcare systems in place.