Portside

Bringing home 6,000 federal prisoners a few months early and delaying disclosure of criminal records for federal job applicants are both better steps to take than no action at all. It no doubt will have a trickle-down effect to state prisons and state laws where the vast majority of people are suffering unjustly. But is a “trickle-down” effect enough?

To secure a guilty plea and avoid having to go to trial, prosecutors can use the threat of a harsh mandatory minimum sentence by informing the defendant that if the case goes to trial, the judge will have no choice but to impose the lengthy sentence.

Football has never been more popular. And it has never felt less like a game.

New York Gov. Andrew announced his support for a $15 minimum wage for state employees on the same day that fast-food workers across the country demonstrated for better pay and union representation. All told, 10,000 New York pubic employees will receive a pay bump. In July, Cuomo increased the minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York through a state wage board.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Grammy-winning musician, AllenToussaint, passed away while on tour in Spain. Toussaint played a pivotal role of formulating a unique style of soul, funk and R&B that became emblematic of New Orleans.

The Socialist leader, António Costa, 54, is now expected to become prime minister in the coming weeks with a broad, leftwing coalition government, which hopes to ease austerity while still adhering to European Union rules. “The taboo has ended; the wall has been broken,” he said after the vote. “This is a new political framework; the old majority cannot pretend to be what it stopped being.”

Here is the list of demands drawn up by the Legion of Black Collegians and those in alliance with them. The protest at the University of Missouri which included weeks of demonstrations, the threatened strike by black football players, and a hunger strike by a student on the campus of the University of Missouri led to the resignation of the President, Tim Wolf, and also the Columbia campus chancellor Bowen Loftin.

The uprooting and cutting down of over a million olive and fruit trees in occupied Palestine since 1967 is an attack on a symbol of life, and on Palestinian culture and survival, writes Dr. Cesar Chelala. A grave crime under international humanitarian law, the arboricide is also contrary to Jewish religious teachings.

60 Minutes does its thing; GOP wants free ads; Broadband rip-off; E-vote flipping; 3D printing decision; Atwood on tech

'This Changes Everything', which re-imagines the vast challenge of climate change, is directed by filmmaker Avi Lewis and inspired by journalist Naomi Klein’s international best-selling book by the same name. Over the course of four years, the pair traveled to nine countries on five continents to profile communities on the front lines of the climate justice movement.