Portside

The star in the constellation of Orion has been visibly dimming since late 2019, and now stands at just 36% of its normal brightness. Astronomers are talking about the chance of the star becoming a supernova.

Takes the reader from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark—and the historic, thirteen-years of litigation that followed—through the dogged pursuit of commander Jon Burge, leader of CPD torture squad.

Elected 150 years ago, Hiram Revels was the first.

Since 2007, the government had held off on releasing an official estimate of expectant and new mothers who died from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. It waited for the data to get better. But the new, long-anticipated number falls short.

In recent months, the Horn of Africa has been invaded by desert locusts that have consumed food crops and pasture. For Kenya, it is the worst infestation in 70 years.

A generous reading might consider the show a corrective to the original, particularly because women, people of color, and queer folks now work the stacks at Championship Vinyl. A more skeptical take is that even this is morally suspect.

The Culinary Union’s stance on Medicare for All raises serious questions for the immigrant labor movement. It is in Labor’s interest to back M4A.

Turkey’s major trade unions called for a one-day strike on 29 December to protest the government-led military operations against the Kurds. Union representatives declared that they would persist in struggle against those who are trying to destroy the hope of both peoples [Turks and Kurds] to live together and build a common future.

A recently released secret U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) file can be justifiably termed “Stranger than Strangelove”, the 1964 film that satirically captured the madness of the Cold War. It reveals for the first time the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war. The U.S. planned to attack more than 1,200 “Soviet bloc” cities, killing an estimated 520 million people. Even “friendly forces and people” would be radiated.

In one of the largest U.S. natural gas leaks ever recorded, Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon plant outside of Los Angeles is leaking harmful methane gas at a rate of 110,000 pounds per hour, and according to the company, it may take more than three months to plug it. The single leak, which has been called the worst environmental disaster since the BP oil spill in 2010, accounts for a quarter of the California's entire methane emissions.