Portside

As their membership and resources have continued to dwindle, unions are trying to figure out how best to respond to the current moment. With a Trump inauguration fast approaching and the Republicans taking control of the Supreme Court, the United States Congress, a majority of governorships, and over two-thirds of state legislatures, this choice has become even more urgent than it already was.

Among the many disturbing appointments by President-elect Donald Trump are the people charged with conducting U.S. policy in the Middle East. Trump’s ignorance of the region will make him even more dependent on his advisers than most Presidents. And that’s not good news.

Private equity firms like K.K.R. have already presented themselves as a willing partner, and Bayonne provides an important case study. Its arrangement is one of a handful of deals across the country in the last few years in which private equity firms have managed public water systems. While these deals are a small corner of private equity’s sprawling interests, they represent the leading edge of the industry’s profound expansion into public services.

Tens of thousands of workers walked out of factories this month in the manufacturing hub of Ashulia which make clothes for top western brands such as Gap, Zara and H&M, prompting concerns over supply during the holiday season. The protests were sparked by the sacking of 121 workers, but soon evolved into a demand for the trebling of workers’ pay from the current monthly minimum of 5,300 taka (£54).

President Obama’s decision to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal has done more to change the shape of the conflict than any other action in the last ten years.

Teen Vogue Spreads Terror; Sounds of Silence; War and Hanukkah; Make way for the alt-center; Mad City Rumble

The friend who urged me to see Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea told me it was the only film she’d been able to watch since the election, the only work of art that had, even briefly, distracted her from her worry about the future of our democracy. It might seem odd to describe a film about unendurable grief and sadness as a distraction—a word we more often associate with entertainment and escape. But after watching Lonergan’s astonishing film, I understood.

The jokes in the HBO comedy may not be all that funny, but the show reveals something raw and authentic about public-school dynamics.

Trump supporters are not the caricatures journalists depict – and native Kansan Sarah Smarsh sets out to correct what newsrooms get wrong.

Environmental groups had hoped the deal could reduce global warming by a half a degree celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90% of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Zaelke’s group said this would mean the “largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement”.