Portside

For the first time in Ferguson, Missouri's history, half of the city council will be black. The city's residents are predominantly black, but their council members have been predominantly white.

The victory by the car wash workers is the ninth negotiated since the Wash New York Campaign was launched three years ago.

This downturn and recovery have been different than others, and workers of all types have suffered.

The World Social Forum is one of the few remaining places where tens of thousands of people from all over the world meet annually to discuss, debate, plan and organise under the banner of “Another World Is Possible”. Though the WSF continues to provide a space in which radical thinking, networking and organising can and does take place, it is not immune from power politics and attempts to neutralise, hijack and convert it to a status-quo agenda.

Anchors away; Tech targeted communities; Clear Channel chickens out; Facebook knows, you don’t; The Ellen Pao verdict

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was given repeated access to millions of Americans to talk trash about the deal over the weekend and to make mostly false allegations about its contours. What does he want? Netanyahu wants to keep Iran poor and undeveloped. He wants to make sure that “crippling” sanctions aren’t lifted. He wants to keep Iranians in grinding poverty.

Whether Emanuel wins or loses his fight for mayor, the savvy coalition leading the charge against him may already have changed Chicago politics for the better.

“Organizing boycotts, work stoppages inside prisons and the refusal by prisoners and their families to pay into the accounts of phone companies and commissary companies is the only weapon we have left,” said Amos Caley, who runs the Interfaith Prison Coalition, a group formed by prisoners, the formerly incarcerated, their families and religious leaders.

The conflict over fast track is fundamental. Organized labor wants to kill the legislation. Obama wants to sign it. The rough outlines of the bill would enable Congress to make its preferences known and receive updates while trade negotiations are under way in exchange for a clean vote -- no amendments -- on a final trade agreement.

One explanation of why do many celebrities are Scientologists is hidden in plain sight: The way the cult mirrors the star-obsessed, profit-driven culture of Hollywood. "Going Clear" also posits the rest of the answer: Stars stick with Scientology because of the meticulously kept notes, recordings and videos from E-meter "auditing" sessions that are central to the religion's practice, and make for ideal blackmail material.