Portside

Southern Democrats, meet your future: No more Republican Lite.

Cattle need 28 times more land than other livestock, according to a new study.

Meet five women who are bearing the burden of conflict in Syria and persevering in spite of it.

Detroit has suspended water shutoffs for 15 days, but it's a temporary reprieve.

A new political action committee has formed to influence the outcome of Los Angeles school board races, filling a gap created when a group of civic leaders, which includes former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, decided to sit out next month's key upcoming election. The new organization, Great Public Schools Los Angeles Political Action Committee, joins other outside groups involved in the campaign to replace Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, who died in December.

There will be a mail-in vote for union representation from July 21 to Aug. 4 for teachers at the "I Can" charter school in Northeastern Ohio. The American Federation of Teachers plans to file Unfair Labor Practice Charges for alleged retaliation against nine teachers whose contracts were not renewed. Teachers are concerned over class sizes as large as 40, and special needs students not having their needs met. Click the link at the bottom to watch the video.

How Chicago's school choice system is tracking kids into separate high schools based on achievement (and race).

We can tell, for sure, from video images and even photographs that the Iron Dome system is not working very well at all. It hits a targeted missile maybe 5 percent of the time—could be even lower. ... Meanwhile, the Israeli government presents Iron Dome's performance as part of a sophisticated public relations effort.

Almost a decade of bruising debate has led to the absence of any serious policy alternative and paralysis over the way forward

There is no doubt that an unhealthy diet and sedentary lifestyle are the two chief drivers of the obesity epidemic, but many researchers are confident that they will eventually hit on specific brown fat–based treatments, although most admit that such interventions most likely are 10 years away at least.