Portside

Why are the French once again firing into a continent? First, France has major investments in Niger and Mali. At bottom, this is about Francs (or Euros, as it may be). Some 75 percent of France's energy needs come from nuclear power, and a cheap source is its old colonial empire in the region (that besides Mali and Niger included Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Chad, Algeria, and the Central African Republic).

U.S. citizens suffer from poorer health than nearly all other industrialised countries, according to the first comprehensive government analysis on the subject, released Wednesday. Of 17 high-income countries looked at by a committee of experts sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the United States is at or near the bottom in at least nine indicators.

Huge banks must be restructured and their access to the safety net scaled back, Mr. Fisher said, because neither regulators nor market participants have proved effective in monitoring risks at these institutions.

The consequences for the mentally ill of the gun control push are not yet fully clear, as the full content of the president’s executive actions have yet to be released. And advocates will watch closely as congressional deliberations unfold over the vast parts of gun control that the president can’t do alone. But for now, it appears things are moving forward with some distance between proactive plans to improve mental health care and those to prevent mass murder.

A new study in mice suggests that Leprosy employs a bit of biological trickery to do its damage: It reprograms certain nerve cells to become like stem cells and uses them to infiltrate the body's muscle and nervous systems.

PARIS — French labor unions and business leaders struck a deal to overhaul labor laws. The changes include more flexibility for employers to reduce hours to prevent lay offs in times of "economic distress." Employers will pay a higher tax for using temporary labor. In exchange for flexibility, unions secured improvements to unemployment benefits and health insurance, as well as seats on the board of large companies.

The new Portside: better communication, a more usable web site, hyperlinked text, photos, brighter pages, better typography and formatting, integration with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

City council passes "wage theft" law that threatens license of violating companies. Will other cities follow?