HEALTH-CANADA: Drug Injection Site Pricks U.S., U.N. Agencies

Jeff West, one of the coordinators of the safe drug injection centre known as Insight, leads the way through the doorway. Track lighting makes the room dim but you can see that it is clean.

ENVIRONMENT: U.S. Rethinks Human Studies on Pesticides

Human studies involving dangerous pesticides are making a comeback in the United States, despite intense criticism from public interest groups which say that industry-sponsored research is inherently biased and designed to prove that its products are safe.

RIGHTS-U.S.: Defence Wanting for Death Row Women

An inadequate defence by her court-appointed attorney makes Frances Newton's story typical of many women on death row in the United States, says a report by the country's largest civil liberties organisation.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS: History Debunks Bush Myth

U.S. President George W Bush is not known for his love either of books or of history.

CANADA: Tiptoeing Around Weapons in Space

Ottawa's tendency to take contradictory or ambiguous political positions on sensitive issues will be put to the test in the current debate over the U.S. request that its northern neighbour endorse its controversial ballistic missile defence (BMD) programme.

POLITICS-US: Intelligence Reform No Victory for Civil Rights

Many of the more draconian provisions affecting privacy, secrecy and asylum-seekers, originally included in Congress' intelligence reform bill passed this week, were omitted in the law's final version. But the agreed compromise still contains language that troubles human and civil rights organisations.

POLITICS-U.S.: So Little Time, So Many Regimes to Change

The interregnum between November's election and the formal launch in January of U.S. President George W Bush's second term has a strange feel.

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY: Good News for Gays in U.S. Churches

For supporters of gay and lesbian civil rights, the news in recent weeks has not been encouraging.

IRAQ: Cost of Guards, Guns Deters Some Contractors

Somewhere between Halliburton and CARE, there is a cadre of contractors trying to help Iraq establish a working, private-sector economy. But the cost of securing their safety is frustrating many, as some firms report spending 25-30 percent of their contract revenues on armoured cars and small private armies.

POLITICS-U.S.: Groups Probe FBI Spying in ‘War on Terror’

U.S. civil rights groups have filed multiple freedom of information requests around the country to uncover evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local police are spying on political, environmental and faith-based groups in the name of fighting terrorism.

U.S.-IRAQ: More Troops Mean More Trouble

The Pentagon's announcement this week that it is adding 12,000 more troops to the approximately 138,000 soldiers it already has in Iraq has put an abrupt end to the fleeting sense of triumph that followed November's ''victory'' by U.S. marines who regained control of Fallujah, the main Sunni rebel stronghold.

POLITICS: U.S. Soldiers Seek Asylum in Canada

Canadian leaders, not the country's refugee system, should decide the fate of soldiers who have deserted the U.S. military to apply for asylum in their northern neighbour, according to a support group.

RIGHTS: U.S. Downplays Report on Guantanamo Prisoner Abuse

U.S. officials Tuesday insisted that detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been treated ''humanely,'' despite a Red Cross report that concluded interrogators were using psychological and physical techniques that were ''tantamount to torture''.

POLITICS: Activists Crawl Through Web to Untangle U.S. Secrecy

To combat the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, U.S. citizens have been forced to unearth new sources for information they once read in their daily newspapers. But thanks to a few dedicated individuals and not-for-profit groups - and the Internet - such material is easier to come by than ever before.

U.S: Crop Testing Rules Menace Food Supply, Say Critics

Proposed rules for experimental genetically engineered (GE) crops will allow contamination of the U.S. food supply, critics said this week, as a new poll reported Americans want stricter regulation of GE foods.

POLITICS-U.S.: From Plymouth Rock to Baghdad, Iraq

As U.S. families partake of the turkey, yams, and other staples of the traditional Thanksgiving feast Thursday, they are unlikely to reflect on the enduring ideological - as opposed to the gastronomic - influences of that hardy band of Pilgrims that celebrated their first year of survival in the Massachusetts colony on the American continent back in 1621.

U.S.: States Steam Ahead on Climate Change

The signs are subtle, but ominous. The spring thaw arrives in much of the United States about two weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago. Exotic tropical birds are nesting in Florida, and butterflies on the west coast are fleeing north to escape the heat.

IRAQ: Debt Relief Weighed Down By IMF Burden

Rich nations' decision to accept a U.S. request and forgive part of Iraq's debt will help the occupied country but also saddle it with a burdensome economic programme that threatens to take decision-making power from Iraqis and put it in the hands of officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), say critics.

POLITICS-U.S.: Don’t Count Out Realists Yet

While after a week of personnel announcements conventional wisdom appears to have concluded that the foreign policy of President George W Bush's second term will be at least if not more radical than the first, there is also a minority view that such a conclusion is premature.

U.S. ELECTION: Democracy in Question

John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, told IPS he has been calling it "the Armageddon election" for about a year. Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader believes the Republican Party was able to "steal it before election day."

ECONOMY: World Bank Urges Free Trade on All Fronts

The World Bank, aligned with other global financial institutions dominated by rich nations that promote free trade, is advising poor nations that have already signed agreements to open up for more trade on "all fronts."