ECONOMY-US: Deep Cuts Push Californians to Edge

They call it Tortilla Flats - a haphazard cluster of tents and tarps sprawling across a sidewalk and a vacant lot smack in the middle of Fresno, a city of 500,000 in California's Central Valley.

CANADA: Govt Threatens Tar Sands Activists with Anti-Terror Laws

The provincial government in Alberta, Canada is threatening to unleash its counterterrorism plan if activists continue using civil disobedience to protest the tar sands, Canada's fastest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

U.S.: Foreign Policy Hawks Launch New Campaign Against Obama

Just days after the Nobel Committee in Oslo awarded Barack Obama its coveted peace prize, two of Washington's most prominent foreign policy hawks launched a new group and ad campaign designed to depict the president as weak and defend the more aggressive policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

CANADA: Harper Courts Religious Right, But Quietly

Stephen Harper's ruling Conservative government has managed to muddy the ideological right-wing aspects of his political agenda to stay in power in Canada without alienating his western and rural base of moral and social conservatives.

ENVIRONMENT-US: Interfaith Leaders Back Climate Bill

An interfaith group of religious leaders Thursday announced the launch of DaySix.org, an initiative aimed at influencing the passage of Senate legislation on climate change.

MIGRATION-US: Controversial Sheriff Dismisses Federal Probe

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, nationally known for his crackdown on undocumented migrants in Arizona, could have all of his immigration enforcement powers taken away by the federal government.

POLITICS-US: Democrats Disgruntled as Obama Fails to Deliver

Since before taking office, U.S. President Barack Obama has been no stranger to being in the crosshairs of Republican pundits who have accused him of everything from bring a "secret communist" to a tax-and-spend liberal who would oversee huge expansions in the federal government.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Firms Divided Over Obama’s Emissions Cuts

Momentum is building in Washington for an overhaul of climate policy, with President Barack Obama signing an executive order Monday directing federal agencies to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions and set targets to reduce their emissions by 2020.

SCIENCE: Icelandic Banks Finally Get Some Good News

Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman helped unveil a new, lifesaving invention at the 2009 Ig Nobel awards ceremony last week - a pink brassiere that doubles as a pair of filtering gas masks.

ENVIRONMENT-US: Advocates Fight Mountaintop Removal

Environmental groups across the southeast United States, from Georgia to the Appalachia region, are stepping up their opposition to a controversial but widespread practice by coal companies of removing the tops of mountains with explosives.

POLITICS-US: Nukes Agency Pushes New Bomb Production

Despite statements by U.S. President Barack Obama that he wants to see the world reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration continues to push forward on a programme called Complex Modernisation, which would expand two existing nuclear plants to allow them to produce new plutonium pits and new bomb parts out of enriched uranium for use in a possible new generation of nuclear bombs.

Q&A: Secrecy, Lies, Power and the Pentagon Papers

A little over 38 years ago, when Daniel Ellsberg released the "Pentagon Papers" to The New York Times and other newspapers, it set off one of the 20th century's most important battles over government secrecy and freedom of the press.

U.S.: Homeless Shelters Fighting Push from Downtowns

The largest homeless shelter in the southeast U.S., the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, has filed a lawsuit against the city of Atlanta claiming officials have undertaken a complex campaign to sabotage the shelter with the ultimate goal of driving homeless, mostly African American men off the streets of downtown.

HEALTH-US: State’s ‘Model’ Reforms May Be Anything But

As all factions of the U.S. Congress continue a bruising debate about how to change the U.S. health system, one state, Massachusetts, seems to point the way clear, but activists say the Massachusetts plan is already troubled and doomed by skyrocketing costs.

RIGHTS-US: Some Guantanamo Prisoners Fight Release

As 13 prisoners held at the U.S. naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba appeared set to finally win their freedom, others are asking their release to be deferred.

RIGHTS-US: Rendition Victim Still Seeking Justice

Thwarted by U.S. courts, a German citizen who claims he was "rendered" by the U.S. and secretly detained and tortured for four months is taking his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

RIGHTS-US: Ashcroft Liable for Wrongful Detention

In what is being hailed as an unprecedented ruling, a federal appeals court has concluded that the George W. Bush administration's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of an innocent U.S. citizen.

RIGHTS-US: Cleared for Release, But…

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that inmates at Guantanamo Bay have a right to go to federal court to challenge their detention, detainees have filed more than 150 such lawsuits.

ECONOMY-US: Activists Demand Real Change as Foreclosures Mount

Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. continue to lose their homes each month in an ongoing crisis that is wreaking chaos on communities, advocates say.

ECONOMY-US: Still as Good as Ever to Be the Boss

Only 12 months after the meltdown of the U.S. financial system and the ensuing taxpayer-sponsored government bailout, the pay of the nation's top Wall Street chief executive officers (CEOs) is beginning to bounce back to pre-crisis levels, according to a new study on executive compensation released Wednesday.

RIGHTS-US: Group Charges Complicity by CIA Medics in Torture

Did physicians and psychologists help the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency develop a new research protocol to assess and refine the use of waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques?