ENERGY-CANADA: “It’s Like the Wild West Out Here”

The once serene road to Tim and Linda Ewert's organic farm near Tomslake in northeastern British Columbia has become a mess of dust clouds, drilling rigs and hordes of pick-up trucks as the area transforms into the newest frontier of Canada's natural gas boom.

DEVELOPMENT-US: Gentrification Fears Dog Sustainable Transport

As U.S. cities consider the urgent need for sustainable public transportation options, advocates are looking for ways to achieve the environmental benefits of such projects without displacing residents through gentrification of surrounding areas.

RIGHTS-US: New York “Terror” Detainee in Draconian Conditions

As the planned closing of the U.S. military's detention centre at Guantanamo Bay draws nearer, human rights activists are raising questions about the treatment of detainees who will be transferred to the U.S. for trial.

ENERGY: Pipeline Sabotage Blows Image of Stable Canada

North America's largest natural gas corporation hopes a one-million-dollar bounty will take down the saboteur who is blowing up their pipelines in northern Canada.

POLITICS-US: Health Reform Bogged in PR Battle

The message machine of the Barack Obama administration appears to need oiling, as the U.S. president's push for a Sep. 15 deadline for a bipartisan deal on healthcare reform in the U.S. Congress continues to meet stiff resistance.

RIGHTS-US: CIA Probe Should Go Farther, Groups Say

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision Monday to investigate whether interrogators from the Central Intelligence Agency or its contractors violated any federal laws in applying "enhanced interrogation techniques" to detainees in U.S. custody overseas triggered immediate criticism from human rights advocates and appeared to widen the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats.

POLITICS-US: Case Challenges E-Voting’s Constitutionality

A case brought by election integrity advocates in Georgia claiming that unverifiable electronic voting, or E-voting, is unconstitutional could spell trouble for the controversial practice, as it heads to the Georgia Supreme Court for a ruling.

RIGHTS-US: Justice to Probe Detainee Abuses

The issue of detainee interrogation and abuse – lately eclipsed by the debate over U.S. health care reform – bubbled back to the surface Monday in a number of headline-making developments.

U.S.: ‘Civility Project’, Style Over Substance?

Every year during August recess, many members of the U.S. Congress go back to their districts and hold town hall meetings to get a sense of what their constituents are thinking about, and to apprise them of upcoming legislation.

RIGHTS-US: ACLU Sues Controversial Sheriff

The man who boasts he is "America's Toughest Sheriff" - and who is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for civil rights violations - this week added another lawsuit to thousands already pending against him.

MIGRATION-US: More Deaths in Detention

In response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed Tuesday that the government had failed to disclose 11 more deaths in immigration detention facilities.

US: Children Call for End to Immigration Raids

It has been two months since Katherine Figueroa has shared a meal with her parents. Both of them are undocumented workers that were arrested in a workplace raid last June by Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office here.

ENVIRONMENT-US: Urban Farms Take Root

Juxtapose the word urban in front of farm and there’s bound to be a lot of head scratching. But in cities around the U.S. small-scale farms and garden plots are coming to life in unlikely places. Abandoned city lots, and neglected yards are being converted into vegetable gardens - as basic food literacy becomes part of the vocabulary of city dwellers.

RIGHTS-US: Struggle to Reform Draconian NY Drug Laws Continues

Before making the biggest mistake of his life, Anthony Papa lived a normal life with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, working in his own radio repair shop in the Bronx. He’d never gotten into any trouble with the law and took pleasure in simple things, like bowling.

POLITICS-US: Sotomayor Sworn In Following Senate PR

With Sonia Sotomayor's swearing in over the weekend as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts are aggressively debating what was learned from her four days of gruelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee - and whether these hearings are instructive or merely Capital Hill's version of Kabuki Theatre.

POLITICS-US: First Latina Appointed to the Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor - the first Latina Supreme Court nominee and the third woman appointed to the court - won her confirmation vote in the Senate today setting the stage for her swearing in at a White House ceremony as early as tomorrow.

POLITICS: U.S. Officials Protect Pak Military on Aid to Taliban

Despite evidence implicating the current Pakistani Army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, in a major military assistance program for the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the past few years, senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to the Taliban had ended.

U.S.: Homeless “Tent City” in Harlem Ends in Arrests

New York City police arrested 10 people who refused to leave a vacant lot in a demonstration for homeless people's rights in East Harlem on Thursday. Early in the day, dozens of homeless people had occupied the lot, which is currently not being used, setting up tents and a makeshift kitchen.

U.S.: Coal Power Hitting Roadblocks

As more and more states are turning against coal power facilities in the U.S., advocates have been using the legal system to halt new pending plants.

ENERGY: "Nuclear Steals Billions from Other Technologies"

Why is nuclear energy back on the table?

ENVIRONMENT: Lavish US Lobbying Pushes Nuclear Energy

Climate change and the resulting need for low-carbon energy sources is driving the current interest in nuclear energy despite the industry's near universal legacy of staggering cost-overruns, technical difficulties and dependence on enormous government subsidies.