TECHNOLOGY-US: Digital TV for All? Not so Fast

Imagine turning on your television and all you see is black and white fuzz.

POLITICS: Rhetoric and Reality Clash on Obama’s First Foreign Visit

On his first foreign visit as U.S. president, Barack Obama's rhetoric of "hope" and "change" came face to face with the hard, divisive policy realities of climate change from Canada's tar sands, a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and the sputtering world economy.

ECONOMY-US: Squatters See Silver Lining in Foreclosed Homes

With foreclosures skyrocketing and U.S. families sinking deeper into poverty, a number of organisations are turning to a new strategy to end homelessness: moving families into vacant, foreclosed houses that are currently owned by banks or the government.

POLITICS-US: Democrats Divided Over "Reckoning" for Bush

With growing public support for a public investigation of crimes that may have been committed by the administration of former president George W. Bush in waging its "global war on terror", policy makers and legal experts are deeply divided on how to proceed - and President Barack Obama seems ambivalent about whether to proceed at all.

POLITICS-US: New Bid to Ban Indiscriminate Weapons

Leaders of a wide variety of national organisations and Congress are putting pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama to reconsider his predecessor's policies of allowing the use, transfer and production of weapons that have been shown to indiscriminately maim and kill civilians.

MEDIA: U.N. Press Corps Protest Rented Offices

Every U.N. secretary-general since Norway's Trygve Lie back in 1946 believed in the concept of a free press - including rent-free offices to journalists covering the United Nations.

RIGHTS-US: The Children of Guantanamo

Legal experts and human rights advocates are challenging the public to remember Guantanamo's "child soldiers" when the detainees there are characterised as "the worst of the worst".

ECONOMY-US: Advocacy Groups Fear New Wave of Homeless

Homeless advocates in the United States say if the new Congress and the Barack Obama administration do nothing, many more low-income people already teetering on the brink could end up living on the streets over the next two years.

/EXCLUSIVE/FINANCE: How One Fund’s Profits Ended Up in the Caymans

President Barack Obama said he would crack down on firms that use offshore centres to evade taxes. He could begin with a New York subsidiary of one of the world's largest private banks, which used a Cayman Islands company to shift its profits.

U.S.: Hawks Urge Boosting Military Spending

Despite a shrinking national economy and a record defence budget, U.S. neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks are mounting a spirited - if misleading - campaign to persuade Congress that the military should get a bigger slice.

ECONOMY-CANADA: Conservatives’ Budget Skimps on Stimulus

Canada's reluctance to institute a full stimulus package in the recent federal government budget has international parallels, says Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

RIGHTS-US: Indefinite Detention Case to Test Obama’s Pledges

In what promises to be the first major test of the Barack Obama administration's new approach to the rule of law, the Supreme Court will soon hear what could be one of the most consequential cases in U.S. history.

RIGHTS-US: Racist Ideology Permeates Anti-Immigrant Lobby

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) said Tuesday that its research has connected three mainstream U.S. anti-immigration groups to racist ideas.

RIGHTS-US: Close Torture Loopholes, Physicians’ Group Urges

While applauding President Barack Obama's recent executive orders banning torture and other harsh interrogation practices, medical authorities are calling attention to a little-reported section of the Army's Field Manual on Interrogation that they say still allows the use of tactics that can constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under U.S. and international law.

ECONOMY-US: Poverty Safety Nets Fraying Nationwide

The global economy is barely showing a pulse, and the world's poor are especially at risk, the International Monetary Fund declared Wednesday.

POLITICS-US: Republican Benefactor Launches Comeback

While the alleged Ponzi scheme of New York investment manager Bernie Madoff has claimed significant chunks of the fortunes of a number of well-known charities, celebrities and not-so familiar millionaires, over the years another outfit appears to have left a trail of a different sort - the broken dreams of thousands of wannabe entrepreneurs who were left with garages full of dust-gathering products, motivational tapes and how-to-get-rich-quick books.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Obama Signals End to Era of Denial

Environmental activists have hailed the first moves by U.S. President Barack Obama to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by setting tough new fuel efficiency and pollution standards for the country's cars and trucks, steps that his predecessor, George W. Bush, had rejected or ignored.

CLIMATE CHANGE: North American Trees Dying Twice as Fast

Our trees are dying. Throughout the western United States, cherished and protected forests are dying twice as fast as they did 20 years ago because of climate change, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.

U.S.: Rights Groups Applaud Move to Halt Gitmo Trials

U.S. and international human rights groups Wednesday praised President Barack Obama's directive to immediately suspend the work of military commissions established by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to prosecute suspected terrorists at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and pressed for its earliest possible closure.

POLITICS-US: Obama and the Zelig Effect

President Barack Obama's inaugural address was in many respects an echo of his campaign rhetoric, offering nods to each side of the political divide in a way that elicited respectful praise from both sides but also deep uncertainty as to the speech's practical implications.

POLITICS-US: A Country United, at Least for a Moment

"I have never seen anything like this in my whole life," said Joseph Smith, 79, with tears of joy rolling down his dark, wrinkled cheeks as he watched Barack Obama being sworn in as the new U.S. president Tuesday. "This is unbelievable."