POLITICS-CANADA: Low-Key Dion Walks Away With Surprise Win

Stephane Dion, a bookish political science professor, walked away from Canada's Liberal Party convention as the leader of his party after a lengthy year-long battle reminiscent of the 1968 contest which propelled a young Pierre Trudeau to the same position.

POLITICS-US: Conservative Evangelicals Stayed the Course

Top shelf conservative Christian evangelicals, Republican political leaders, and a host of right-wing pundits, columnists and radio and television talk show hosts have just about finished hashing out the whys and wherefores of election 2006's "thumpin'."

POLITICS-US: Foe of Birth Control to Head Family Planning

Women's groups, health advocacy organisations and 21 members of the U.S. Congress are strongly lobbying against the recent appointment of an anti-birth control activist as head of the nation's family planning programme.

HEALTH: Prescription Heroin Brings Ethical Dilemma

While North America's first prescription heroin trial is being described as successful in its early stages, it is plagued with ethical questions regarding its research design and the manner in which addicts are leaving the study.

POLITICS-US: Spying Won’t Deter Us, Peace Groups Say

A coalition of U.S. peace groups are pressing ahead with plans for what they hope will be a massive march on Washington Jan. 27, even though newly released documents show the antiwar community is under Pentagon surveillance.

FILM-US: A Director Bold in Life and Art

U.S. film and stage director Robert Altman, who died of cancer at the age of 81 in Los Angeles on Nov. 20, will be remembered for the overt and subtle liberal political views that imbued his nearly 50 films.

POLITICS-US: More Scientific Sleight of Hand

Most abstinence-until-marriage education programmes in the United States - which receive about 158 million dollars annually from the Department of Health and Human Services - are not reviewed for scientific accuracy before they are granted funding, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office released this week.

ELECTIONS-US: E-Voting Squeaks By With Passing Grade

An estimated 80 to 90 percent of the nearly 79 million U.S. voters either cast their mid-term elections ballot by computer on Tuesday or had their vote tabulated that way, and as experts had predicted, there were various glitches with electronic voting machines throughout the country.

DEATH PENALTY: U.S. State Backs Reinstatement After 153-Year Hiatus

A majority of voters across the Midwestern state of Wisconsin approved a referendum asking lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty after a 153-year hiatus.

POLITICS-US: Democrats Drub Republicans, Face Own Tests

Come January, Democrats will control one and possibly both houses of the U.S. Congress for the first time in more than a decade after voters snubbed President George W. Bush's Republican Party and prompted Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit his embattled post.

DEATH PENALTY-U.S.: Texas Death Row Suicide Underscores Stress

When Texas death row inmate Michael Dewayne Johnson slit his throat with a homemade razor blade in the early morning hours of Oct. 19, he took a life that the state wanted to claim later that day.

POLITICS-US: Foe of Gay Marriage Led a Double Life

Last week, Pastor Ted Haggard, a leading opponent of same-sex marriage, got a November surprise.

POLITICS-US: Electoral Stew Gets a Big Spoonful of Slime

The political fallout from an ongoing sex scandal involving a Florida congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives will likely pollute this November's state - and national - election landscape in various ways, according to a number of experts.

ECONOMY-US: Promise of Biofuels Boom Is Overrated, Report Says

Despite an explosion of private investment in the U.S. liquid biofuels industry, taxpayers are contributing around seven billion dollars a year in subsidies which could be better used for other energy- and environment-saving technologies, according to a major new report released here Wednesday.

CANADA: Critics Say New Environment Policy Ignores Science

Canada has officially turned its back on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change in its new "green plan" introduced Thursday, environmentalists say.

POLITICS: Christian Crusader Targets U.S. Prisons

An influential U.S. evangelical leader has lashed out at opponents of so-called faith-based prison projects, arguing that they are blind to the threat of terrorism in the "homeland" by former inmates who have converted to Islam while in U.S. jails.

ENVIRONMENT: The Next Wave in Clean, Green Power

Oregon's spectacular coastline could become the United States' centre for wave energy development in coming years, with plans underway to install power buoys in locations with enough potential to meet the state's future energy needs.

POLITICS-US: Democrats to Seize At Least Half of Congress

Less than four weeks before the Nov. 7 mid-term elections, most political professionals from both major parties believe the Democrats not only will end the 12-year Republican reign in the House of Representatives, but also have a roughly even chance of taking back the Senate which they lost in 2002.

POLITICS-US: Richard Viguerie’s October Surprise

With control of the U.S. Congress at stake in the upcoming November elections, a host of top-shelf conservative Christian leaders recently tried to rev up their base to vote Republican at the "Value Voters Summit".

DEATH PENALTY: Jamaicans Debate Re-introduction

Carl McHargh sports twenty-three stab wounds on his body which he received while he was sitting on death row in the Spanish Town District Prison.

DEATH PENALTY-US: Federal Case Revives Local Debate

A high-profile murder case in the U.S. state of North Dakota has drawn new battle lines between those who support and those who oppose the death penalty in a state which has not executed anyone in a century.