News stories by Eli Clifton, page 4

U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday his administration's plan to expand the areas off the U.S. coast which will be eligible for oil and natural gas drilling, as environmental groups condemned the plan as damaging to the oceans and coastal ecosystems.

Eighty-one percent of U.S. citizens say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has hurt their country's interests, according to a new poll, although a sharp partisan divide increasingly frames the issues.

Internet users in China are reporting varying degrees of censorship on Google search results after the company moved its Chinese operation out of mainland China.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered reassurance Monday to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee that the Barack Obama administration's 'commitment to Israel's security and Israel's future is rock solid,' while echoing the words of warning issued by Gen. David Petraeus and Vice-President Joe Biden.

Relations between Beijing and Washington have been far from smooth since the beginning of the year.

After U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's January address on the role of internet freedom in U.S. foreign policy, the Barack Obama administration appears to be taking the first steps to introduce specific legislation and policies to exploit the role of the internet in opening up those countries ruled by oppressive or authoritarian governments.

Reducing the annual 13 million preterm births and 3.2 million stillbirths should be a global public health priority, says a report released Monday which asserts that significant reductions in these numbers could be achieved by improving access to low-cost interventions in both low and high-income countries.

With relations between China and the U.S. taking some bitter turns in recent months, how China responds to mounting pressure from the U.S. and its European allies for tougher sanctions on Iran is being viewed as a major test of the current relations and a determinant of the future shape of bilateral ties between Washington and Beijing.

U.S. President Barack Obama met with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, Thursday in the White House, raising objections from China and adding to existing U.S.-China tensions over Taiwan arms sales, internet censorship and hacking, tariffs on Chinese tyres and calls for Beijing to readjust its currency.

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar last week in a joint operation conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) represents the most important Taliban leader to be taken into custody since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.