Spare a thought for the students at Arizona State University who will this semester be obliged to shack up in the new $130m (£74.3m) Vista del Sol complex. Not for them a spartan, shared dorm with a communal bathroom down the hall. No, the poor little rich kids of ASU will have to make do with what could pass for a five-star Caribbean beach resort. Rooms open onto a palm-lined [...]

For years, the rest of the world has complained about American energy consumption. Now, thanks to the surge in world oil prices, the United States has woken up to the need to avoid journeys - starting with the daily commute.

Edward Heath, whose Conservative government was defeated in February 1974 after he put British industry on a three-day working week during the first great miners' strike, would be encouraged. States, [...]

After a storm of protests from abortion rights groups, the American health secretary, Michael Leavitt, has for the time being backed down from issuing a legally binding regulation that would have made contraception more difficult to obtain by redefining birth control pills, the "morning-after pill" and devices such as IUDs as forms of abortion.

Health workers already have the right, guaranteed by federal law, to decline to take part in [...]

Ever since the chilling words "Man is in the forest" shattered the peaceful world of Bambi, Walt Disney has been considered a suspect company by the US gun lobby. The gunshots that ring out in the forest hardly give viewers the warm glow expected of a Hollywood animated children's film.

Parents and offspring are left wondering whether the young buck Bambi and his father have been shot dead for human [...]

The American economy is on the brink of recession. Rock-solid institutions such as the federal-government-founded mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Banks have had to close their doors to avoid a run on assets. The huge investment company Bear Stearns disappeared over a weekend.

The same uncertainty feeds into the housing market. Bundling dubious sub-prime mortgages has led to tight credit, which, [...]

A California company will give five dog owners the chance to have a favourite pet genetically copied and brought back to life later this month. BioArts International has arranged an online auction to decide which dog lovers will qualify: at starting bids between $100,000 (£51,000) and $180,000.

But questions are being asked. After pet cloning, how soon before grieving parents demand a cloned copy of their dead child? What [...]

The scene was straight out of Sam Peckinpah. Late one night this month, Edgar Eusebio Millán Gómez, Mexico's chief of police, returned to his modest flat in the Colonia Guerrero neighbourhood of Mexico City. He chose to live among the poor to stay close to those he was trying to protect from Mexico's rampaging drug lords, whose killing spree this year has left 1,100 corpses in its wake.

Millán's gesture [...]

Impatient with waiting for the US Supreme Court to outlaw abortion by overturning Roe v Wade (the 1973 decision that recognised a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy), anti-abortion activists are successfully waging campaigns through state legislatures.

The latest battleground is Florida, where lawmakers have been debating whether a woman intending to have an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy should first undergo a compulsory ultrasound scan of [...]

The identity of a baby's father can be discovered more quickly and cheaply since do-it-yourself DNA tests went on sale in high-street pharmacists in the US last month.

The $29.99 (£15) kits, with a further $119 (£60) for laboratory costs, sold so well in test marketing in the Pacific coast states that Sorenson Genomics of Salt Lake City, Utah, has rolled out its Identigene paternity kits across America. The kit [...]

President Bush is being told that while his promise to give billions of dollars to alleviate the effect of Aids upon Africans is welcome, he must be kinder to HIV sufferers who want to visit the US.

At present, those who are HIV-positive must apply for a special visa from the department of homeland security before they are allowed to enter America. Even if it is granted, they are allowed [...]