BARACK OBAMA

Humanity faces a profound emergency and unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, a joint editorial published in newspapers in 45 countries said on Monday.

U.N. talks billed as a turning point in a bid to slow global warming open on Monday seeking to agree curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and raise billions of dollars for the poor in aid and clean technology.

The Unites States, Japan and South Korea are working on a road map for ending North Korea's nuclear arms plans that will be on the agenda of a U.S. envoy who visits Pyongyang this week, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai raised doubts on Sunday that his country could take over responsibility for its security by July 2011, while U.S. leaders said the date was not a drop-dead deadline for Kabul.

U.S. President Barack Obama will attend the end of the Copenhagen climate change summit, a late change of plan the White House attributed on Friday to growing momentum toward a new global accord.

President Barack Obama on Sunday urged Senate Democrats to work out their differences on healthcare reform and pass what will be the most significant social legislation in decades.

Lifting the value of China's yuan currency would hurt, not help, global economic recovery and threaten the country's own financial and trade health, a Chinese state think-tank said in an essay published on Monday.

German climate activists posing as international leaders sat inside a giant aquarium which was filled with water on Saturday in a protest held in Berlin against the world's rising sea levels.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will attend the end of the U.N. climate summit, joining dozens of leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama, in the latest sign of growing momentum toward a new global accord.

On the chorus of her latest single, I Am, Mary J. Blige sings in her riveting voice: Ain't nobody gonna touch you better... more than I am. Since breaking through with her first R&B charting single and first No. 1 in 1992, You Remind Me, few performers have touched fans' inner emotions quite like Blige.

Cuban musicians are returning to perform in the United States after a long freeze on such visits, seizing the opportunity of friendlier overtures toward Havana from U.S. President Barack Obama.

President Obama, who had planned to speak at the climate change summit in UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen on Wednesday, will now only arrive on Dec. 18, the White House said Friday.

U.S. employers cut far fewer jobs than expected last month in the best showing for the labor market since the recession began, lifting the beleaguered U.S. dollar as investors bet a sustainable recovery was building.

A U.N.-led drive to raise cash to help poor nations cope with global warming is looking fairly encouraging, three days before a 190-nation climate conference, the U.N.'s top climate official said on Friday.

After two years of work, and 12 years after their last attempt, 190 nations gather in Copenhagen from Monday to try to avert dramatic climate change -- what one minister called the most difficult talks ever embarked upon by humanity.

Hollywood has finally realized that Tobey Maguire has grown up. The actor who gained fame as a teenager in the Spider-Man movies has embraced fatherhood and a new role as a soldier whose family is torn apart by war.

Following are the negotiating positions of major nations before a 190-nation U.N. conference in Copenhagen on December 7-18 which will try to work out a new pact to combat climate change.

U.S. employers cut far fewer jobs than expected last month in the best showing for the labor market since the recession began, boosting the U.S. dollar and global stock prices on hopes for a strong economic recovery.

The presidents of Russia and the United States on Friday pledged to keep working for a deal to reduce arsenals of Cold War nuclear weapons, as an existing treaty expired, but did not announce any new agreement.

Russia and the United States are close to a deal to cut vast arsenals of nuclear weapons, Russia said Friday, as the world's two biggest atomic powers rush to replace a Cold War treaty that expires at midnight.

Sharon Byers is unconvinced that human activities such as the burning of coal and other fossil fuels are behind climate change.