One of the working rules of pounding out a readable newspaper column is to focus squarely on a single topic, and to stick to it. Every now and again, however, I find it devilishly hard to follow rules.

It's kind of heavy, isn't it? Those are the first words people seem to utter when they heft a Droid smart phone. And the answer is, yeah, it is — maybe because so much is packed into it.

The United States is likely to bear the brunt of the blame among recession-hit developed nations for an expected six- to 12-month delay to a new global climate deal hoped for December in Copenhagen.

The jump in U.S. unemployment above 10 percent for the first time since 1983 will pressure President Barack Obama to find additional stimulus to keep a fragile economic recovery on track, analysts say.

U.S. President Barack Obama will be seeking China's backing over North Korea and Iran when he visits this month, but Beijing appears increasingly assertive about what Western pressure it accepts or rejects.

In a stirring and heartfelt tribute to the United States and its people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington DC and outlined the post-war relationship between the United States and a politically free, and now united, Germany.

Bolstering the world economic recovery and crafting a deal to fight climate change will be top of the agenda for G-20 finance ministers meeting in Scotland from Friday.

“In price is knowledge,” one editor used to scream at me. Whether or not you believed in efficient markets, you could be sure the price of a bond, a currency or a commodity was trying to tell you something about the outlook for growth, inflation or monetary policy; all you had to do was listen and translate.

American beef or Taiwanese pork — which is safer to stay on the menu? Last month, at least 160 piglets in Taiwan displayed flu symptoms, and some of them have now been confirmed as testing positive for the H1N1 flu.

The eye-popping economic growth that has made China an attractive business partner has also funded an even faster expansion in its military spending that has raised eyebrows among U.S. policymakers.