Washington  - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of the top court in the United States, said Tuesday she will be undergoing chemotherapy after surgery last month for pancreatic cancer.

The 75-year-old Supreme Court justice said her surgery last month was a complete success and described the chemotherapy treatment as a precautionary move. Ginsburg, the only woman on the nine-member court, said she expected to continue working full-time.

Washington  - The construction of new homes in the United States unexpectedly surged in February, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, signalling that the housing downturn at the heart of the US economic crisis may finally have reached bottom.

Privately-owned housing starts in February were 583,000 at an annual rate, up 22 per cent from January but still down 47.3 per cent from the same month in 2008. Economists had expected a further monthly decline to 450,000 last month, according to a Bloomberg News survey.

Washington, Mar. 17: President Barack Obama''s approval rating is down into the 50''s for the first time since he took office, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.

Obama has a 59 percent approval rating and a 26 percent disapproval rating in the poll, which quizzed 1,308 adults by phone (including 326 who were called on their cell phone) from March 9 to 12.

This is down from Pew''s poll last month, which showed Obama with 64 percent approval and 17 percent disapproval.

Washington, Mar. 17: The United States has decided to bar the entry of Uzi Arad, who is expected to be Israel’s new national security adviser, for nearly two years on the grounds that he is an intelligence risk.

According to the Washington Times, Arad, a former member and director of intelligence for the Mossad, Israel''s spy service, is mentioned in the indictment of Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst who pleaded guilty in 2005 to providing classified information about Iran in a conversation with two employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Washington, Mar. 17: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will deliver the keynote address at the annual Senate-House GOP dinner to be held on June 8 at the Washington Convention Center, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas) announced on Monday.

Washington, Mar 17: Scientists have uncovered where exactly lies the origin of consciousness in the brain.

While some neuroscientists have argued that consciousness may arise from a single "seat" in the brain, the new study has suggested that four specific, separate processes combine as a "signature" of conscious activity.

For the study, researchers analysed the neural activity of people who were presented with two different types of stimuli – one that could be perceived consciously, and the other that could not.

By using the above information, Dr. Gaillard of INSERM and colleagues showed that the four processes occurred only in the former, conscious perception task.