Extracting first n columns of a numpy matrix

If a is your array:

In [11]: a[:,:2]
Out[11]: 
array([[-0.57098887, -0.4274751 ],
       [-0.22279713, -0.51723555],
       [ 0.67492385, -0.69294472],
       [ 0.41086611,  0.26374238]])

I know this is quite an old question -

A = [[1, 2, 3],
     [4, 5, 6],
     [7, 8, 9]]

Let's say, you want to extract the first 2 rows and first 3 columns

A_NEW = A[0:2, 0:3]
A_NEW = [[1, 2, 3],
         [4, 5, 6]]

Understanding the syntax

A_NEW = A[start_index_row : stop_index_row, 
          start_index_column : stop_index_column)]

If one wants row 2 and column 2 and 3

A_NEW = A[1:2, 1:3]

Reference the numpy indexing and slicing article - Indexing & Slicing