WASHINGTON (AP) ― The Obama administration is weighing options for sharp new cuts to the U.S. nuclear force, including a reduction of up to 80 percent in the number of deployed weapons, the Associated Press has learned.Even the most modest option now under consideration would be a historic and politically bold disarmament step in a presidential election year, although the plan is in line with President Barack Obama’s 2009 pledge to pursue the elimination of nuclear weapons.No final decision has

Feb. 15, 2012

ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Pakistan announced Tuesday that it has temporarily allowed NATO to ship perishable food to its troops in Afghanistan, a sign of thawing tensions following American airstrikes last year that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.Pakistan closed its Afghan border to NATO supplies in response to the deadly Nov. 26 attack on two of its border posts. The closure has been a headache for coalition forces, who have had to spend much more money to get goods to Afghanistan using alte

Feb. 15, 2012

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) _ Rev. Rafael Reatiga asked his parishioners to pray for him and gave the choirmaster a list of songs for his funeral shortly before he was found shot to death together with another Roman Catholic priest, a Colombian prosecutor said Tuesday.Authorities initially suspected robbe

Feb. 15, 2012

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ―The last time China’s soon-to-be leader visited Iowa, he slept in a bedroom with green shag carpeting and Star Trek character cutouts on the walls. He ate eggs with a spoon because his host forgot the chopsticks.But apparently Xi Jinping remembered the 1985 stay fondly because he insisted on returning this week to Muscatine, a small farming community he toured to learn about crop and livestock practices.Back then, he was a young Communist Party leader seeking ideas to help

Feb. 15, 2012

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- U.S. and Afghan officials are weeks away from clinching a security pact allowing an American military mission to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday.The two sides still had to resolve disagreements over controversial night raids by U.S. troops, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials say have claimed too many civilian lives, and the transfer of U.S.-run prisons in the country, the Pentagon chief said.“As you know, there

Feb. 15, 2012

A French champagne producer literally hit gold when workers doing up an old building on his property brought down a shower of US coins hidden in the rafters.Francois Lange, the head of the Alexandre Bonnet champagne-producing firm, in this eastern French village on Tuesday described the treasure tro

Feb. 15, 2012

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― The United States is engaging in intense exploratory talks with the Taliban in a bid to launch Afghan-led negotiations aimed at ending a decade-long war, but such negotiations face daunting hurdles.Questions swirl around a flurry of talks involving State Department special envoy Marc Grossman who wants the Taliban to set up an office in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar to serve as an open platform for negotiations.Analysts said that while the United States has made clear it intend

Feb. 14, 2012

Undercover filming by an animal rights group, Animal Equality (AE) has revealed pigs at a British farm being abused by workers, BBC reported Monday.A member of the AE got a job at Harling Farm and secretly filmed farm workers brutally killing injured pigs with iron bars.Britain’s Royal Society for t

Feb. 14, 2012

OLYMPIA, Washington (AP) -- Gov. Chris Gregoire handed gay rights advocates a major victory Monday, signing into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage in Washington state, making it the seventh in the nation to allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the bill surrounded by gay rights supporters. Gay marriage is already legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C."I‘m proud our same-sex couples will no longer be

Feb. 14, 2012

TEHRAN (AP) ― A senior Iranian military official said Monday that Tehran’s nuclear and other industrial facilities suffer periodic cyber attacks, but that the country has the technology to protect itself from the threat, an official news agency reported.Iran considers itself to have been waging a complicated cyber war since 2010, when a virus known as Stuxnet disrupted controls of some nuclear centrifuges.“Most enemy threats target nuclear energy sites as well as electronic trade and banking ope

Feb. 14, 2012

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) -- Bahrain deployed thousands of security forces Sunday to confront anti-government protesters ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Shiite-led uprising that seeks to loosen the ruling Sunni dynasty‘s monopoly on power.Opposition groups urged marchers to stream toward an empty lot dubbed “Freedom Square” outside the capital Manama. Some activists seek to occupy the site before Tuesday’s anniversary of the start of the wave of protests, and turn it into a new semi-permanen

Feb. 13, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Authorities searching with the help of a convicted serial killer found more human remains Saturday -- the first bones discovered at an abandoned well on a cattle ranch where a death row inmate claimed 10 or more victims may be buried, authorities said.The discovery marked

Feb. 13, 2012