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The Obama administration is formulating a new nuclear weapons policy that would include the elimination of thousands of warheads and the possible withdrawal of all tactical warheads from Europe. Obama is also under pressure to abandon the Bush Doctrine allowing preemptive action, including the use of nuclear weapons, against any nation threatening American security, The New York Times reported on Monday. The new strategy will be included in a document called the Nuclear Posture Review, which every president must complete. “It will be clear in the document that there will be very dramatic reductions — in the thousands — as...

A leftist La Raza activist previously forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government has been nominated by President Obama to a key administration post. Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former director at the extremist Mexican group National Council of La Raza (see the press release applauding her nomination) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been handpicked by Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That means Aponte, an attorney and independent consultant, will represent the State Department in the civil war-ravaged Central American country. In 1998...

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said today. Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but "would explain what happened and why they did it." The U.S. Justice Department announced earlier this month that Ali and four other men accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people in the nation's deadliest terrorist attack will face a civilian federal trial just...

President Barack Obama has asked Congress to end federal payments to states and communities for jailing illegal immigrants as he continues along a path toward legalization of undocumented aliens. The budget plan Obama released on Thursday would end the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), under which states received $400 million in the current fiscal year to cover the cost of incarcerating convicts and pre-trial detainees who are illegally in the U.S. Specifically, the SCAAP reimburses states and counties for jailer's salaries for holding illegal immigrants who are apprehended and found to have at least one felony and two misdemeanor...

President Barack Obama is to release up to 2,000 photographs of alleged abuse at American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in a move which will reignite the scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. The decision to make public the images sought in a legal action by the American Civil Liberties Union comes amid a political firestorm over alleged torture of detainees under President George W. Bush. Some of the photographs, which will be released before May 28, are said to show American service personnel humiliating prisoners, according to officials. The images relate to more than 400 separate cases involving...

The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 44 pictures will be released by May 28 -- making public for the first time images of what the military investigated as abuse that took place at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Defense Department officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East.