WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT Barack Obama plans “dramatic reductions” in the country’s nuclear arsenal, a senior US official said this week, but it remains unclear if he will opt for a radical break from past policy.
A review of nuclear strategy underway “will point to dramatic reductions in the stockpile, while maintaining a strong and reliable deterrent through the [...]

WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s administration moved to rein in America’s largest banks this week, sending Congress new rules blocking mega-mergers and barring investments seen as too risky.
With Obama’s presidency still dominated by the economic fallout from the banking crisis, the Treasury sent lawmakers proposed new rules that would prevent financial firms from becoming “too-big-to-fail.”
The rules would [...]

BAQUBA
THREE suicide attacks, including one by a bomber who rode in an ambulance to hospital before blowing himself up, killed 33 people in central Iraq on Wednesday, just days before nationwide elections.
The blasts in Baquba, the deadliest to hit the country in nearly a month, also wounded 55 people and spurred security forces to clamp [...]

GENEVA
CAMPAIGNERS at the three-day World Conference Against the Death Penalty, which continued on Thursday, see light at the end of the tunnel in their drive to rid the planet of capital punishment.
About 140 countries, two thirds of the United Nations, have now abolished or suspended executions including some 93 that have abolished it outright, officials [...]

WASHINGTON
THE TOPIC was the safety woes of Toyota, but the hearing at the US Congress could also have been a study in cross-cultural communication as Japanese formality met American bluntness.
Waving papers, pointing fingers and occasionally raising their voices, US House members spent three hours grilling executives of the iconic Japanese company over auto defects blamed [...]