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In their second debate, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain indulged in their fair share of misrepresentations on Tuesday night as they tried to convince voters of their fitness to […]

Almost from the moment he took power in October 1999, Gen. Pervez Musharraf heard about serious problems with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the prominent Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist who this week […]

The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has signed a detailed confession admitting that during the last 15 years he provided Iran, North Korea and Libya with […]

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged Friday that scientists from his country appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations probably 'for personal financial gain.' He denied that the […]

The Bush administration, trying to rescue its troubled plan to restore sovereignty to Iraq, is joining Iraqi leaders to press the United Nations to play a role in choosing an […]

THEY are the biggest, the fastest, the most unconventional. They are easily the most complex machines coming out of major computer manufacturers, university laboratories and now even Silicon Valley start-up [...]

WASHINGTON - In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hours after North Korea's missile test, President Obama on Sunday called for new United Nations sanctions and laid out a new approach to American nuclear disarmament policy -- one intended to strengthen the United States and its allies in halting proliferation. ''In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up,'' Mr. Obama told a huge crowd in Prague's central square. ''Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

North Korea defied the United States, China and a series of United Nations resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that the country said was designed to propel a satellite into space, but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile. North Korea launched the rocket at 11:30 a.m. local time, or 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, said the office of the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. Early reports from the Japanese prime minister's office indicated that the three-stage rocket appeared to launch successfully, with the first stage falling into the sea between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, and the second stage into the Pacific. South Korea vowed a ''stern and resolute'' response to the North's ''reckless act.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

North Korea defied the United States, China and a series of United Nations resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that the country said was designed to propel a satellite into space, but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile. North Korea launched the rocket at 11:30 a.m. local time, or 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, said the office of the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. Early reports from the Japanese prime minister's office indicated that the three-stage rocket appeared to launch successfully, with the first stage falling into the Sea of Japan and the second stage into the Pacific. South Korea vowed a ''stern and resolute'' response to the North's ''reckless act.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran took up President Obama's oft-repeated invitation for direct talks between the United States and Iran on Tuesday. The move signaled the start of a long-delayed war-or-peace drama that may help define the Obama administration's plans to remake America's approach to diplomacy. But it also opens up the possibility of new tensions with Israel, which less than a year ago sought American help in preparing an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex and is expected to drift further to the right after Tuesday's parliamentary elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A Pakistani court freed one of the most successful nuclear proliferators in history, Abdul Qadeer Khan, from house arrest on Friday, lifting the restrictions imposed on him since 2004 when he publicly confessed to running an illicit nuclear network. Mr. Khan, 73, considered in the West as a rogue scientist and a pariah who sold technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, is revered as a national hero in Pakistan for his role in transforming the country into a nuclear power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran's main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran's suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials. White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran's major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country's only known uranium enrichment plant is located. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- With the deal reached Sunday night, the United States has a good chance of escaping the debt limit showdown with its credit rating intact. The United States government may not be so lucky with its reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran's nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year -- and perhaps longer -- for Iran to complete what one senior official called a ''dash'' for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials. Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country's nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WASHINGTON -- Long before Afghanistan became the longest shooting war in American history, the question loomed: Could it have turned out differently? If only we had been smart enough, the arguments went, the ''good war'' might not have gone bad. If only we had gone into Tora Bora with overwhelming force in the winter of 2001, and captured Osama bin Laden. If only we had put a substantial force into the country in 2002, rather than assuming that the Taliban had been ''eviscerated,'' the term used, and now regretted, by American military briefers. If only we had carried through on President George W. Bush's promise of a ''Marshall Plan'' for Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WASHINGTON -- As President Obama begins making final decisions on a broad new nuclear strategy for the United States, senior aides say he will permanently reduce America's arsenal by thousands of weapons. But the administration has rejected proposals that the United States declare it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, aides said. Mr. Obama's new strategy -- which would annul or reverse several initiatives by the Bush administration -- will be contained in a nearly completed document called the Nuclear Posture Review, which all presidents undertake. Aides said Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates will present Mr. Obama with several options on Monday to address unresolved issues in that document, which have been hotly debated within the administration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Senior staff members of the United Nations nuclear agency have concluded in a confidential analysis that Iran has acquired ''sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable'' atom bomb. The report by experts in the International Atomic Energy Agency stresses in its introduction that its conclusions are tentative and subject to further confirmation of the evidence, which it says came from intelligence agencies and its own investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Struggling to bridge deep divides over how to revive a paralyzed global economy, the leaders of the world's largest economies agreed Thursday to bail out developing countries, stimulate world trade and regulate financial firms more stringently. But President Obama conceded that there were ''no guarantees'' that those measures would reverse the biggest global downturn in six decades. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, host of the Group of 20 summit meeting called to fight the crisis, announced at its conclusion that the leaders had committed to $1.1 trillion in new funds that would greatly increase the capital available to the International Monetary Fund. The goal would be a revival in trade, which is expected to contract this year for the first time in 30 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his first full day in Europe, President Obama conceded Wednesday that the United States had ''some accounting to do'' for failures that led to the world's financial crisis, even as he tried to brush past heavy pressure from Germany and France to accept global financial regulations that could reach well inside American borders. Speaking on the eve of a summit meeting here to address the financial crisis, Mr. Obama acknowledged that regulatory failures in the United States had a role in the meltdown, but he urged world leaders to focus on solutions rather than on placing blame. He also cautioned that the United States was unlikely to return to its role as a ''voracious consumer market,'' and he urged other nations to do more to revive growth in their home markets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For nearly 30 years, American presidents have arrived at economic summit meetings with nearly identical talking points: the solution to most ailments lies in more economic integration, unleashing free markets and using a light touch to tame capitalism. As President Obama landed here Tuesday night to attend the Group of 20 summit meeting, almost every one of those principles appeared up for debate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As an assertion of government control over a huge swath of the industrial landscape, President Obama's decision to reshape the automobile industry has few precedents. In essentially taking command of General Motors and telling Chrysler to merge with a foreign competitor or cease to exist, Mr. Obama was saying that economic conditions were sufficiently dire to justify a new level of government involvement in the management of corporate America. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama plans to further bolster American forces in Afghanistan and for the first time set benchmarks for progress in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban there and in Pakistan, officials said Thursday. In imposing conditions on the Afghans and Pakistanis, Mr. Obama is replicating a strategy used in Iraq two years ago both to justify a deeper American commitment and prod governments in the region to take more responsibility for quelling the insurgency and building lasting political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The groundbreaking message to Iran that President Obama delivered by videotape on Friday was part of a strategy intended to emphasize a positive message to Iran in the prelude to that nation's presidential election this summer, according to administration officials and European diplomats. Among other measures being weighed are a direct communication from Mr. Obama to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, and an end to a prohibition on direct contacts between junior American diplomats and their Iranian counterparts around the world, the officials and diplomats said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama and his advisers have decided to significantly expand Afghanistan's security forces in the hope that a much larger professional army and national police force could fill a void left by the central government and do more to promote stability in the country, according to senior administration and Pentagon officials. A plan awaiting final approval by the president would set a goal of about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces' current size, and more than three times the size that American officials believed would be adequate for Afghanistan in 2002, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda appeared to have been routed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan. According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Treasury officials and management experts hired by the Obama administration quietly began combing through General Motors' latest downsizing plan in Detroit last week, in a last-minute effort to assess whether more government aid could make the company viable, or whether the better choice was a managed bankruptcy. President Obama faces a deadline of March 31 to decide the fate of G.M., and by extension its huge network of suppliers. In interviews, however, administration officials said they would not be bound by that date, when Mr. Obama is scheduled to visit London for a summit meeting on the global economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the capitals of two staunch allies last week, top intelligence officials spoke about the nuclear threat from Tehran. Differences were clear. ''Iran has crossed the technological threshold,'' the chief of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, told the cabinet in Jerusalem last Sunday, in words that were immediately leaked to the press. Now, he added, ''its reaching military nuclear capabilities is a matter of adapting its strategy to the target of manufacturing a nuclear bomb.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the leaders of 20 nations met in Washington in November to face down a grave economic crisis that imperiled them all, the air was filled with promises of a new era of global regulation intended to match a new era of global risk. Nearly five months later, those risks look greater than ever. But it is a measure of the growing strains over how to manage the global contagion -- for which much of the world primarily blames the United States -- that the world's major and emerging economic powers cannot agree on whether redoing a system created in 1944 should be Job 1. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain used his first meeting with President Obama on Tuesday to raise the prospect of ''a global New Deal'' that would set common principles for regulating banks, declaring that the fiscal crisis could help to overcome past resistance to increased oversight across borders. In an appearance with Mr. Obama at the White House, Mr. Brown did not provide specifics about the components of the initiative. Mr. Obama, after saying he would not allow policy to be set by the day-to-day gyrations of stock markets, said the issues most important to him were halting ''massive over-leverage'' and ''huge systemic risks taken by unregulated institutions, as well as regulated institutions.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia's president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday. The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Opponents of President Obama's proposal for a sweeping new government activism in the economy call it a return to a traditional tax-and-spend philosophy, a step back to the era of Lyndon B. Johnson. It may also be a postmodern, post-Clinton form of liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was only 13 years ago that Bill Clinton declared before a joint session of Congress that ''the era of big government is over.'' President Obama's challenge on Tuesday night is to declare that, out of ugly necessity, big government is back -- and then to make a persuasive case, with a specificity he has avoided until now, that if done right, this era will not last for long. His aides say this is no moment for the lofty idealism of the inaugural address, 35 long days and roughly a thousand Dow Jones points ago. His task is to be at once reassuring and realistic, or, as one of Mr. Obama's economic advisers said over the weekend, ''to convince the country we've finally pulled the ripcord on the parachute, even if we can't tell you how long we fall or where we land.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]