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President Barack Obama will announce in the next few weeks how many combat troops the United States will leave in Afghanistan in 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday. _0"> Obama has set next year as the target for withdrawing most troops but the decision is a delicate one as sufficient forces must stay behind to train and support Afghan forces and carry out some operations.   "Very shortly, not too long from now, the president does intend to make public what his plans are for post-2014," Kerry told reporters. Kerry declined to discuss how many troops might remain but said: "He (Obama) is committed to supporting the Afghan military beyond 2014." U.S. lawmakers have been pressing military commanders and the Obama administration to release recommendations for the size of a force to remain in Afghanistan. U.S. troops first went into Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to root out al Qaeda and its Taliban

The Associated Press said on Monday the U.S. government secretly seized telephone records of AP offices and reporters for a two-month period in 2012, describing the acts as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations. AP Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a letter posted on the agency's website, said the AP was informed last Friday that the Justice Department gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the news agency and its reporters.   "There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," Pruitt said in the letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder. An AP story on the records seizure said the government would not say why it sought them. But it noted that U.S. officials have previously said the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia was conducting a criminal investigation into information contained i

The White House, under pressure from reports that the Justice Department seized Associated Press phone records, said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama is seeking to balance support for a free press with the need to investigate leaks of classified information. _0"> "The president believes that the press as a rule needs to have an unfettered ability to pursue investigative journalism," White House spokesman Jay Carney told a news briefing.   "He is also committed, as president and as a citizen, to the proposition that we cannot allow classified information, that can do harm to our national security interests or do harm to individuals, to be leaked," Carney said. Beyond that, he said the White House could not comment on the specific investigation that provoked the reported seizure of journalists' phone records. (Reporting By Laura MacInnis, Mark Felsenthal and Jeff Mason; Editing by Sandra Maler and Vicki Allen)

An outspoken freshman senator with a record of taking on Wall Street wants financial regulators and federal prosecutors to provide an economic justification for allowing big banks to settle investigations without admitting any wrongdoing. In a May 14 letter to the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren asks the agencies to provide her with details of how they weigh the costs and benefits of settling versus trying cases.   "If a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial - either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources - the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer," Warren wrote. Concerns about whether regulators are properly weighing the costs and benefits of their policies have typically bee

The top Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee said on Tuesday it was time for the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven Miller, to leave his post amid a growing controversy over IRS scrutiny of conservative groups. _0"> "He basically misled me. I really think it is time for him to leave," Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah told reporters.   The remarks came as the Senate Finance Committee and at least two U.S. House of Representatives panels are launching probes. The panels plan to look into the tax agency's use of search terms such as "Tea Party" in targeting tax-exempt status applications from conservative groups for closer scrutiny. (Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Paul Simao)

Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is considered crucial for the success of an immigration law overhaul, on Tuesday vowed to fight for a biometric system to track foreigners leaving the country after a Senate panel rejected the provision, in part because it was too costly. Rubio and seven other Republican and Democratic senators, known as the "gang of eight," have crafted a sweeping bill that would revamp the immigration system, increase work visas and put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.   In its second day of examining the legislation, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against the Republican amendment that would have made it easier for the government to track illegal immigrants and other foreigners who have overstayed their visas. The amendment would have required a biometric system, which uses technology such as iris scans and fingerprinting, at every point of entry in the United States before illegal immigrants would be eligible for

The Senate Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill on Tuesday, costing $500 billion over a decade, that would expand the scope of the federally subsidized crop insurance program and modestly trim spending on food stamps for the poor. The 1,000-page bill now goes to the Senate floor, where a vote could be called as soon as this month.   The House Agriculture Committee was scheduled to draft its farm bill on Wednesday. The new five-year farm law is months overdue after an election-year deadlock in 2012. Expansion of crop insurance in the Senate bill would be part of a broad remodeling of farm subsidies. Most notably the $5 billion a year direct-payment subsidy to farmers, long a target of reformers, would end. Separate insurance programs to guarantee revenue to cotton and peanut growers would be created, as well as an insurance program to compensate growers if revenue from other crops drop by more than 10 percent. Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of M