BERLIN (AP) — Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama on Wednesday defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats. The two leaders spoke to the media after meeting privately on a range of issues confronting U.S. and European leaders, including the fragile effort to bring peace in Afghanistan, where peace talks with the Taliban are in the offing to find ways to end the nearly 12-year war. On another world trouble spot, the 2-year-old Syrian civil war, the president declined to provide details on the type of military support the U.S. will provide to opposition forces. Later Wednesday, Obama planned to draw attention to his plan for a one-third reduction in U.S. and Russian arsenals, rekindling a goal that was a centerpiece of his early first-term national security agenda. Fifty years ago next week, President Kennedy addressed a crowd of 450,000 in that then-divided city to repudiate communism and famously declare "Ich bin ein Berliner," German for "I am a Berliner." [...] presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have used Berlin speeches to articulate broad themes about freedom and international alliances. Obama, fresh from a two-day summit of the Group of Eight industrial economies, placed his hand over his heart outside the sunny presidential palace as a German military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," the American national anthem. An evening news show in Berlin devoted itself to the president's visit, highlighting "Das Biest," or "The Beast," as the president's armored limousine is called.

[...] by addressing the issue in a major foreign policy speech, Obama is signaling a desire to rekindle an issue that was a centerpiece of his early first-term national security agenda. The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based policy group, urged Obama not to wait for a formal treaty, arguing the U.S. and Russian leaders could move more quickly by taking parallel steps to reduce warheads. Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, is a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament and has long called for the removal of the last U.S. nuclear weapons from German territory, a legacy of the Cold War. Under an agreement drawn up when they formed a coalition government in 2009, Merkel's conservatives and Westerwelle's Free Democratic Party agreed to press NATO and Washington for the nuclear weapons to be withdrawn, but did not set any timeframe.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service is about to pay $70 million in employee bonuses despite an Obama administration directive to cancel discretionary bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year, according to a GOP senator. Office of Management and Budget "guidance directs that agencies should not pay discretionary monetary awards at this time, unless legally required," IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said in a statement. The IRS has been under fire since last month, when IRS officials acknowledged that agents had improperly targeted conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections. [...] the original agreement allows for the re-appropriation of such award funding in the event of budgetary shortfall. Discretionary monetary awards include annual performance awards, group awards, and special act cash awards, which comprise a sizeable majority of awards and incentives provided by the federal government to employees. [...] notice, agencies should not issue such monetary awards from sequestered accounts unless agency counsel determines the awards are legally required.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A wide-ranging farm bill the House is considering would cut food stamps by $2 billion a year and make it more difficult for some people to qualify for the domestic food aid program. The cuts are about 3 percent of the food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The chamber is expected to begin voting on 103 amendments to the farm legislation, including bids to reduce or expand the food stamp cuts, on Wednesday. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., pleaded for votes on the House floor Tuesday, saying a robust farm policy is necessary to avoid farm crises like those in the 1930s and 1980s. The House legislation would achieve some of the food stamp cuts by partially eliminating what is called categorical eligibility, or giving people automatic food stamp benefits when they sign up for certain other programs. The bill would also end a practice in some states of giving low-income people as little as $1 a year in home heating assistance, even when they don't have heating bills, in order to make them eligible for increased food stamp benefits. [...] Republicans took control of the chamber and more than 200 new members have been elected — many of them conservatives who replaced rural Democrats. Chandler Goule, a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union, said his group is telling Democrats that the food stamp cuts will likely be reduced in conference because the Senate farm bill passed last week has a much smaller cut — about one-fifth of the amount of the House cuts, or $400 million a year.

The statue joins sculpted tributes to fellow black Americans Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Sojourner Truth on permanent display in the Capitol's Emancipation Hall. Boehner is calling the statue "a fitting tribute to one of the greatest Americans and voices for freedom who ever lived."