Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday urged a transition to democracy in Syria, saying in a commentary in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that the regime crackdown would not quell the momentum for change.

In an English translation provided by the State Department, Clinton wrote under the headline "There Is No Going Back in Syria" that it was "increasingly clear" the crackdown was an irreversible shift in the country's push towards reform.

The United States is studying whether war crimes charges can be brought against Syria to pressure its regime to end a bloody crackdown on dissent, a senior administration official said Friday.

The official said other measures, including sanctions targeting the country's oil and gas sector, were being considered as part of a broader diplomatic campaign to increase pressure on Syria's President Bashar Assad.

U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner quit Congress Thursday, apologizing for the scandal over his lewd online exchanges with women that led to a political uproar.

Before a crush of news cameras in New York, the 46-year-old congressman who was until recently seen as a leading candidate for mayor of New York City sounded a note of remorse "for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment I have caused."

President Barack Obama insisted Wednesday that the current U.S. military action in Libya was legal, rejecting rising criticism from Congress over the goals and justification of the operation.

In a 30-page report to lawmakers, the White House argued that U.S. participation in the NATO-led assault on Moammar Gadhafi's forces did not require congressional authorization as the U.S. role was only a supporting one.

President Barack Obama is calling on Sudan's warring factions to end the bloody violence threatening a peace agreement as the south gears up for independence due in three weeks.

"There is no military solution," Obama said in an audio message recorded late Tuesday for the U.S.-funded Voice of America (VOA) broadcasting network.

The U.N. Security Council will consider Friday removing about 20 former senior Taliban commanders from an international sanctions list to boost reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan, diplomats said.

In another sign that the international coalition in Afghanistan wants a negotiated peace, the council will also divide the U.N. sanctions list between al-Qaida and the Taliban to draw a distinction between them.

Republican presidential candidates led by frontrunner Mitt Romney used their first big televised debate to lash out at President Barack Obama -- but not each other.

The debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, late Monday did little to define differences between the seven candidates in the unwieldy Republican line-up as White House hopefuls reserved their venom for Obama on the economy and foreign policy.

The U.S. House of Representatives vote late Monday to prohibit the use of funds for American military operations in Libya.

Lawmakers adopted the amendment to a military appropriations bill by a vote of 248 to 163.

U.S. President Barack Obama has appointed a woman of Lebanese origin to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Dr. Azizah al-Hibri, who is the founder and chair of KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, was appointed to the two-year term earlier in the week.

U.S. President Barack Obama met the crown prince of Bahrain Tuesday, as Washington backed the Sunni royal family's national dialogue to ease the political crisis in the Shiite majority kingdom.

Obama dropped by a meeting between Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa and U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, in a White House protocol mechanism used to allow the president to meet lower level officials.