U.S. President Barack Obama said he believes deep racism unearthed in Ferguson, Missouri's police department is not common but could exist elsewhere in the country.

"I don't think that is typical of what happens across the country, but it's not an isolated incident," Obama told Sirius XM radio in an interview broadcast Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday brushed aside criticism from U.S. President Barack Obama of his speech to Congress, in which he warned Washington was paving the way to a nuclear-armed Iran.

The White House was infuriated by Netanyahu's address Tuesday to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, where he laid out Israeli concerns at an emerging world deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Tuesday that the deal being negotiated between world powers and Iran would leave Tehran free to develop nuclear weapons.

In an impassioned address to the U.S. Congress, conducted even as Secretary of State John Kerry was in nuclear talks in Switzerland with his Iranian counterpart, Netanyahu branded Iran a global threat.

Iran's foreign minister rejected Tuesday as "unacceptable" remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama who said a minimum 10-year nuclear deal offered the best hope of avoiding an atomic-armed Tehran.

Mohammad Javad Zarif was speaking in Switzerland, where he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met for a second day to seek a framework for a deal to rein in Tehran's nuclear program by a March 31 deadline.

The United States will be ready to "protect" moderate Syrian rebels possibly with air power once they enter into combat, a top U.S. official said Monday.

Retired U.S. general John Allen, President Barack Obama's envoy to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group, insisted that once moderate Syrian rebels were vetted, trained and armed, they would not be abandoned on the battlefield.

President Barack Obama will receive his Afghan counterpart Ashraf Ghani at the White House on March 24 as Washington weighs slowing down the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

The two presidents will discuss security issues, economic development and U.S. support for a reconciliation process, White House secretary Josh Earnest said Friday.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Friday praised President Barack Obama's "extraordinary" leadership in the fight against the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

With Liberia now in recovery from the worst outbreak ever of the deadly virus, the United States ended its military mission in the region Thursday.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-8 Thursday to advance Loretta Lynch's nomination to be President Barack Obama's new attorney general.

All Democrats on the panel backed Lynch, a veteran prosecutor who would be the first African-American woman ever to hold the post. She also earned support from three Senate Republicans.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the U.S. Congress next week will shatter already poor relations with President Barack Obama and test the resilience of U.S.-Israeli ties.

Since Netanyahu and Obama came to power in 2009 they have had a testy relationship, clashing over Israeli settlement building and the moribund Middle East peace process.

U.S. Senate leaders struck a deal Wednesday to avert an ugly shutdown and fund homeland security operations through September, but it remained unclear whether lawmakers will agree to the plan before Friday's deadline.

The fate of U.S. security operations including border patrols, airport screening and Secret Service protection hung in the balance as lawmakers bickered about how to break an impasse over funding the Department of Homeland Security, which has become embroiled in a partisan fight over immigration.