President Nicolas Maduro plans to limit the U.S. diplomatic presence in Venezuela and require American tourists to obtain visas, in a sign of growing tensions between the two countries.

The leftist president said the measures, announced Saturday, aimed to "control" U.S. meddling in Venezuelan affairs.

A U.S. court Friday denied a request by alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his trial to be moved out of the city, just days ahead of opening statements.

A three-judge panel came down in a two-to-one split decision against the move.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has urged his army to prepare for war with the United States and its allies, state media said Saturday, as Pyongyang ramps up the rhetoric ahead of U.S.-South Korea military drills.

Kim's comments came after South Korea and the United States Friday conducted a joint naval drill involving 10 South Korean warships and a U.S. Aegis destroyer, ahead of the launch of large-scale military exercises that have enraged the North.

Australia is considering joining New Zealand in a training mission in Iraq to help counter the Islamic State (IS) militant group, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Saturday.

New Zealand announced Tuesday it will send troops to Iraq on a "behind-the-wire" non-combat mission to boost the local military's ability to fight the jihadists.

Faced with a seemingly unending bloody conflict in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State group, is President Bashar Assad the lesser of the country's evils and should the West re-engage with him?

While world powers such as the United States, France and Britain refuse to have anything to do with a leader the French prime minister described as a "butcher", the question is increasingly being raised within these countries.

Feuding U.S. lawmakers narrowly avoided a Department of Homeland Security shutdown Friday at the 11th hour, but funded the agency only until March 6, forcing Congress to revisit the issue next week.

House and Senate members scrambled to prevent the premier agency securing the United States against terror threats from running out of money at midnight, as DHS became a battleground for lawmakers clashing over President Barack Obama's controversial immigration reforms.

The U.S. military insisted Friday it was not pressurizing Iraq to launch an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State extremists in the next few months, saying the timing was up to Baghdad.

Previous comments by senior U.S. officials suggesting the Iraqi army would stage a counter-attack against the IS group in the northern city as soon as April or May have provoked an angry response in Baghdad.

The United States and Cuba said they made progress Friday in talks on restoring diplomatic ties and Washington could reopen its Havana embassy before a key April summit if differences are overcome.

After a second round of historic meetings, negotiators from both countries appeared optimistic about the road ahead, but cautioned there were still outstanding issues to resolve in order to restore diplomatic ties frozen for half a century.

The U.S. military said Friday the training of moderate Syrian rebels will likely begin within four to six weeks in Turkey after the two NATO allies clinched an agreement last week.

Potential recruits still needed to be vetted for the training sessions, which will take place in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Turkey, Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told a news conference.

Iran on Saturday shrugged off a bid by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abort a nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers by lobbying opposition in a speech to the U.S. Congress.

"I believe this effort is fruitless and it should not be an impediment to an agreement," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said at a joint press conference with his visiting Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni.