U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday he is sending 100 combat troops to central Africa to help and advise forces battling the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels accused of gross human rights abuses.

"These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA," Obama said, but warned they would not lead the fighting themselves.

U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday demanded answers from the pinnacle of Iran's government over an alleged plot to kill the Saudi envoy to Washington and said the facts of the plan were not in dispute.

But he also declined to say whether U.S. officials believed that the alleged scheme was endorsed at the very highest levels of the Iranian regime, though ascribed it to a pattern of "dangerous and reckless" behavior by Tehran.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spawned grass-roots activities around the U.S. and prompted comments from President Barack Obama, is now drawing political remarks from overseas.

Iran's top leader said Wednesday that the wave of protests reflects a serious problem that will ultimately topple capitalism in America.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the United States is in a full-blown crisis because its "corrupt foundation has been exposed to the American people."

The U.S. Congress has approved long-stalled free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea that President Barack Obama trumpeted as engines of growth and job-creation.

The accords will "significantly boost exports that bear the proud label 'Made in America,' support tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs and protect labor rights, the environment and intellectual property," Obama cheered after the pacts were approved on Wednesday.

A Nigerian man dubbed the "underwear bomber" pleaded guilty Wednesday to trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009, saying he had sought to avenge the killing of Muslims.

In a six-minute speech to a shocked courtroom on the second day of his high profile-trial in Detroit, Michigan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab insisted his actions were righteous and that the true crime was U.S. foreign policy.

President Barack Obama's administration crafted a legal document in secret ahead of the assassination of U.S.-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaqi, which permitted the killing of an American citizen without trial, a report said Saturday.

The secret memorandum was written in 2010 to justify the action despite a legal framework that prevents the White House ordering assassinations, the U.S. federal law against murder, and protections for U.S. citizens contained in the Bill of Rights, said the New York Times, citing sources familiar with the memo.

U.S. President Barack Obama accused Pakistan Thursday of hedging its bets on Afghanistan's future and warned there were "some connections" between its intelligence services and extremists.

"I think they have hedged their bets in terms of what Afghanistan would look like and part of hedging their bets is having interactions with some of the unsavory characters who they think might end up regaining power in Afghanistan after coalition forces have left," Obama told a White House news conference.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday said that it would be "very difficult" over the next two years for Al-Qaeda to stage a spectacular terror attack on the scale of the September 11 strikes in 2001.

Obama said that given America's open society, it would always be vulnerable, but argued that as a result of a stepped-up U.S. campaign which had "decimated" Al-Qaeda's leadership, the country was safer.

The United States and North Korea are likely to hold a second round of talks this month to try to revive international nuclear disarmament negotiations, a South Korean report said Sunday.

The meeting may come after a summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-Bak in Washington on October 13, an unnamed senior government official in Seoul told Yonhap news agency.

Representatives of Syria's six-month-old protest movement joined opposition parties in Turkey on Saturday to forge a united front against Bashar Assad's regime after violence claimed at least 19 more lives.

Clashes between security forces and deserters killed 11 people in a village in Hama province on Friday, while another eight died during a crackdown on protests in flashpoint Homs, human rights activists said.