Leaked U.S. embassy cables carry U.S. suspicions that Hizbullah raised funds and maintained contacts among Chile's small community of Islamic fundamentalists.

An unclassified embassy cable dated February 27, 2006, and released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, said a "radical fundamentalist presence" was centered in the northern city of Iquique, and to a lesser degree in Santiago.

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday warned autocratic U.S. allies they cannot crush the Middle East's youthful "hunger" for change and offered "moral support" to Iranian protesters defying a crackdown.

Obama walked a fine line between offering American support for political uprisings after the Egypt revolt and openly offending states that use iron-fisted rule yet have guaranteed U.S. interests for decades.

Furious Iranian lawmakers on Tuesday demanded the hanging of opposition leaders who called anti-government protests which left two people dead, saying they had been "misled" by Iran's arch-foes.

But in one of his most direct reactions to events in Iran, U.S. President Barack Obama offered encouragement to protesters, saying he hoped they would have the "courage" to keep expressing their "yearning for greater freedoms."

Seven men, including two Lebanese citizens, were charged with selling drugs and weapons in an effort to help the Taliban fight U.S. troops overseas.

Posing as representatives of the Taliban, cooperating witnesses for the Drug Enforcement Administration approached the men in Ghana last June, asking to set up a drug relationship, prosecutors said. First, the cooperators asked if they could buy large amounts of cocaine, according to court documents. Then, they asked if the men could set up safe places in West Africa to store heroin on its way from Afghanistan to the United States, Canada and Europe.

U.S. President Barack Obama marked the sixth anniversary of the assassination of ex-premier Rafik Hariri by reaffirming his support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

For the past two years, a bitter political battle has revolved around the STL which is expected to implicate Hizbullah members in the Hariri murder.

Hizbullah official Nabil Qaouq stated on Sunday that the equation in Lebanon today has changed from what it was in the past seeing as the Resistance now enjoys a parliamentary and popular majority, adding that it refuses the United States’ employment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as a weapon against the party.

He said during a ceremony commemorating the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyeh: “The new government in Lebanon should help remove the country from the American minefield.”

U.S. lawmakers are reportedly pushing for the adoption of the Hizbullah Anti-Terrorism Act of 2011 which guarantees that organizations like Hizbullah do not benefit from the money of American taxpayers.

During hearings on Egypt and Lebanon this week, House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Howard Berman announced that he would be introducing the new legislation entitled the "Hizbullah anti-terrorism act of 2011."

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday the world was watching history unfold and a moment of transformation in Egypt, as reports said President Hosni Mubarak may be ready to step down.

Obama also directly addressed the young people of Egypt who have swelled massive crowds in Cairo, saying America would do all it could to ensure a genuine transition to democracy at an apparently pivotal moment of the crisis.

The U.S. has accused the Beirut-based Lebanese Canadian Bank of laundering money for alleged cocaine trafficker Ayman Joumaa, and linked Hizbullah to the bank's illegal activities.

The U.S. Treasury said it would move to prohibit U.S. financial institutions from working with the bank, which it said was tied to Joumaa's international syndicate that laundered "hundreds of millions of dollars monthly" in cash from the drugs trade.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration was the target of harsh criticism in Congress Wednesday for not doing enough to support "pro-democracy forces" in Lebanon and Egypt.

"In both Egypt and Lebanon, we have failed to effectively leverage U.S. assistance in support of peaceful, pro-democracy forces and to help build strong, accountable, independent, democratic institutions as a bulwark against the instability that is now spreading throughout much of the region," said Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee she heads.