Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory in the Israeli election will not disrupt painstaking U.S. efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, the State Department said Wednesday.

The Israeli leader opposes any accommodation with Tehran and came to Washington during the campaign to address U.S. lawmakers and denounce the agreement under negotiation as a "bad deal."

U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday they will not pursue criminal charges against an intelligence agency employee who lost control of a hobby drone that crashed into the White House gardens, sparking a Secret Service investigation.

The man, whose name was not released, had been flying a friend's DJI Phantom "quadcopter" around his downtown Washington apartment late on January 25 and early the next morning. 

The United States will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar Assad to end the civil war now entering its fifth year, Secretary of State John Kerry conceded in an interview that aired Sunday.

"Well, we have to negotiate in the end. We've always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process," Kerry said in an interview carried out Saturday.

A man in the U.S. capital was killed in a police shooting Thursday night in Washington's subway system, officials said.

Transit police responded to a call that a person had entered a subway tunnel just over a mile from the U.S. Capitol building, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority spokesman told Agence France Presse.

U.S. Ambassador David Hale has reportedly informed Lebanese officials that Washington will announce a huge financial aid for the Lebanese government during a donors conference in Kuwait.

Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas told al-Liwaa newspaper published on Wednesday that Hale discussed with him the March 31 conference. He did not give more details.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq is scheduled to travel to the United States later in March where he set to meet with a number of officials, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday.

The agenda of his trip is not complete yet, but the details of it were discussed during a meeting the minister held on Friday with U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale.

U.S. authorities on Thursday issued an appeal to police and the public to remain "vigilant" against attempts by the Islamic State group to recruit young Americans online.

The warning from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) came after the reported arrest last week of a 17-year-old boy who federal authorities allege helped another young man travel to Syria to join forces with the IS jihadists.

The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was recovering from surgery Thursday after having his face and arm slashed by a knife-wielding activist in an attack applauded by North Korean state media.

The United States condemned the "act of violence" which saw the ambassador rushed to hospital where his condition was described as stable after two-and-a-half hours of surgery that included 80 stitches to a deep gash on his right cheek.

The European Union and Cuba held a third round of "frank" talks Wednesday aimed at normalizing relations, as Havana and Washington work through their own historic rapprochement.

The two-day session in Havana, part of a dialogue that began 11 months ago, is aimed at tackling sensitive human rights issues and finalizing an agreement "on political dialogue and cooperation," meant to turn the page on a decade of estrangement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Washington on Monday that an emerging nuclear deal with Iran could threaten his country's very survival, but insisted Israel-U.S. relations remain solid.

"You are here to tell the world that reports of the demise of the U.S. relationship is not only premature, but it is wrong," the Israeli leader told delegates to a packed pro-Israel conference in Washington.