WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Saddled with Middle East problems ranging from Iran to Syria and beyond, President Barack Obama now faces one that is both old and new: Iraq.

Unresolved sectarian tensions, inflamed by the raging civil war in neighboring Syria, have combined to send violence in Iraq to its highest level since Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops in December 2011, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts say.

WASHINGTON, May 24 (Reuters) – Twelve years after the “war
on terror” began, President Barack Obama wants to pull the
United States back from some of the most controversial aspects
of its global fight against Islamist militants.

In a major policy speech on Thursday, Obama narrowed the
scope of the targeted-killing drone campaign against al Qaeda
and its allies and took steps toward closing the Guantanamo Bay
military prison in Cuba.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, former White House aide and Harvard professor, is under consideration to be the U.S. State Department’s top human rights official, sources familiar with the matter said.

If chosen, Power, an outspoken defender of human rights who wrote a study of the U.S. government’s failure to prevent genocide in the 20th century, could become a strong voice in the administration for a more muscular U.S. role in protecting rights in such places as Syria, China and Sudan.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama signaled on Tuesday that he is no rush to respond quickly to Syria’s apparent use of chemical weapons, taking a cautious approach to the Arab country’s civil war that mirrors the views of the U.S. public, most lawmakers and some American allies.

Obama, who last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would cross a “red line,” told a White House news conference there is evidence those weapons were used, but that there is still much U.S. intelligence agencies do not know.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI in 2011 interviewed one of the brothers suspected in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings, a U.S. law enforcement source said on Friday, a disclosure that could raise questions about whether the government missed potential warning signs about the men’s behavior.

The source said the FBI’s dealings two years ago with Tamerlan Tsarnaev occurred following a request from an unidentified foreign government.

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) – The stealthy,
nuclear-capable U.S. B-2 bomber is a veteran of wars in Iraq and
Libya, but it isn’t usually a tool of Washington’s statecraft.

Yet on Thursday, the United States sent a pair of the
bat-winged planes on a first-of-its-kind practice run over the
skies of South Korea, conducting what U.S. officials say was a
diplomatic sortie.

TOKYO/WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) – Japan and Australia
plan to sanction North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank as part of
U.S.-led efforts targeting Pyongyang’s main foreign exchange
bank for the role Washington says it has in funding the
country’s nuclear programme.

A Japanese government source said Tokyo could act within the
next two to three weeks. Australian Foreign Ministry sources
said Canberra might also unveil sanctions soon.

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will discuss matters of war, including future U.S. troop levels and Afghanistan’s army, when they meet on Friday, but matters of peace may be the most delicate item on their long agenda.

After nearly 10 months in limbo, tentative reconciliation efforts involving Taliban insurgents, the Karzai government and other major Afghan factions have shown new signs of life, resurrecting tantalizing hopes for a negotiated end to decades of war.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffered a blood clot in a vein between her brain and skull behind her right ear but is expected to make a full recovery, her doctors said on Monday in a statement released by the State Department.

Clinton did not suffer a stroke or neurological damage as a result of the clot, the doctors said, adding that “she is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family and her staff.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In his first week as U.S. president, Barack Obama told Iran’s leaders he would extend a hand if they would “unclench their fist” and persuade the West they weren’t trying to build a nuclear bomb.

So far, they have not. In response, the United States and the European Union this year took a step they had long resisted, imposing trade sanctions to choke off Iran’s lifeblood: oil revenue.