The U.S. Senate rejected legislation early Saturday aimed at reforming NSA intelligence gathering, a blow to President Barack Obama and others who support ending the bulk collection of Americans' telephone records.

The House of Representatives passed the measure overwhelmingly last week, with Democrats and Republicans uniting in their desire to rein in the National Security Agency's highly controversial program that scoops up data from millions of Americans with no connection to terrorism.

A senior official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party on Friday rejected fresh U.S. criticism of the premier as unjustified and hypocritical.

Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the influential foreign affairs and defense committee in parliament, was responding to remarks by U.S. President Barack Obama published Thursday in news magazine The Atlantic.

U.S. President Barack Obama offered Tunisia closer security ties Thursday, in a bid to ensure jihadists do not extinguish the brightest democratic light to emerge from the Arab Spring.

Hosting President Beji Caid Essebsi at the White House, Obama declared Tunisia a "non-NATO ally," which would allow for enhanced military cooperation and the transfer of advanced weapons. 

U.S. President Barack Obama has described the loss of key Iraqi territory to Islamic State as a tactical setback, while insisting the war against the jihadist group is not being lost.

"I don't think we're losing," Obama said in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic published Thursday, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi was overrun.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to mend fences with Israel's Arabs at a meeting Thursday with the head of the Arab parties in parliament, Ayman Odeh, after polarizing election-day remarks.

Netanyahu had caused an uproar when during the March 17 vote he warned that Arabs were being mobilized "in droves" to the ballot boxes, putting his rightwing rule at risk.

"Hello, Twitter! It's Barack. Really! Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account."

With that inaugural Tweet sent from a smartphone in the Oval Office before jumping on Marine One Monday, the President of the United States Barack Obama -- or @POTUS -- cast off security and bureaucratic chains in place since he was elected.

President Barack Obama plans to bar police from using tracked armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers and large-caliber firearms, in response to accusations that U.S. law enforcement has become too militarized.

After controversy over the policing of high-profile protests in Baltimore, Maryland and Ferguson, Missouri, the White House said Monday that Obama will limit police access to military equipment.

Gulf nations were reassured by a pledge from U.S. President Barack Obama that Washington would stand by them despite its overtures to Iran, a senior Arab official said Friday.

"We're very happy the outcome of the results disappointed pundits, and exceeded beyond most expectations," said Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, assistant secretary general for the Gulf Cooperation Council.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that the war in Syria would not likely end before he leaves office in early 2017 and reaffirmed his belief that there is no "military solution" to the conflict.

"The situation in Syria is heartbreaking but it's extremely complex" Obama said in an interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television network.

President Barack Obama tried to reassure America's Gulf allies Thursday that engaging with Iran would not come at their expense, at a Camp David summit that proved short on concrete outcomes.

Pledging to counter external threats to Gulf states amid Iran's growing role in the region, Obama said his security commitment to the decades-old allies was "ironclad."