Cleveland, the Ohio city where a white policeman was acquitted Saturday in the fatal shooting of two African Americans, has reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department on policing practices, The New York Times reported.

The deal, which could be announced as early as Tuesday, follows the verdict that prompted mainly peaceful protests after 31-year-old patrolman Michael Brelo was found not guilty on two counts of voluntary manslaughter in the 2012 killing.

Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Sunday that Iraqi forces "failed to fight" in Ramadi, which has fallen to Islamic State militants, adding the troops lacked the will to defend themselves.

IS jihadists took control of the strategic city, the capital of Anbar province, a week ago, in Baghdad's worst defeat in almost a year. 

President Barack Obama's war strategy failed to stop Islamic State jihadists from overrunning Ramadi but he appears reluctant to change course despite the group's advances on the battlefield.

The disastrous fall of the Iraqi city exposed the limits of Obama's policy, experts say, highlighting the sectarian divisions in Iraqi society exploited by the IS group and the American president's determination to avoid another protracted military occupation. 

A London taxi driver who made bombs targeting coalition troops in Iraq, one of which killed a U.S. soldier, was on Friday jailed for life with a minimum of 38 years after being convicted of murder.

Anis Sardar, 38, built an improvised explosive device (IED) which killed Sergeant First Class Randy Johnson of 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment when it exploded under his armoured vehicle outside Baghdad on September 27, 2007.

A drug cartel installed 39 surveillance cameras in a Mexican city bordering the United States to monitor the movements of residents and security forces, authorities said Friday.

It underlines the pervasiveness of Mexico's powerful drug cartels, who have eyes and ears in towns and cities across the country thanks to human "halcones," or hawks, who act as lookouts and relay information to the gangs.

The State Department on Friday released a first batch of emails by Hillary Clinton, giving an unprecedented glimpse into the work of the former top diplomat in the wake of a deadly 2012 attack on a U.S. mission in Libya. 

The emails have stoked fresh controversy since Clinton -- who is now running for president -- admitted to using a private server and email address during her tenure as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

A senior U.S. diplomat on Friday urged Myanmar to extend "citizenship" to the oppressed Rohingya minority to address an ongoing migrant crisis that has hit Southeast Asia, leaving thousands stranded at sea.

More than 3,500 migrants have swum to shore or been rescued off the coasts of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh since a Thai crackdown in early May on human-trafficking threw the illicit trade into chaos.

China declared victory on Friday over an encounter with a U.S. surveillance aircraft overflying the contested South China Sea, saying its military "drove away" the intruder with radio warnings. 

Beijing is in the throes of a rapid land-reclamation program in the area, building artificial islands and facilities including an airstrip -- raising tensions with Washington and the risk of a standoff on the high seas.

One of Iraq's leading Sunni Arab politicians, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq, branded as "shameful" Friday the army's chaotic pullout from Anbar provincial capital Ramadi.

Mutlaq, who is himself from the overwhelmingly Sunni province, said the Shiite-led government would discipline officers who had given up the fight as Islamic State jihadists overran the city last Sunday.

The Islamic State group consolidated its control of the Iraq-Syria border Friday after capturing an Iraqi provincial capital and a famed Syrian heritage site in an offensive that has forced a review of U.S. strategy.

The jihadists, who now control roughly half of Syria, reinforced their self-declared transfrontier "caliphate" by seizing Syria's al-Tanaf crossing on the Damascus-Baghdad highway late Thursday.