Washington's iconic monuments were off-limits to disappointed tourists and schools around the region were also shuttered Wednesday, as authorities assessed the damage from a rare U.S. east coast earthquake the previous day.

Officials announced that the Washington Monument, one of the most recognizable symbols of the U.S. capital city, would be closed to visitors indefinitely after cracks were found near the summit of the soaring obelisk.

A strong earthquake measuring 5.9 struck the U.S. east coast on Tuesday, rattling buildings in downtown Washington and causing evacuations of buildings as far away as New York.

The Pentagon was evacuated after the region's rare temblor, which according to the U.S. Geological Survey had its epicenter near Richmond, Virginia.

Tripoli is "under control" of the regime, a son of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi claimed early Tuesday, after rebels said they had taken most of the capital and gunfire rattled the port city.

Seif al-Islam, wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, met with an Agence France Presse correspondent and two other journalists, after ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said rebel forces had arrested him.

President Barack Obama says members of Congress should put country before politics, set aside their differences and act together to put people back to work.

The president is vacationing on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, but he recorded his weekly Saturday radio and Internet address earlier in the week while in Illinois during an economy-focused Midwestern bus tour.

The Cuban government on Saturday rejected a U.S. decision to keep Cuba on its blacklist of countries that allegedly support terrorism and accused Washington of sheltering the "real terrorists."

The Cuban Foreign Ministry said the U.S. does not have "the least moral authority or right whatsoever" to judge Cuba, citing the case of a Cuba-born former CIA operative wanted for a string of bombings and residing in Miami.

A growing belief that the U.S. economy may be headed toward recession gave the stock market its fourth straight week of losses.

The anxiety in the market was obvious Friday as the major indexes went from moderate gains early in the day to another sharp loss. The Dow Jones industrial average had its 10th move of more than 100 points in 15 trading days this month.

A U.S. drone strike targeting a house in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt on Friday killed at least four militants, local security officials said.

The unmanned aircraft fired two missiles, hitting a house in the Shin Warsak area of South Waziristan, part of the notorious tribal badlands that Washington calls a global headquarters of al-Qaida, the Pakistani officials told Agence France Presse.

North Korea said Friday it would discuss with the United States the recovery of U.S. soldiers killed during the Korean War after a six year suspension.

Its foreign ministry spokesman said the North had accepted a U.S. proposal for talks on the resumption of the excavation of remains of American soldiers killed during the 1950-53 war.

President Barack Obama accused Republican Tea Party activists of holding back the economic recovery Tuesday, hiking pressure on Congress to pass his yet-to-be unveiled jobs plan.

On the second day of a three-day bus tour of midwestern states, Obama expanded on his theme that political brinksmanship in Washington was harming America's capacity to speed up the slowed recovery.

Syrian diplomats are intimidating expatriates who speak out against the regime, and reporting back home where dissidents' relatives are then threatened and arrested, according to Wednesday's Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration told the Journal it had "credible" evidence that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is using the reports from its embassies abroad to target relatives of those living overseas, particularly Syrian-Americans who have joined peaceful U.S. protests.