U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that he had discussed how to work with Iraq to "push back" a surge in sectarian violence whipped up by al-Qaida.

Obama noted that the group was increasingly active in the country, and said he and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki discussed a common response, and also said Washington wanted to help build an Iraq that was "inclusive" and "democratic"

Just six people managed enrol in Obamacare on day one of the health plan's troubled rollout, documents released by Republican lawmakers showed, in a new embarrassment for the White House.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa released a document from a meeting on October 2, the day after HealthCare.gov went online, recording the paltry figure.

President Barack Obama welcomes Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the White House on Friday, as sectarian violence in the country hits its deadliest peak since April 2008.

The Oval Office talks take place nearly two years after the last American troops left Iraq following an eight-year occupation and as a wave of Al-Qaida attacks sows terror in the Iraqi Shiite community.

With his soaring rhetoric and skilled oratory, Barack Obama is used to knocking it out of the ballpark.

But despite a stirring defense of his landmark healthcare law on Wednesday, Obama accepted that his Boston audience's minds might be elsewhere as the city's baseball team closed in on a World Series victory.

A U.S. drone strike targeting a militant compound Thursday killed three insurgents in a northwest Pakistan tribal region near the Afghan border, officials said.

The attack took place near Miranshah, the main town in the troubled North Waziristan tribal district.

Having outfoxed him on Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has pipped Barack Obama to the title of the world's most powerful leader as ranked by Forbes on Wednesday.

It was the first time in three years that the U.S. president has dropped to second place on the magazine's list and came as U.S.-Russia relations slid to a new low.

Pakistan's defense ministry said Wednesday U.S. drone strikes in the country's tribal areas have killed 67 civilians since 2008, a surprisingly low figure given previous casualty estimates.

The figure represents three percent of the total killed in the past five years according to ministry data given in a written answer to a question from the Pakistani Senate.

President Barack Obama's health secretary publicly apologized Wednesday for the rocky rollout of the U.S. health care law's new website, stressing that citizens "deserve better" from the system.

But while Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius regretted that navigating HealthCare.gov has been a "miserably frustrating experience" for many, she insisted that so-called "Obamacare" has been working well for millions of Americans.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran Monday, a day after the Israeli leader warned Tehran could convert uranium into weapons-grade material within weeks.

The White House said in a short statement that the leaders discussed Iran, Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and other key issues.

Hackers from a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army claimed Monday they had taken control of U.S. President Barack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The group, which backs Syria's government and which has previously hacked accounts of The New York Times, Agence France Presse and other media organizations, published screen shots which it said backed its claims.