The U.S. Secret Service locked down the White House press room Saturday after a loud noise was heard as reporters gathered to await President Barack Obama and wife Michele's departure for Selma, Alabama, a pool report said.

The Washington fire department reported a fire at a food cart near the White House and that its units had extinguished it. 

Iraqi government forces and allied tribal militia have retaken the town of al-Baghdadi, from where jihadists had threatened to attack an airbase housing U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Friday.

Fighters from the Islamic State group had taken al-Baghdadi, a small town on the Euphrates river in western Iraq, in February, posing a threat to a nearby base where American forces train their Iraqi counterparts.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he believes deep racism unearthed in Ferguson, Missouri's police department is not common but could exist elsewhere in the country.

"I don't think that is typical of what happens across the country, but it's not an isolated incident," Obama told Sirius XM radio in an interview broadcast Friday.

EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini said Friday a "good deal" was near as an end-March deadline looms over talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is leading marathon international efforts to get Iran to agree strict limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for ending punishing Western economic sanctions.

South Korean police on Friday charged the man behind a shocking knife attack on the U.S. ambassador with attempted murder, while investigating his possible links with North Korea.

Kim Ki-Jong, 55, also faces a separate charge of violence against a foreign envoy after slashing Mark Lippert with a paring knife in an assault that left the US envoy needing 80 stitches to a deep gash on his face, the Yonhap news agency said.

An airplane skidded of the runway Thursday and ploughed into a fence after landing at New York's La Guardia airport in a snow storm, officials said.

Delta flight 1086 from Atlanta to New York skidded off the runaway around 11:00 am (1600 GMT) with 125 passengers on board after landing, the airline reported, without confirming any injuries.

An alarming number of Turks from students to celebrities are facing criminal charges over draconian laws prohibiting insult or disrespect to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fueling criticism that they are aimed at stifling dissent.

Erdogan's opponents accuse him of increasing megalomania, and the authorities of setting up a cult of personality around the man who has ruled Turkey either as president or prime minister since 2003.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called Thursday on the U.S.-led coalition conducting air strikes against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq to fight the jihadists on the ground, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted that military pressure may be needed to oust Syria's President Bashar Assad.

Saudi Arabia, part of the anti-IS coalition, "stresses the need to provide the military means needed to face this challenge on the ground," Faisal said during a press conference with Kerry.

A major winter storm slammed parts of the United States Thursday, as thousands of flights were canceled and government offices shut down in anticipation of more than half a foot of snow in the nation's capital.

Snow started to fall in some parts of Washington DC Thursday, where the Office of Personnel Management ordered government employees to stay home. Many schools were closed as well. 

In their battle against "terrorists", countries around the world must root out the injustices that fuel extremism and are used as recruiting tools, the U.N. human rights chief said Thursday.

"The struggle to combat extremist violence must tackle the visions of injustice that fuel it," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.