White House

Former US president Jimmy Carter said Aug. 12 that recent liver surgery has shown he has cancer, and that it has spread.

The 39th president, now aged 90, underwent an initially successful operation earlier this month to remove a "small mass."  

A decade of anger over the Iraq war resurfaced in the 2016 US election race Aug. 11, with Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton's campaigns trading blame about that country's continued instability.

The first debate among Republicans running for the White House in 2016 put to rest speculation that billionaire businessman Donald Trump would moderate his harsh denouncement of America's politicians. He used the opening moments of the faceoff with nine other candidates to refuse to rule out running as an independent.
     

Turkey is legitimate in defending itself against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), U.S. President Barack Obama has said, while stressing that an agreement between Washington and Ankara is "carefully bound" around the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

A senior figure from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has called on the United States to intervene in the Kurdish peace process, which has come to a halt due to PKK attacks on Turkish security forces and the Turkish government's airstrikes on PKK base camps in northern Iraq. 

Japanese leader Shinzo Abe told US Vice President Joe Biden he would have "serious concerns" if WikiLeaks claims Washington spied on Japanese politicians were true, and called for an investigation, a top official said on August 5.

On Friday, Barack Obama was photograph signing new legislation, but… he was not wearing his wedding band. In fact, he was not wearing his wedding ring throughout the entire weekend. Noticeably missing, the missing band set forth a flood of speculation.

A US warning that it would use its air power to defend Pentagon-trained rebels against Syrian troops was met with scepticism by officials in Damascus on August 4.

The US-backed Division 30 was also left reeling when the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra front captured at least five of its members in overnight raids, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.    

President Barack Obama framed climate change as the toughest and most pressing challenge of our time on August 3, as he unveiled the first ever limits on US power plant emissions.

"No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a change in climate," Obama said, warning: "There is such a thing as being too late."  

The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on August 2.