U.S. President Barack Obama voiced support Friday for France's military intervention in Mali and vowed to work with French counterpart Francois Hollande to tackle extremism across North Africa.

The two presidents discussed other "shared security concerns," including Algeria, Libya and Syria, during telephone talks, the White House said in a statement.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden took his gun control show into the heart of Virginia gun country Friday, defending and seeking support for a White House plan on reducing firearm violence.

Biden led a two-hour roundtable meeting with U.S. lawmakers, administration officials and local leaders in the capital Richmond -- once a city with one of America's highest crime rates.

U.S. President Barack Obama and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sit down Friday for a joint television interview, U.S. broadcaster CBS announced.

The interview will be aired Sunday evening on the "60 Minutes" show, the channel said.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday will name Denis McDonough -- a deputy national security adviser and member of the president's inner circle -- as White House chief of staff, an official said.

Obama was to announce McDonough's appointment at 12:10 pm (1610 GMT) along with those of other senior officials, the White House official said on condition of anonymity.

If it all goes wrong for President Barack Obama in his second term we will know who to blame: civil rights icon Myrlie Evers-Williams, who blessed his successor, the 45th president, by mistake.

"America, we are here, our nation's capital, on this day, January the 21st, 2013, the inauguration of our 45th president, Barack Obama," Evers-Williams said as she gave the official blessing at the ceremony.

Beyonce drew a loud cheer Monday at President Barack Obama's second inauguration even before her impressive rendition of the national anthem.

The applause started when she took her place with Jay-Z at the Capitol to watch Obama take the oath before hundreds of thousands of people.

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to make climate change a priority as he was sworn in Monday to a second term, using some of his most forceful language yet despite uncertain political prospects.

In an inaugural address that kept largely to lofty but general prose, Obama zeroed in on the battle against climate change as a specific goal for his presidency's next four years after setbacks in his first mandate.

President Barack Obama issued a impassioned call for equality and national unity as he was inaugurated for a second term Monday, warning political "absolutism" must not thwart renewal and change.

Obama was publicly sworn in for another four White House years before a flag waving crowd of hundreds of thousands on Washington's National Mall. Then he delivered an address steeped in poetic power and broad hints of his new agenda.

President Barack Obama took the oath of office Sunday to begin a second term threatened by strife at home and abroad and amid inaugural rituals lacking the hope and historic promise of 2009.

Obama, with a slight smile, took the oath at an intimate, private ceremony in the Blue Room of the White House lasting less than a minute, raising his right arm and placing his left hand on a family Bible.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday that blame for deaths stemming from a hostage crisis in Algeria lay with the "terrorists" who had earlier taken foreigners captive at a remote gas plant.

The remarks were the president's first direct comments about the protracted hostage crisis. His statement was released several hours after Algerian troops stormed the gas plant to end a situation that had began four days earlier.