A 23-year-old woman armed with a handgun was arrested outside the White House late Thursday, U.S. Secret Service officials said.

In a statement released Friday, the Secret Service identified the woman as April Lenhart of Mount Morris, Michigan.

The dust has barely settled on midterm elections, but ex-senator Jim Webb has become the first candidate in America's upcoming presidential race -- and an early potential challenger to fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"I have decided to launch an exploratory committee to examine whether I should run for president in 2016," Webb said in a YouTube video posted late Wednesday.

A U.S.-Somali engineer who had come back to his birth nation to help rebuild the war-torn country has become the latest returning expat to be shot dead by suspected Islamic extremists, his relatives told Agence France Presse. 

The killing of Abdulahi Ali Anshur marks the latest in a string of murders of Somali diaspora who have returned to the country and were apparently targeted by Al-Qaeda affiliated Shebab militants because they work with the internationally-backed government.

The White House would support increased sanctions against Venezuela, a U.S. administration official said in a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Failed efforts from Latin American allies to reform the government of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro have led President Barack Obama to switch his stance on increased sanctions, national security adviser Antony Blinken said while facing questions from lawmakers.

An American imprisoned for a month in the United Arab Emirates for taking photographs of a sensitive site has been released, a spokeswoman for his family said.

Robert Alan Black was in Abu Dhabi for a conference on creativity when he was arrested October 21 after taking a picture in a restricted area during his morning walk, said the Friends of Alan Black.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond expressed doubt Wednesday that a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers would be reached by the deadline next week and spoke of the possibility of an extension.

"I am not optimistic that we can get everything done by Monday, but I think if we make some significant movement, we may be able to find a way of extending the deadline to allow us to get to the final deal, if we are making good progress in the right direction," he told reporters in Latvian capital Riga.

A massive snowstorm stranded motorists, canceled flights and left at least eight people dead in the northeastern United States, officials said Wednesday.

Areas east and southeast of Buffalo, in northern New York state, could receive a year's accumulation of snow or even more in just two days, Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters.

A massive early snowstorm pounded the Buffalo, New York, area on Tuesday, dumping record snowfalls, trapping people in cars and homes, and killing four people, authorities said.

Even in a city famous for blizzards that roar off Lake Erie just to the west, this one stunned locals; it even featured the unusual phenomenon of "thunder snow".

Leading critics of President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged Britain to step up pressure on the Kremlin chief by imposing sanctions on visiting Russian government officials and oligarchs.

Former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot and environmental campaigner Evgenia Chirikova also urged Western leaders to stay united against Russia over Ukraine.

Ukraine's prime minister on Tuesday called for fresh talks with Russia on "neutral territory" as deadly fighting rumbled on in the country's east.

"We invite the Russian Federation to hold serious negotiations on a neutral territory. The US and EU are helping us with this," Arseniy Yatsenyuk was quoted as saying by the Interfax Ukraine news agency.