The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday it will not prosecute the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August, touching off nationwide outrage.

Its decision not to prosecute Darren Wilson on federal civil rights charges was issued alongside a report that faulted the police department in the St Louis suburb for systematically targeting African Americans.

New York public schools will add two Muslim holidays to their vacation calendars, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, a promise he made during his election campaign.  

Two of the most sacred holidays in the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, will be observed. 

Gruesome details of injuries sustained by victims of the Boston Marathon bombings were recounted to jurors on Wednesday as lawyers for the Muslim student on trial for the attack admitted he carried out the bloody assault.

Nearly two years after what was the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial got under way in a federal court packed with victims, survivors and the media.

The apparent disintegration of a key Syrian rebel group has dealt a major blow to U.S. efforts to build up a force of moderate fighters to take on the Islamic State group.

The Hazm movement was seen as a cornerstone of the train-and-equip program Washington hopes will bring thousands of non-extremist fighters to bear against IS in Syria.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday brushed aside criticism from U.S. President Barack Obama of his speech to Congress, in which he warned Washington was paving the way to a nuclear-armed Iran.

The White House was infuriated by Netanyahu's address Tuesday to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, where he laid out Israeli concerns at an emerging world deal with Iran on its nuclear program.

Islamic extremists in the southern Philippines ambushed a military convoy Wednesday by planting a landmine that killed three soldiers, the latest outbreak of violence as the government cracks down on the militants.

The military convoy of three vehicles was traveling on the southern island of Jolo to secure a road project when a truck hit the landmine.

Kremlin opponent Boris Nemtsov's blood was barely dry on the Moscow sidewalk before powerful Russians came up with a startlingly clear conclusion: that the West was to blame.

The West stands accused of an increasing number of outrages in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Police in the Missouri town rocked by racially charged riots last year after the shooting of a black teenager by a white officer had routinely discriminated against African-Americans for years, media reports citing a Justice Department probe said Tuesday.

The Justice Department investigation into the police department in Ferguson uncovered a widespread pattern of racial discrimination and multiple violations of citizens' constitutional rights, several U.S. media outlets reported.

Several U.S. Democrats irate over Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress over Iran's nuclear program on Tuesday blasted the Israeli prime minister as a fear-mongerer leading a stampede to war.

Dozens of House and Senate Democrats boycotted Netanyahu's speech, arguing he should not have been invited by Republican leaders just two weeks before his own country's elections and amid delicate international negotiations to rein in Iran's nuclear program.

Iraqi forces closed in on Tikrit Tuesday, their progress slowed by jihadist snipers and booby traps, on the second day of Baghdad's largest operation yet against the Islamic State group.

The government has mobilized a 30,000-strong force for the push to retake Tikrit made up of Shiite militiamen and Sunni tribesmen as well as troops and police.