The White House warned Wednesday that any military action against Iran would create "greater instability" that could threaten the safety of Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The warning came days before a planned March 5 meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The United States on Wednesday summoned Syria's envoy in Washington to express "outrage" over his government's month-long bombardment of the flashpoint city of Homs.

During talks at the State Department with Syrian Charge d'Affaires Zuheir Jabbour, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman also urged Syria to live up to its November 2 commitment to the Arab League to end such violence.

The United States is drawing up a new draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria demanding humanitarian access to protest cities where thousands have been killed, diplomats said Tuesday.

If put to a vote it would be the third time Western nations have tried to get a Security Council resolution on the 11 month old crisis.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly on Tuesday said the U.S. Administration understands Lebanon’s situation and that of the Lebanese-Syrian relations.

“However, we must look at what Lebanon did and the prominent role it played by taking care of the Syrian refugees”, Connelly added, in an interview on LBC.

A U.S. fugitive charged with swindling several nuns has been arrested in Las Vegas after more than three months on the run, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

Adriano Sotomayor, 54, of New Jersey, has been charged with 13 counts of wire fraud and is accused of having scammed the Dominican Sisters of the Rosary of Fatima, an order based in Puerto Rico and Philadelphia, the FBI said Monday.

After two unexpected pregnancies at a sanctuary for retired research chimpanzees, other females have been put on birth control and the males are getting another round of vasectomies.

The first recent pregnancy at the Chimp Haven Inc. facility near Shreveport in northwest Louisiana was discovered on Valentine's Day when a worker noticed Flora, a 29-year-old chimp, was carrying a newborn.

People from the wealthy upper classes are more likely than poorer folks to break laws while driving, take candy from children and lie for financial gain, said a U.S. study on Monday.

The seven-part study by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Toronto analyzed people's behavior through a series of experiments.

Venezuela's oil minister confirmed that it sent two shipments of diesel to Syria last year and said it would send further supplies "when required" despite Western-led sanctions.

The United States and the European Union have tightened sanctions in an effort to isolate Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime over its deadly months-long crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

U.S. auto giant General Motors is in talks to buy out five percent of France's biggest car builder PSA Peugeot Citroën, business daily Les Echos reported on Tuesday citing several sources.

Sources close to the negotiation said the deal was a so-called standstill agreement in which GM could not increase its stake in Peugeot without prior permission from the car group.

A new strain of influenza A has been found in fruit bats, indicating for the first time that bats, like birds, can be carriers of the virus, though it is not believed risky to humans, U.S. health authorities said Monday.

"This is the first time an influenza virus has been identified in bats, but in its current form the virus is not a human health issue," said Suxiang Tong, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's pathogen discovery program.