The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on Sunday passed through the Strait of Hormuz and is now in the Gulf, the Pentagon said, after Tehran threatened to close the strategic shipping route.

"USS Abraham Lincoln ... completed a regular and routine transit of the Strait of Hormuz... to conduct maritime security operations as scheduled," Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain John Kirby said in an email to Agence France Presse.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday called Egypt's foreign minister to discuss the country's economic and political situation, as well as events in Syria, the State Department said.

It said the telephone call covered the same ground as President Barack Obama's discussion with Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi on Friday, which the White House said was focused on Egypt's need for a democratic transition.

Support for Newt Gingrich is soaring as South Carolina votes in its Republican presidential primary, according to a new poll Saturday that shows him with a commanding lead over longtime frontrunner Mitt Romney.

Former House speaker Gingrich has the support of 40 percent of likely Republican voters in the state's primary, compared to 26 percent for Romney, the American Research Group reported in its poll released as voters trudged to the polls in the southern U.S. state.

A jailed Cuban dissident has died after a 50-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment by the Western Hemisphere's only one-party communist regime, rights activists told Agence France Presse.

Wilmar Villar, 31, passed away Thursday at 6:45 pm (23:45 GMT) after protesting against a four-year sentence handed down in November, opposition activist Elizardo Sanchez told AFP.

Top U.S. military chief General Martin Dempsey arrives in Israel late on Thursday evening for talks with Israel's political and military leaders that are expected to focus on Iran's nuclear program.

Dempsey's trip will be his first to Israel since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October.

Texas Governor Rick Perry brought down the curtain Thursday on his gaffe-plagued U.S. presidential campaign and endorsed Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination.

Perry's campaign had been flagging but with Gingrich closing on frontrunner Mitt Romney ahead of the all-important South Carolina primary, his departure could leave a big imprint on the race to find the nominee to face President Barack Obama in November.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly held talks on Tuesday with Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on the political and security situation in Lebanon and the current situation in Syria.

She stressed after the meeting “U.S. concerns that developments in Syria not contribute to instability in Lebanon.”

A tightened field vying for the Republican nomination took aim at frontrunner Mitt Romney in a fiery debate here just days before South Carolina's presidential primary.

Before a raucous audience late Monday, the four candidates lagging behind Romney in polls ahead of Saturday's key vote slammed the former Massachusetts governor and traded charges over a rash of nasty attack ads by outside groups.

A senior U.S. official urged South Korea Tuesday to reduce purchases of crude oil from Iran in line with a U.S.-led drive to sanction Tehran for its suspected nuclear weapons program.

"We are urging all of our partners to help us, to work with us in putting pressure on the government of Iran to get it to negotiate seriously," said Robert Einhorn, State Department special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control.

The Associated Press opened its newest bureau in North Korea on Monday, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence to cover news in words, pictures and video.

In a ceremony that came less than a month after the death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il and capped nearly a year of discussions, AP President and CEO Tom Curley and a delegation of top AP editors inaugurated the office, situated inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean Central News Agency in downtown Pyongyang.