President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Roberta Jacobson, a key figure in ongoing talks with Cuba, to be the next ambassador to Mexico.

Jacobson traveled to Havana in January, becoming the most senior ranking official to visit the communist island in 35 years.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday warned Malaysia must be careful that the high profile prosecution of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim does not have a "chilling effect" on democracy.

Hosting a group of young leaders from ASEAN countries at the White House, Obama was asked about the case of former deputy prime minister Ibrahim, who was jailed on much-criticized sodomy charges.

U.S. President Barack Obama said a negotiated deal and not military action is the way to prevent Iran procuring nuclear weapons, in an interview broadcast on Israeli television on Monday.

"I can, I think, demonstrate, not based on any hope but on facts and evidence and analysis, that the best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a verifiable tough agreement," he told 2, a private station.

With eight declared Republican presidential hopefuls and eight more expected to run, consensus has been brushed aside for 2016, as GOP rivals battle to shape the future of the party, and America, in the post-Obama era.

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton may have the aura of inevitability about her, but it is another world for the GOP, where social conservatives and fiscal hawks are galloping alongside moderates as they race to see which philosophy prevails.

President Barack Obama paid a surprise visit Thursday to a Miami religious shrine popular with Cuban exiles, amid moves by Washington and Havana to normalize ties after five decades of enmity.

"The president is visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami to pay his respects to the Cuban-American diaspora that worships there," said Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman.

An American youth who appeared in MTV reality show "Catfish" last year was arrested on Wednesday for making a series of bogus "terrorist threats" against metro stations, trains and buses in the U.S. capital.

Jerez Nehemiah Stone-Coleman, 20, nicknamed "Kidd Cole", is accused of making 11 crank 911 calls between December last year and May, warning of bomb threats or hostage situations on the Washington transport network.

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday dealt another blow to President Barack Obama's efforts to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans rejected a request from the Obama administration that it lift an injunction barring it from carrying out a measure that would have protected some four million undocumented foreigners from deportation.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday criticized Russia's "increasingly aggressive" stance on Ukraine after discussing the situation there with NATO's secretary general.

"We had a chance to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the increasingly aggressive posture that Russia has taken," Obama said after an Oval Office meeting with Jens Stoltenberg.

A Kenyan lawyer has offered U.S. president Barack Obama 50 cows and other assorted livestock in exchange for his 16-year old daughter Malia's hand in marriage, a report said Tuesday.

Felix Kiprono said he was willing to pay 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats in order to fulfill his dream of marrying the first daughter.

U.S. President Barack Obama paid a Memorial Day tribute to America's "fallen heroes" Monday, stressing the heavy burden of perennial wars and underscoring his decision to pull troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Echoing Abraham Lincoln's praise for those who offered the "last full measure of devotion," Obama praised "everyday heroes" who died in the "mountains of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of the Middle East" and in countless other conflagrations.