Bosses from Internet giants including Twitter and Facebook Tuesday pressed President Barack Obama for reforms of U.S. spy agency snooping, adding to rising heat from the courts and American allies.

Obama met a group of the country's most iconic Silicon Valley firms and spent two hours discussing the National Security Agency's clandestine electronic data mining operation, known as PRISM, a participant in the meeting said.

President Barack Obama Monday ruled that a regional grouping of Gulf Arab states should be allowed to buy certain U.S. defense articles, deepening ties with a grouping wary of Iran's regional influence.

Obama determined that U.S. restrictions on selling material for ballistic missile defense, maritime security and counter-terrorism operations should be lifted, opening the way to purchases by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The US Senate on Monday easily confirmed Jeh Johnson, a former top Pentag.o.n lawyer, to be the next head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Johnson will be the first African-American to lead the huge department, and only the fourth person to head DHS since it was created by then-president George W. Bush in 2002, one year after the 9/11 attacks.

A review panel handed President Barack Obama a report Friday on surveillance by U.S. spy agencies in the wake of explosive revelations on vast phone and Internet sweeps by fugitive Edward Snowden.

The report contains more than 40 recommendations the White House will consider, and Obama will make a speech after a full-scale internal review of U.S. eavesdropping activity concludes in January, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

The White House on Wednesday dismissed Republican criticism of President Barack Obama's handshake with Cuban leader Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela's memorial service.

Obama has faced a backlash from Republican rivals after exchanging pleasantries with Castro, the leader of a Communist-run country that has been bitterly estranged from the United States since 1961.

World leaders have heaped praise on the late Nelson Mandela, but among the countries paying tribute are some that had long backed the South African apartheid regime that jailed him.

Many of the eulogies for the iconic peacemaker have glossed over Western support for the white supremacist regime in Pretoria during the Cold War, when Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) were blacklisted as Soviet proxies.

President Barack Obama's disapproval rating has hit a record high, due mainly to the disastrous debut of his health care law, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday said.

A total of 54 percent of those surveyed disapprove of how he is doing his job, which is the highest mark in his presidency. That is up from 51 percent in late October, said the survey.

South Africa's deaf community on Wednesday accused the sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial of being a fake, who had merely flapped his arms around during speeches.

"He's a complete fraud," Cara Loening, director of Sign Language Education and Development in Cape Town.

Several heads of state stressed to Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati their keenness to preserve stability in Lebanon during the Premier's visit to South Africa to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela, a global symbol of reconciliation.

“Heads of state expressed their keenness to preserve stability in Lebanon and to share the burdens caused by the influx of Syrian refugees on its territories,” a statement issued by Miqati's press office said on Wednesday.

U.S. President Barack Obama may have moved the masses attending Nelson Mandela's memorial service with his stirring eulogy on Tuesday, but it was his grinning "selfie" with the Danish and British premiers that set social networks abuzz.

In a candid moment captured by Agence France Presse photographer Roberto Schmidt, Denmark's Helle Thorning-Schmidt can be seen holding up her smartphone, with Obama lending a helping hand, as they pose for a picture with David Cameron, all three of them smiling broadly in their seats at Soweto's World Cup stadium.