President Barack Obama will seek to add another woman to his cabinet Wednesday by picking business executive Sally Jewell to head the vast Interior Department, a White House official said.

Obama has been criticized for naming middle aged white men to the top jobs in his second term team, but has pledged to promote diversity in his other picks, and has now settled on several prominent females.

Reviving Middle East peace talks will be a key element of Barack Obama's first trip as president, and despite U.S. caution he will seek to build on the center's strong showing in Israel's election, analysts say.

The Palestinians were not mentioned when National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor on Tuesday announced Obama's visit to Israel early in his second term and also his first as president.

The Palestinian presidency hopes U.S. President Barack Obama's forthcoming visit will mark the beginning of a new U.S. policy in the region, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

"President Mahmoud Abbas welcomes the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama to Palestine," Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for the Palestinian presidency told Agence France Presse.

President Barack Obama plans to soon make his first trip to Israel as U.S. leader to confer on the Iranian nuclear showdown and to soothe his delicate relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The White House said Tuesday that Obama also plans to stop to talk to Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and to travel to Jordan on his trip, which will bring him close to the turmoil threatening to tear Syria apart.

U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly visited on Thursday the UNHCR registration center in Beirut during which she underscored President Barack Obama’s recent announcement of nearly $29 million in humanitarian assistance for Lebanon to support the refugees.

During her visit, Connelly “met with UNHCR Country Representative Ninette Kelley and with Syrian families who have sought protection in Lebanon from the continuing violence in Syria,” said a U.S. embassy statement.

A 15-year-old girl who performed at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week was shot dead in Chicago by a gunman who opened fire on a group of kids hanging out in a park, police said Wednesday.

"It is believed that the offender mistook the group for gang members and fired at them," Chicago police office Laura Kubiak told Agence France Presse.

U.S. President Barack Obama's popularity has hit 60 percent, the highest level since he first took office four years ago, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The survey by ABC television and The Washington Post was made public just a little more than a week after the president's formal swearing-in was witnessed by an estimated one million people in Washington and millions more across the nation.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced an extra $155 million dollars to aid refugees fleeing what he said was "barbarism" propagated by the Assad government against Syrians.

Obama, unveiling a grant, which will take U.S. humanitarian help to Syrians to $365 million, also promised that the Assad regime "will come to an end. The Syrian people will have their chance to forge their own future."

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to congratulate him on his Likud Party's showing in last week's general election.

"President Obama spoke today by telephone with Prime Minister Netanyahu to congratulate him on his party's success in winning a plurality of Knesset seats in Israel's recent election," a White House statement said.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview published on Monday that he was wrestling with a decision on whether the U.S. should get involved to resolve the conflict in Syria.

"In a situation like Syria, I have to ask, can we make a difference in that situation?" he said in an interview with the New Republic magazine.