U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday spoke approvingly of an "eloquent" argument by Pope Francis on rising inequality in societies split between the very poor and the super rich.

Obama referred to the Pontiff's remarks in his first Apostolic Exhortation as part of the president's own prolonged meditation on poverty in a speech on inequality and politics in America.

President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday said Colombia and the United States would triple security cooperation in a group of third countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Santos, after meeting President Barack Obama at the White House, also proposed an economic cooperation pact in Latin America based on the Alliance for Progress unveiled by president John Kennedy in Colombia 50 years ago.

A former U.S. contractor jailed in Cuba says he feels his country has abandoned him and is appealing to President Barack Obama to intervene to bring him home, the Washington Post reported.

Alan Gross aired his views in a letter sent via the U.S. mission in Cuba. The letter was to be delivered to Obama Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of Gross's arrest in Cuba.

U.S. President Barack Obama paid a visit Friday to hunger strikers calling for immigration reform, who are camped out on the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, the president stopped by the grassy esplanade several hundred meters (yards) from the White House, in a trip that was not mentioned in his official daily agenda.

A woman in the White House? President Barack Obama says that will happen "very soon," according to remarks released Friday.

"We have some amazing female [public] servants all across the country and there is no doubt that sometime very soon, we're going to have a female president," he said in an interview with broadcaster ABC.

President Barack Obama on Monday defended his administration's approach to Iran, insisting that "tough talk" alone would not guarantee U.S. security.

"Huge challenges remain, but we cannot close the door on diplomacy, and we cannot rule out peaceful solutions to the world's problems," Obama said following the landmark agreement reached in Geneva over the weekend concerning Iran's nuclear program.

For U.S. President Barack Obama, the interim deal to cap Iran's nuclear program is a belated down payment on the transformative foreign policy he always envisioned.

That is one reason why his Republican foes are suspicious of the pact, viewing it as typical of a diplomatic doctrine rooted in weakness and an over eagerness to engage America's enemies at the expense of its friends.

U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice is in Afghanistan, where she will meet with President Hamid Karzai, the White House said Monday.

"She will meet the president at his invitation," National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell told Agence France Presse, adding that the meeting was added to Rice's itinerary of "travel around country" and visiting with U.S. troops, development experts and diplomats.

The United States is taking a German outcry over revelations of American spying on Europeans seriously, a U.S. lawmaker has said, ahead of his visit to Berlin Monday to soothe frazzled ties.

Congressman Gregory Meeks told Handelsblatt business daily that U.S.-German relations were "of enormous importance" and must be stronger and closer still.

President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss an international nuclear deal with Iran that has threatened to raise tensions between the close allies, the White House said.

Just hours after the six world powers clinched the historic agreement with the Islamic republic, Netanyahu lashed out at what he called a "historic mistake" that left open Iran's ability to develop a nuclear arsenal.