Washington, Feb. 22 : Nearly half of Americans would blame Republicans if 1.2 trillion dollars in spending cuts go into effect on March 1, a new poll has found.

According to the Pew Research Center/USA Today Poll, 49 percent Americans would blame the congressional GOP as compared to only 31 percent who would blame President Barack Obama.

The spending cuts, known as the sequester in Washington-speak, would cut equally from defense and domestic programmes across the board.

Washington, Feb. 22 : President Barack Obama has said he still has not made up his mind about where his presidential library will be located.

Obama told a reporter that `Honolulu is his birthplace, it's the place where he grew up and he met so many friends and fond memories and it helped to shape him, so he did like to find a way that after his presidency that connection remains.

In an interview with KITV, the President added that `but he lived in Chicago now and that's where he grew up professionally. It is a tough choice, but it''s not one that he has made yet.

Washington, Feb 21 : US President Barack Obama has said that playing golf with controversial golfing star Tiger Woods was like playing with a golfer from `another planet'.

Obama, who dismissed the notion that he was nervous about playing with Woods, said that the golfing star played a different game from him at the Floridian Golf Club on Sunday, Politico reports.

The president further said that he was sure that Woods was also not nervous about playing with him, and joked that Woods knew that he was not a threat to his world ranking. (ANI)

Washington, Feb 21 : President Barack Obama has gained his highest approval rating as commander-in-chief of the US in over three years, a new poll has found.

A Bloomberg National Poll found that 55 percent of Americans approve of Obama's performance, his highest rating in the poll since September 2009.

The poll also found that 49 percent of respondents believe that the president's proposals to increase government spending in key areas are more likely to spur job creation than GOP-backed efforts to cut both spending and taxes, the Huffington Post reports.

Washington, Feb 21 : Michelle Obama is set to go on tour to mark the third anniversary of her "Let's Move!" campaign to highlight childhood obesity.

She announced the tour during an appearance on the `Rachael Ray Show' on Wednesday, saying it will begin in a couple of weeks, the Politico reported.

"We're going to travel around the nation to visit some cities all across this country that are making important progress to try to highlight the good work that's happening," she said.

Washington, Feb 20 : Controversial golfing star Tiger Woods has said that he enjoyed playing golf with US President Barack Obama since both of them are avid golfers and also because they won their match.

Woods lauded Obama as an avid golfer, just like him after the duo played together at the Floridian Golf Club on Sunday, CBS News reports.

Woods further said that he also liked playing golf with the US president as Obama is a wonderful person to be around.

Obama spent the entire day golfing with Woods at the club, the report added. (ANI)

Washington, Feb 20 - President Barack Obama warned Tuesday of danger for the US economy if Congress doesn't act to stop the so-called budget sequester: a set of spending cuts set to take effect March 1.

"As I said in my State of the Union address last week, our top priority must be to do everything we can to grow the economy and create good, middle-class jobs," he said at a White House event.

"And that's why it's so troubling that just 10 days from now, Congress might allow a series of automatic, severe budget cuts to take place that will do the exact opposite," the president said.

Washington, Feb 20 - The general named by US President Barack Obama as the next supreme commander of NATO relinquished his appointment and is retiring from the Armed Forces, the White House said Tuesday.

Gen. John Allen, who was head of NATO troops in Afghanistan, met Tuesday with Obama, who announced that he accepted the request for retirement "so that he can address health issues within his family", the White House said in a statement.

"I told Gen. Allen that he has my deep, personal appreciation for his extraordinary service over the last 19 months in Afghanistan, as well as his decades of service in the United States Marine Corps," Obama said.

Washington, Feb 19 : As President Barack Obama's leaked plan to put America's 11 million illegal immigrants, including some 250,000 Indians, on a path to citizenship, generated a storm, White House insisted it was just a "backup plan."

"The administration will be ready to move forward in the event the bipartisan process gets bogged down and is not able to produce a bill," a White House official was quoted as saying by NBC News. "But our focus remains on supporting the congressional process."

Washington, Feb. 18 : President Barack Obama played golf with Tiger Woods during the Democrat's long weekend holiday in Florida, the White House said.

The foursome at the Floridian National Golf Club, in Palm City, included U. S. trade representative Ron Kirk and Jim Crane, a Democratic donor who owns the club and the Houston Astros baseball team.

On Saturday, Woods' former coach, Butch Harmon, rode along with the Obama and others for a few holes and gave the president some golf tips.

Washington, Feb 18 - Amid a furore over a leaked Obama administration plan to put America's 11 million illegal immigrants, including some 250,000 Indians, on a path to citizenship, the White House has reaffirmed its commitment to a bipartisan plan.

The Obama administration has circulated the draft legislation that would put the illegal immigrants on the citizenship after about eight years and would require them to go to the back of the line behind legal applicants within various government agencies, according to various media reports.

Washington, Feb 16 : US President Barack Obama has said the absence of fathers, particularly in the African-American community, is one of the root causes of an epidemic of gun violence that has plagued cities across the country, adding he wished he had a father too while pitching for tougher laws to control rampant gun violence.

Obama punctuated a week spent promoting his economic agenda with an emotional appeal on the impact of guns, ABC News reports.

Washington, Feb 16 : United States President Barack Obama would be getting golf lessons from the former instructor of controversial golf star Tiger Woods, during his vacation at Palm Beach, Florida.

Woods' former coach Butch Harmon and his son Claude III will be flying in to coach Obama at the Floridian Golf Club in Palm City after the President requested Harmon's services, Politico reports.

Looking forward to his weekend with Obama, Harmon said that he is aware that the President is a keen golfer, which would make for an interesting teaching experience.

Washington, Feb 16 : A Princeton professor has launched a withering attack on the White House's covert drone program, by likening President Barack Obama to a "war criminal."

Cornel West, the prominent black academic and activist who has consistently been a harsh Obama critic, took on the administration's drone policy and said that `the chickens are coming home to roost.'

During a radio show, Prof West pointed out that over 200 children have been killed so far in `these are war crimes,' Politico reports.

Washington, Feb 16 - US President Barack Obama awarded posthumously Friday Presidential Citizens Medals to the six educators who died along with 20 of their students in the Dec 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

"They could have focused on their own safety, on their own wellbeing. But they didn't. They gave their lives to protect the precious children in their care. They gave all they had for the most innocent and helpless among us," Obama said during a ceremony at the White House.