News stories by Jim Lobe*, page 3

Relations between the United States and Latin America have 'grown more distant' in importance part due to the latter's persistent disagreement with U.S. policies on immigration, drugs, and Cuba, according to a new report released here Wednesday on the eve of this year's Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

Kicking off what some here have called President Barack Obama's 'Latin America Week', the president and his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, touted a deepening of bilateral ties in her first visit to the White House as president of South America's superpower.

While the U.S. candidate for World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, still has the inside track, the two non-U.S. candidates, Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, have been raking in high-profile endorsements.

Two days after hailing Sunday's parliamentary by-elections in Myanmar, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would begin a process of 'targeted easing' of longstanding economic sanctions against the Southeast Asian nation.

Despite his repeated differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strong majority of U.S. Jews are likely to vote to re-elect President Barack Obama in November, according to major new survey of Jewish opinion released here Tuesday.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama Monday hailed Sunday's parliamentary by-election in Myanmar, also known as Burma, which the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won in a landslide.

In a surprise to many development and finance experts here, U.S. President Barack Obama Friday nominated Jim Yong Kim, a relatively unknown but highly regarded international health specialist to become the next president of the World Bank.

Despite strenuous efforts by prominent neo-conservatives and other hawks, a war-weary U.S. public is clearly very leery of any armed intervention in what many experts believe is rapidly becoming a civil war in Syria, according to recent polls.

Amidst persistent speculation over a possible Israeli military attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit here, a detailed new public opinion survey released Tuesday suggests that such a move would enjoy little support in the United States.

While U.S. officials insisted their counterinsurgency strategy is still working, Sunday's pre-dawn massacre by a U.S. staff sergeant of 16 people, including nine children, in their homes in Kandahar province has dealt yet another body blow to Washington's hopes to sustain a significant military presence in Afghanistan after 2014.