Lawyers representing Guantánamo Bay detainees who have been held at the camp in Cuba for up to 14 years without charge or trial have accused President Obama of stalling on his promise to close the military prison. As the US president enters his final year in office, pressure is mounting on him to stand by his pledge to shut down the detention center by the time he leaves the White House. Numerous defense lawyers working directly...

Say goodbye to the beads. On Monday, Dec. 28, President Barack Obama signed into law a ban on tiny plastic particles used in personal cosmetic products that scientists say are polluting U.S. lakes, rivers and the oceans. The bipartisan "Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015," (H.R. 1321), passed by the U.S. House on Dec. 7, "prohibits the manufacture and introduction into interstate commerce of rinse-off cosmetics containing intentionally-added plastic microbeads."

President Barack Obama will be Jerry Seinfeld's first guest when the seventh season of his online talk show, "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," opens Dec. 30. The show features the New York comedian picking up fellow comics in classic cars and taking them out for coffee and conversation. Obama and Seinfeld spoke at the White House earlier this month. The White House says they took turns circling the South Lawn in a 1963 Corvette Stingray split window coupe before chatting over coffee...

The clock is ticking for President Barack Obama to make good on one of his biggest promises — closing Guantanamo Bay. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough backed the president on Sunday in what would be an enormous moral victory for the Obama Administration. “He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don't have to be confronted with the same set of challenges,” Mr McDonough said on Fox News Sunday.

Obama hit all the requisite marks for a State of the Union address: Cataloging past successes, describing current obstacles, outlining bold plans for the future. But, at its heart, the speech was ultimately a lengthy rebuttal to — and a warning about — the metastasizing ugliness and hatred that is pouring out of the conservative movement and the Republican Party that relies on this increasingly vitriolic, hateful conservative base.

The dream of autonomous cars crisscrossing American roads just got a huge boost from the Obama Administration. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced Thursday that the US government plans to invest nearly $4 billion over the next 10 years to help “accelerate the development of safe vehicle automation through real-world pilot projects.” This money will be included as part of the fiscal 2017 budget that the White House will release in February.

I had one overwhelming thought watching President Barack Obama give his final State of the Union Address: We're gonna miss this guy. We'll miss his graceful style and an undervalued record of achievement that - with a year to go — has already put him in the ranks of fine American Presidents. Of course we won't all miss him, but even many Republicans who despise Obama may look back with nostalgia at low inflation, low interest rates and low unemployment...

President Obama will request $582.7 billion in funding for the Pentagon as part of the fiscal year 2017 budget, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said. It will be partly used to keep a competitive edge over Russia and China, and to quadruple spending in Europe. Carter said part of the $582.7 billion will include $71.4 for research and development funding, adding that much of the money will focus on maintaining an edge over the competition.

President Barack Obama will propose a $10-per-barrel charge on oil to fund clean transportation projects as part of his final budget request next week, the White House said Thursday. The proposal — which follows the passage of a bipartisan transportation bill last year — would have difficulty clearing the Republican-controlled Congress. In a statement, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, House majority whip, said the House would quash the "absurd" plan.

A former federal judge in Utah asked President Obama Tuesday to “swiftly” give clemency to Weldon Angelos, a man he sentenced to 55 years in prison in connection with selling marijuana. Calling the sentence “one of the most troubling that I ever faced in my five years on the federal bench,” Paul G. Cassell, now a professor at the University of Utah’s law school, said the mandatory minimum sentence he was required to impose on Angelos...

President Obama is planning a trip to Cuba some time next month, marking the first time in more than 80 years a sitting U.S. president will visit the country, according to sources with knowledge of the plan. A National Security Council official plans to make the announcement tomorrow at the White house.

U.S. President Barack Obama will attend a baseball game during a landmark visit to Cuba later this month.

President Obama says he plans to stay in Washington after the end of his presidency so that his younger daughter can finish high school with her class, a rare disclosure about his family's personal plans. During a visit with voters in Milwaukee on Thursday, Obama said he wasn't sure where he and wife Michelle Obama would settle down for the long term, but added that they were putting off the decision until daughter Sasha finished at Washington's Sidwell Friends School in spring 2019.

President Obama has made his share of foreign policy mistakes, particularly in the Middle East. But it’s ironic that Republican critics now hammer him hardest over his nuclear deal with Iran, a bet that has already paid out for those who want to undermine Iran’s hard-liners. Elections for Iran’s parliament and its Assembly of Experts–which picks the nation’s Supreme Leader–were hardly free and fair. Conservatives managed to block..

The United States unveiled new measures on Tuesday to make it far easier for Americans to visit Cuba and eased limits on the use of U.S dollars in trade there as President Barack Obama prepared to make a historic trip to Havana next week. Rolling out some of the most significant changes since Obama announced his opening to Cuba in December 2014, U.S. officials expressed hope that the further relaxation of travel and financial rules would spur the island's...

A Kremlin spokesman says Vladimir Putin is resisting President Barack Obama’s call for Russia to release a Ukrainian pilot who is on trial over the death of two Russian journalists. Nadezhda Savchenko was fighting with a Ukrainian volunteer brigade against Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine when she was captured in June 2014. Russia says she was a spotter who called in co-ordinates for a mortar attack that killed...

President Obama wants the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) defeated by the end of his term, Defense Secretary Ash Carter says. "That's what he said he wants. That's what he told me and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford]. He said, 'Get this done as soon as possible. I'd like to not leave this to my successor,' " Carter said Friday an event hosted by Politico.

Barack Obama should visit Hiroshima when Japan hosts the G7 leaders’ summit in May to see for himself the human misery inflicted by nuclear weapons, according to a survivor of the atomic bombing of the city 70 years ago. “I hope Obama and other G7 leaders come here and change their minds about possessing nuclear weapons,” said Keiko Ogura, who was an eight-year-old schoolgirl when the bomb flattened her hometown on the morning of 6 August 1945...

President Obama, with his characteristic diffidence, has announced his “liberation” from the Washington foreign-policy “playbook,” but the national security elite is already striking back, writes Gareth Porter.

Federal officials are preparing to enforce an 86-year-old ban on importing goods made by children or slaves under new provisions of a law signed by President Barack Obama. "This law slams shut an unconscionable and archaic loophole that forced America to accept products made by children or slave labor," said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who worked on the legislation.