WASHINGTON - Immigration, guns and national security are dominating the discussion on Capitol Hill, but Americans by and large are still focused on their bottom line. So President Barack Obama is launching a series of quick jaunts around the country to remind Americans he's still got jobs and the economy on his mind. Obama will kick off the effort Thursday with a trip to Austin, Texas, the White House said. While in Texas, the president will visit a technical high school and meet with entrepreneurs. He'll also drop in on a tech company and talk with blue-collar workers.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Thursday will nominate a longtime fundraiser to run the Commerce Department and a top economic adviser as the next U.S. Trade Representative, a White House official said. Commerce nominee Penny Pritzker, a businesswoman, philanthropist and Hyatt hotel heiress, is Obama's final pick to fill vacancies among Cabinet secretaries in his second term. The Commerce post has been vacant since last summer, when former Secretary John Bryson resigned after he said he suffered a seizure that led to a series of traffic collisions.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is seeking to refocus economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, even as fresh questions about security co-operation threaten to cast a shadow over the president's visit to the southern neighbour. Obama will also use his three-day trip beginning Thursday to highlight the immigration overhaul moving through Capitol Hill, both for an audience in Latin America and for those back home in the U.S. The president will also visit Costa Rica.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday the military jail at Guantanamo Bay is damaging US interests and vowed a renewed push to close it, as around 100 prisoners take part in a hunger strike there. Condemning the prison as a legal "no man's land," Obama told a White House news conference that it was time Congress agreed to shut the jail and said the military was trying to keep detainees alive in the face of the hunger strike.