President Barack Obama says there is no easy answer to the problem of rising energy prices, dismissing Republican plans to address the problem as little more than gimmicks.

"We know there's no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "But what we can do is get our priorities straight and make a sustained, serious effort to tackle this problem."

Ali Moussa Daqdouq, a Lebanese Hizbullah operative and the last prisoner held by American forces in Iraq, is set to face U.S. military charges, reported the New York Times on Thursday.

The American administration is cooperating with Iraq to transfer the detainee to the United States in accordance with Iraqi law, it added.

Israel will ultimately decree on an Iranian strike on its own, its military chief of staff said in an interview broadcast Saturday, as a senior U.S. official arrived for talks on the Islamic Republic.

"Israel is the central guarantor of its own security; this is our role as army, the State of Israel should defend itself," Lieutenant General Benny Gantz told state-owned Channel One TV.

U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan met with Yemen's vice president on Saturday and expressed Washington's commitment to provide support to the troubled country, official reports said.

"The U.S. will stand side by side with Yemen as it works to emerge from these difficult circumstances," the official SABA news agency quoted Brennan as saying in a meeting with Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi in Sanaa.

U.S. President Barack Obama said Saturday his administration was headed toward fulfilling its commitment of doubling U.S. exports over five years and promised to reward businesses that created jobs at home with tax breaks.

"Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "And we're on track to meet that goal - ahead of schedule."

The Defense Department on Wednesday referred criminal charges against a Pakistani accused of assisting in al-Qaida terror plots to a military commission, which is one of the last steps before a trial.

The Pakistani, Majid Shoukat Khan, has been held at the U.S. military's prison at Guantanamo since 2006.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged China to play by the "same rules" in the global economy but voiced hope for cooperation in a key introductory meeting with leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping.

Welcoming the Chinese vice president to the Oval Office, Obama raised trade and human rights disputes between the world's two largest economies and made clear that the United States intended to remain a key power in Asia.

White House hopeful Mitt Romney has promised to unite Republicans and defeat President Barack Obama in the "battle for the soul of America" as officials in Maine prepared to unveil the results of party caucuses on Saturday.

Romney and his main rivals for the nomination, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and religious conservative Rick Santorum, all made the pilgrimage to the Conservative Political Action Conference here to court the Republican base and lay out their plan to oust Obama in November.

An Uzbek man living in the United States pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in the southern state of Alabama to planning to kill U.S. President Barack Obama.

Ulugbek Kodirov, 22, was arrested in an undercover operation while trying to obtain explosives and guns, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

U.S. President Barack Obama tested a new high-powered prototype Tuesday for his commander-in-chief's arsenal -- a high-powered marshmallow gun that sent a tasty missile screaming through the White House.

Watched over by a brooding portrait of his hero Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. president fired the launcher and marveled at other inventions on display at a White House youth Science Fair.