Obama in landmark Malaysia visit

Barack Obama arrived in Malaysia on Saturday hoping to energise relations with the predominantly Muslim country and re-focus a four-nation Asian tour repeatedly distracted by foreign-policy crises elsewhere. Obama became the first serving US president to visit Malaysia since Lyndon Johnson in 1966 as he tours Asia to underscore his "rebalance" of US attention toward the strategic Asia-Pacific and push a stalled regional trade pact. But hotspots elsewhere in the world have repeatedly intruded. In earlier visits to allies Japan and South Korea, the US leader was forced to deal with the spiralling confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, a faltering Middle East peace process, and perennial bugbear North Korea, according to AFP.