Michelle and I send warm wishes to all those celebrate Kwanzaa this holiday season. This is a happy time of year when African Americans and all Americans come together to celebrate our blessings and the richness of our cultural traditions. This is also a time of reflection and renewal as we come to the finish of one year and the beginning of another. The Kwanzaa message tells us that we must recall the lessons of the past even as we seize the promise of tomorrow.

The seven principles of Kwanzaa - Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Purpose, Cooperative Economics, Creativity, and Faith - express the values that have enthused us as individuals and families; communities and country. These same principles have continued us as a nation during our darkest hours and provided hope for better days to come. Michelle and I know the challenges facing many African American families and families in all communities at this time, but we also know the courage of perseverance and hope that is ever-present in the community. It is in this spirit that our family extends our prayers and best wishes during this occasion and for the New Year to come.

President Obama is the man Americans admired most in 2009, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are almost tied as the most-admired woman.

The close finish by Clinton, named by 16% in the open-ended survey, and Palin, named by 15%, reflects the nation's partisan split. Clinton was cited by almost 3 in 10 Democrats but only 6% of Republicans, Palin by a third of Republicans but less than 1% of Democrats.

First lady Michelle Obama ranks as the fourth most-admired woman, at the back Oprah Winfrey.The poll of 1,025 adults, taken Dec. 11-13, has a edge of error of +/–4 percentage points.

President and Michelle Obama sent their "warm wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season," calling it a occasion when "all Americans come together to celebrate our blessings and the richness of our cultural traditions.”

The principles of Kwanzaa, Barack Obama said,

... Express the values that have enthused us as individuals and families; communities and country. These same principles have sustained us as a nation during our darkest hours and provided hope for good days to come. Michelle and I know the challenges facing many African American families and families in all communities at this time, but we also know the spirit of insistence and hope that is ever present in the community.

But among all the prayers and best wishes - similar to those offered for Christmas, Hanukkah and Eid -- there's no sign of whether they'll be observing Kwanzaa customs at the Hawaii "White House" this week.

With just days to go before the great holiday, White House officials say President Barack Obama is "very close" to a decision on what to get First Lady Michelle for Christmas this year. The president is expected to proclaim his decision within "several hours" today.

"The president has been meeting daily with his top advisors and they have provided him with the good options available at this time," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. "In around one hour, he will present his choice to a hand-picked task force, who will then approve or reject the choice."

The US President, Mr Barack Obama, and First Lady Michelle have received their swine flu shot.
Their daughters Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, got their shot in October when the vaccine first became available.

In an interview to the American Urban Radio Network, Mr Obama said the girls have been now fine and have yet to get sick this flu season.

“That’s the most significant population because this flu, unlike seasonal flu, excessively affects children and young people - healthy children and young people as well as people with underlying conditions like asthma or neurological diseases,” Mr obama said.

The President also encouraged everyone to get vaccinated against the H1N1 strain of flu now that the vaccine is available to the common public. The vaccine has been restricted to high-risk groups such as children.

Andy Stern, the labor union chief who was one of the most frequent White House visitors this year, criticize President Obama for not fighting for more sweeping changes in health-care legislation.

“We need his personal involvement,” Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s main labor unions, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. “We are encouraging him to really step in here now” and “use all the powers of persuasion that he has.”

Stern, whose union spent $85 million last year to help elect President Obama to the White House and Democrats to Congress, adds to growing discontent among Democratic allies over compromises made in the bill to overhaul the nation’s health insurance system. The Senate has loosened necessities in legislation designed to curb medical expenses and provide health care for 31 million uninsured Americans.

White House officials say U.S. President Obama has ordered the federal government to purchase a state prison in Illinois to house about 100 suspected terrorists now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The prison is situated in Thomson, a rural town about 240 kilometers west of Chicago. The 1,600 cell correction center there was built in 2001 to house maximum security inmates, but is nearly-empty. An official announcement on the contract is planned for Tuesday.

The president signed as an order days after taking office in January to close Guantanamo within a year.

But the administration's plan has been met with fierce resistance by a few congressional lawmakers who oppose bringing alleged terrorists into the United States.

Mr. Obama admitted newly that his administration will not be able to close Guantanamo by its self-imposed deadline.

As the president of the United States prepared to receive his Nobel Peace Prize Thursday, Indonesia remembered "Little Barry" Obama with the presentation of a bronze statue of him as a 10-year-old boy.

The statue of a young Barack Obama, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, were erected in the Jakarta neighborhood where he used to play as a child.

The 100 million rupiah (10,600 dollar) statue, which was based on a picture of Obama taken during his childhood, depicted the future world leader wearing a large necklace with a butterfly perched on his outstretched hand.

Ron Mullers, chairman of the group Friends of Obama, which paid for the statue, said there was nothing important about the timing of the unveiling.

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a sequence of measures to put American back to work and help companies hire people, which he said would lay the foundation for robust economic growth in the country.

These measures are part of the overall policy designed to not just make jobs in the short run but also shift America away from consumption-driven growth to a focus on enhancing the competitiveness of America's businesses, encouraging investment, and promoting exports, Obama said.

Obama also called for the removal of fees and an increase in guarantees for loans through the Small Business Administration, a measure that extends provisions in the Recovery Act through the end of 2010. In addition, he called for continued Treasury efforts to use the TARP to maintain small business lending.

Today was a great day in environmental news.

First, former Vice President Al Gore met with President Obama about climate change this afternoon in a personal meeting in the Oval Office. Gore is one of the most famous Americans and thought leaders in favor of U.S. action on climate change.

Second, today the greatly anticipated U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen got underway. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, the White House was announced that President Obama would join the U.S. delegation to Copenhagen (last weekend, officials said the President would be in Copenhagen on December 18, instead of December 9). President Obama is expected to commit the United States to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

And third, today the Environmental Protection Agency finalized its “endangerment finding” on greenhouse gas emissions, officially declaring that carbon and other greenhouse gases are harmful to the public’s health and welfare.

President Barack Obama on Thursday called on corporate America to help tackle the nation's highest unemployment in 26 years and dismissed skeptics who have doubt his efforts to boost employment.

"We cannot hang back and hope for the best when we've see the kinds of job wounded that we've seen over the last year," Obama told business and labor leaders invited to the White House to suggest how to lift employment creation.

"Despite the progress we've made, many businesses are still playful about hiring," he said, acknowledging that although the economy is growing again, the labor market is lagging behind.
Obama is hosting a jobs forum after US unemployment hit a 26-year high of 10.2% in October, sap his popularity and potentially shaping his political future.

Critics dismiss the effort as mainly a public relations exercise. Obama already has said he wants measures that will not add to the country's record budget deficit, efficiently ruling out significantly more public spending on top of a USD 787 billion stimulus package that he signed in February.

US President Barack Obama gave PM Manmohan Singh a sample of his Afghan strategy before he announces it on Wednesday morning. While the phone call was one of several that Obama made - he spoke to Hamid Karzai, Nicholas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown, Dmitry Medvedev, Kevin Rudd and Hu Jintao - officials said India's satisfaction was derived from the high level of Obama's commitment to stay the course in Afghanistan despite growing clamor in the US for an early pullout.

The US president is set to announce an raise of around 35,000 troops in Afghanistan, putting an end to a tortuous exercise of a review of his Afghan strategy that has taken the better part of the past four months.

The Obama-Singh conversation had one more important component for India: India's own presence and activity in Afghanistan. The Indian takeaway here is that the Pakistan "line" which, in a few ways was reflected in the report prepared by the top US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, that Indian activities in Afghanistan could be counter-productive, was comprehensively discarded. Obama reportedly told the PM that Indian activities are not only appreciated but they should continue. India has committed almost $1.2 billion in civilian and infrastructure project in Afghanistan, in the teeth of repeated Pakistani complaints.