Obama says ready to help Haiti after earthquake

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that his "thoughts and prayers" were with the people of Haiti after it was struck by a major earthquake and pledged to come to their aid if needed.

"We are closely monitoring the situation and we stand ready to assist the people of Haiti," Obama said in a statement.

The Obama administration said that the State Department, USAID and the U.S. military were working to coordinate an assessment of the situation and any possible assistance.

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U.S. announces $187 million for fuel efficiency

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 - The Obama administration plans on Monday to announce the selection of nine projects totaling $187 million aimed at improving the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks.

The funding includes more than $100 million from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan President Barack Obama pushed through Congress last February. An additional 50 percent will come from the private sector, according to the announcement to be made by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu in Columbus, Indiana.

The Obama administration is under pressure to show it is working to create jobs with the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at 10 percent.

The administration estimated the projects would create 500 jobs in areas like research and engineering near term, with the potential for creating 6,000 positions in manufacturing and assembly by 2015.

Three projects will focus on efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of long-haul freight trucks by 50 percent.

The freight-truck awards include:

* $38.8 million for Cummins Inc in Columbus, Indiana. This project is aimed at developing a clean, efficient diesel engine, an advanced waste heat recovery system, an aerodynamic Peterbilt tractor-trailer combination and a fuel cell auxiliary power unit to reduce engine idling.

* $39.6 million for Daimler Trucks North America LLC . This project in Portland, Oregon will seek to develop technologies including engine downsizing, electrification of auxiliary systems such as oil and water pumps, waste heat recovery, improved aerodynamics and hybridization.

* $37.3 million for Navistar Inc. This Fort Wayne, Indiana project will seek to develop technologies to improve truck and trailer aerodynamics, combustion efficiency, waste heat recovery, hybridization, idle reduction and reduced rolling resistance tires.

Another six projects will be aimed at developing fuel efficiency for passenger vehicle engines and powertrain systems. The goal is to develop engine technologies that will improve the fuel economy of passenger vehicles by 25-40 percent by 2015 using an engine-only approach.

Those include:

* $14.5 million for Chrysler Group LLC. The Auburn Hills, Michigan project will aim to develop a flexible combustion system for their minivan platform based on a downsized, turbocharged engine that uses direct gasoline injection, recirculation of exhaust gases and flexible intake air control to reduce emissions.

* $15 million for Cummins Inc to develop a fuel-efficient, low emissions diesel engine that achieves a 40 percent fuel economy improvement over conventional gasoline technology and significantly exceeds 2010 Environmental Protection Agency emissions requirements.

* $7.5 million for Delphi Automotive Systems LLC to develop a novel low-temperature combustion system, coupled with technologies such as continuously variable valve control and engine downspeeding, to improve fuel economy by at least 25 percent.

* $15 million for Ford Motor Co in Dearborn, Michigan to achieve a 25 percent fuel economy improvement with a gasoline engine in a 2010 mid- to large-size sedan using technologies including engine downsizing, turbo-charging, direct injection, and a novel exhaust after-treatment system.

* $7.7 million for General Motors Corp in Pontiac, Michigan to develop an engine that uses lean combustion and active heat management, as well as a novel emissions control system, to improve the fuel economy of a 2010 Malibu demonstration vehicle by 25 percent.

* $12 million for Robert Boschin Farmington Hills, Michigan to demonstrate a high compression, turbo-charged engine based on homogenous charge compression ignition technology -- a combustion technology that allows for lower emissions and higher efficiency -- to achieve up to 30 percent fuel economy improvement in a gasoline-fueled light-duty vehicle.

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Obama launches new push for healthcare overhaul

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Saturday renewed his pitch for final congressional passage of a U.S. healthcare overhaul and promised Americans they will begin reaping the benefits soon after he signs a bill into law.

As Obama's fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate struggle to merge their healthcare bills into one, the president used his weekly radio address to try to ease lingering public doubts over his top legislative priority.

The president stepped back into the center of the healthcare debate after being preoccupied for much of his first week back from vacation in Hawaii with fallout over the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner.

"We are on the verge of passing health insurance reform that will finally offer Americans the security of knowing they'll have quality, affordable health care whether they lose their job, change jobs, move or get sick," he said.

Latching onto widespread public resentment against big insurers, Obama promised, "The worst practices of the insurance industry will be banned forever."

While acknowledging it will take a few years to fully implement the reforms, Obama insisted, "What every American should know is that once I sign health insurance reform into law, there are dozens of protections and benefits that will take effect this year."

He said the more immediate changes would include enabling uninsured Americans with pre-existing medical conditions to purchase affordable coverage, prohibiting insurance companies from imposing lifetime and annual limits on care and giving small businesses tax credits to buy coverage for employees.

TOUGH NEGOTIATIONS

The healthcare overhaul would lead to the biggest changes in the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system in four decades. Both bills would extend insurance coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and create exchanges where individuals can shop for insurance plans.

But Democrats who control Congress face tough negotiations to reconcile House and Senate bills, which differ on issues including taxes, abortion and whether to have a government-run insurance plan. The measures must be melded together and passed again by each chamber before being sent to Obama.

Democrats want to deliver a major legislative victory for Obama and sell the public on what they believe are the benefits of reform, well before they have to fight to preserve their majorities in Congress in November midterm elections.

Republicans solidly oppose Obama's healthcare approach, calling it a government takeover of the system and too costly, and have threatened new procedural roadblocks in the Senate. Democrats have shut them out of the closed-door negotiations.

U.S. healthcare spending would rise by $222 billion over the next decade under the Senate's overhaul bill, the U.S. agency that oversees Medicare said in a report released on Friday.

The report, written by Richard Foster, the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is the latest from the agency casting doubt on savings claims from healthcare reform.

The increased spending would primarily come from the expected influx of newly insured individuals seeking medical care, the report said. More than half of them would receive Medicaid, the report said, creating a demand level that would likely be difficult to meet over the first few years.

But Foster acknowledged that his analysis is "subject to much greater uncertainty than normal" as there is little precedence for the sweeping change in how insurance is provided and paid for under the proposed legislation.

Obama met Democratic leaders during the past week to try to push the process along. He will host labor leaders at the White House on Monday in a bid to ease their concerns.

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Obama says bomb attempt an intelligence "screw-up"

WASHINGTON - The attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner was a potentially disastrous "screw up" by the intelligence community, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday as he vowed urgent action to tighten air security.

Sharpening his tone as he sought to limit political fallout over the intelligence breakdown, Obama said spy agencies had enough information to uncover the December 25 plot to blow up a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam but failed to "connect those dots."

On Obama's first full day back from his Hawaii vacation, he faced the challenge of spotlighting national security -- suddenly pushed to the top of his agenda -- while not looking distracted from other pressing public concerns like reducing double-digit U.S. unemployment.

"We have to do better and we will do better. And we will do it quickly," Obama said after a two-hour meeting with his national security team to discuss what he has called "human and systemic failures" in the Christmas Day incident.

Obama used his sharpest language behind closed doors, telling more than two dozen security chiefs gathered in the Situation Room, "This was a screw-up that could have been disastrous," according to the White House.

"We dodged a bullet but just barely," the White House quoted him as telling the security chiefs. "It was averted by brave individuals not because the system worked, and that is not acceptable."

Passengers and crew subdued the Nigerian bomb suspect as he tried to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear.

Nicknamed "No Drama Obama" for his normally unflappable style, Obama was on the defensive after security lapses allowed the Nigerian man with alleged links to Yemen-based al Qaeda operatives to board the Northwest Airlines flight.

U.S. spy agencies and the State Department had information about the man, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab but never collated the information to put him on a no-fly list.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said the intelligence community "received the president's message today -- we got it and we are moving forward to meet the new challenges."

"The system did not catch Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and prevent him from boarding an airliner and entering the United States. We must be able to stop such attempts," Blair said in a statement. "The threat has evolved and we need to anticipate new kinds of attacks and improve our ability to stay ahead of them and protect America."

Obama, who returned on Monday from 11 days in Hawaii, has been lambasted by Republicans who accuse his Democratic administration of being weak on terrorism and unable to fix intelligence gaps that have lingered since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States involving hijacked planes.

Republicans hope to score points ahead of November's congressional elections in which they hope to challenge the Democrats' control of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Republicans have criticized Obama for waiting three days before making his first public statement on the airliner attack and blasted his homeland security chief for initially saying that "the system worked" to thwart the potential disaster.

'FIX WHAT WENT WRONG'

Trying to seize the initiative, Obama said in his public remarks, "I want our additional reviews completed this week. I want specific recommendations for corrective actions to fix what went wrong. I want those reforms implemented immediately so that this doesn't happen again and so that we can prevent future attacks."

While giving few specifics of reforms yet to be announced, Obama promised changes in particular in the government's terrorist "watch-list" system.

Obama said U.S. intelligence ignored "red flags" and did not pull together pieces of information that could have headed off the attempted bombing.

"The bottom line is this: the U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list," Obama said.

Abdulmutallab's name was in a U.S. database of about 550,000 people with suspected terrorist links but was not on a list that would have subjected him to additional security screening or kept him from boarding the flight.

His father earlier had warned U.S. officials of concerns about his son and critics say the CIA should have done more to flag the intelligence.

The government has lowered the threshold for information deemed important enough to put suspicious individuals on a watch-list or no-fly list, or have their visa revoked, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing senior State Department officials.

Spoke on condition of anonymity, they told CNN the government had overhauled criteria it uses for putting possible terrorists on such lists as a result of the failed Christmas day attack.

The White House said on Tuesday the administration has suspended the transfer of detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Yemen as a result of the deteriorating security situation there.

Obama bowed to political pressure not to send more prisoners to Yemen following revelations that Abdulmutallab had received al Qaeda training there.

The White House insisted Obama's focus on counterterrorism will not keep him from addressing jobs, healthcare reform and the rest of his agenda. The administration had wanted to focus on economic recovery efforts and job creation after the holidays. Opinion polls show those issues are topping Americans' concerns.

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Obama to unveil counterterrorism reforms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday plans to unveil reforms aimed at thwarting future attacks like the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing, as he seeks to limit political fallout from the incident.
Obama will outline an initial series of changes, including enhancements in much-criticized "watchlists" of terrorism suspects, after he meets with intelligence chiefs and other top security advisers, an administration official said.

On Obama's first full day back from his Hawaii vacation, he faces the challenge of spotlighting national security -- suddenly pushed to the top of his agenda -- while not looking distracted from other pressing public concerns like reducing double-digit unemployment.

It will be no easy task.

The administration is on the defensive after intelligence failures allowed a Nigerian with alleged links to Yemen-based al Qaeda operatives to board a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam on December 25. The man is accused of trying to blow up the plane with explosives hidden in his underwear.

U.S. spy agencies and the State Department had information about the suspect, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but never connected the dots that might have put him on a no-fly list.

White House officials have conceded the failed bomb plot on a Detroit-bound airliner exposed errors that must be fixed but have played down the need for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the U.S. security system.

But Obama, who returned on Monday from 11 days in his home state, has been lambasted by Republicans who accuse his Democratic administration of being weak on terrorism and unable to fix intelligence gaps that have lingered since the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks.

Republicans hope to score points for November elections to help challenge the Democrats' control of Congress.

YEMEN

With the U.S. military increasing forces battling Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and burdened with continued responsibilities in Iraq, the failed Christmas attack has also raised doubts whether enough attention has been paid to Yemen, a poor, restive country at the tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Despite the administration and media focus on the bombing attempt, White House spokesman Bill Burton said he did not expect the issue to keep Obama from addressing jobs, healthcare reform and the rest of his agenda.

"When you're president of the United States you've got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," Burton said on Monday.

It was clear, nevertheless, that national security issues and their domestic political ramifications would take up more of Obama's time than expected as he approached the one-year mark of his presidency.

The administration wanted to focus on economic recovery efforts and a job creation push after the holidays, in keeping with polls showing those issues topping Americans' concerns.

But Obama, who was criticized for waiting three days before making his first public statement on the airliner attack, now finds himself juggling a more complicated agenda as he tries to grab the initiative.

The administration on Monday imposed tighter screening for U.S.-bound airline passengers from Yemen, Nigeria and 12 other countries, including possibly being patted down, measures that civil libertarians called ineffective and unconstitutional.

After his regular briefings on Tuesday, Obama will meet at least 20 top officials to review what he has called "human and systemic failures" in the incident and how to avert a repeat.

Among those attending: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and FBI chief Robert Mueller.

"After the meeting, the president will make public remarks (at 4 p.m. EST) outlining his findings and an initial series of reforms to improve our watchlisting system as well as our ability to thwart future attempts to carry out terrorist attacks," the administration official said.

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Obamas Thank Troops in Christmas Message, GOP Vet Recalls Why He Served

WASHINGTON -- President and first lady Obama gave troops a special message of thanks to U.S. troops in the president's taped weekly radio and Internet address, and urged Americans to to help support military families this holiday season.

Separately, a Republican congressman who served combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan offered the GOP message to troops for the holidays.

In a Christmas message released early for the weekend, Obama said serving as commander in chief has been his greatest honor as president. He saluted the "selfless spirit" of those who serve and said he has been "humbled, profoundly" by those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

"So to all our men and women in uniform spending the holidays far from home -- whether it's at a base here in the states, a mess hall in Iraq or a remote outpost in Afghanistan -- know that you are in our thoughts and our prayers," the president said in a message released Thursday.

"And this holiday season -- and every holiday season -- know that we are doing everything in our power to make sure you can succeed in your missions and come home safe to your families."

Given his own Christmas gift of Democratic-led Senate passage of a health insurance overhaul, Obama offered praise for the military before leaving Washington on Thursday. He then took one question in which he said he was sending a holiday wish to reporters.

"I'm on my way right now to call a few of them and wish them merry Christmas and to thank them for their extraordinary service as they're posted in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.

Mrs. Obama, who doesn't normally appear in the weekly address, recalled her visits with "military spouses doing the parenting of two" to keep their households together.

"But even these strong military families can use a hand, especially during the holidays," she said. "If you live near a military base, you can reach out through your workplaces, your schools, your churches.

"There are so many ways to help -- with child care, with errands, or by just bringing over a home-cooked meal," Michelle Obama said.

For service members on active duty around the world, the president added that kids can send greeting cards and adults can send care packages or prepaid phone cards. He directed listeners to the White House Web site "for more ways to let our troops know you care."

Thousands of Marines left for Afghanistan in the days prior to Christmas, part of the president's surge of 30,000 forces to the region. He has said he wants to set a benchmark of July 2011 to start pulling them out of the embattled country.

California Rep. Duncan Hunter said he knows well the longing to be home for the holidays, and asked Americans to keep in mind those less fortunate and the members of the military .

"Thoughts of home remind us of why we serve: because we're proud to be Americans, because we want to pass on to our children the blessings of liberty that we inherited from our forefathers, and because nothing matters more to us than protecting our homes and our families," he said.

He added that despite the separation of families, "This is not a time for sadness or regret."

Adding some politics into the GOP's weekly radio response, Hunter noted the country's 10 percent unemployment rate and Republican solutions for increasing jobs and reducing government debt.

"I hope we also take a moment this year to reflect on those suffering here at home. For too many families, this will be a difficult Christmas," he said.

"Let's resolve in the new year to end misguided efforts to create new laws that will cost even more jobs, whether it's the 'cap and trade' national energy tax, the government takeover of health care, 'card check' or even more tax increases," Hunter said. "Working together, we can make the next holiday season even brighter for all Americans."

Even in these tough economic times, Obama said, there's still much to celebrate this Christmas, including the birth of Jesus.

"The love family and friends. The bonds of community and country. And the character and courage of our men and women in uniform who are far from home for the holidays, away from their families, risking their lives to protect ours," he added.

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Obama ends benefits for Guinea, Madagascar, Niger

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he has terminated trade benefits for Guinea, Madagascar and Niger, three African countries where democratic progress is threatened by political turmoil.

In a statement, Obama said the three countries had failed to make "continual progress" in meeting U.S. requirements for the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

"Each of these countries has experienced an undemocratic transfer of power, which is incompatible with making progress toward establishing the rule of law or political pluralism," said a White House official.

"These circumstances also make it extremely difficult to achieve the progress necessary to satisfy the other AGOA eligibility criteria," the official added.

At the same time, Obama said he was adding Mauritania to the list of sub-Saharan African countries eligible for preferential U.S. tariff treatment under the program.

Separately, the State Department said the United States had suspended non-humanitarian aid to Niger and imposed travel bans on some government officials in response to Niger President Mamadou Tandja's moves to extend his time as leader.

Tandja's original term was to end on December 22.

Earlier this month, Obama sent Tandja a message calling for more democracy in Niger. The United States has also frozen $20 million in aid for Niger under its U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement with the country.

GUINEA'S JUNTA BLAMED FOR DEATHS

A United Nations report on Monday blamed Guinea's junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara for the September 28 killings of more than 150 pro-democracy marchers by security forces.

Guinea, the world's top exporter of bauxite and a pivotal country for the security of West Africa, has been on the brink of chaos since the massacre and a botched assassination attempt against Camara on December 3 by his former aide de camp.

Madagascar's security forces on Tuesday fired teargas at opposition leaders and hundreds of their supporters outside parliament as political tensions escalated on the Indian Ocean island.

The brief flare-up happened near the national assembly where the opposition plans to form a new parliament, a process President Andry Rajoelina says is illegitimate.

The United States provides duty-free treatment for nearly 6,400 eligible items such as clothing, cocoa, wood, leather, processed foods and cut flowers under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. However, the biggest single import under the program is oil.

To be eligible, countries must at least be making continual progress toward establishing the rule of law and political pluralism, the protection of human rights and workers rights and efforts to fight corruption.

The United States imported $324.3 million worth of goods from Madagascar, $106.4 million from Guinea and $44.3 million from Niger in 2008.

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