AP-GfK poll: Americans more upbeat about economy

Americans are growing more positive about the U.S. economy, a sentiment that is benefit President Barack Obama in spite of public disillusionment with his handling of rising petrol prices and swollen government financial plan deficits.

An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that more than 2 out of 5 people believe the U.S. economy will get better, while a third think it will stay the same and nearly a fourth think it will get worse, a spring up back from last month's more negative attitude. And, for the first time since the 100-day mark of his presidency, somewhat more than half agree of Obama's stewardship of the economy.

Both findings characterize a boost for Obama, nevertheless he still must triumph over ill will over government red ink and the price of gas at the pump, at the present hovering around $4 a gallon.

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Barack Obama: All U.S. troops will be pulled out of Iraq

U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a complete withdrawal from the country, almost after nine years the invasion under President George W Bush. About 39,000 US troops remain in Iraq, down from a peak of 165,000 in 2008. He has announced that, “All U.S. troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of the year”.

The US and Iraq were in "full agreement" on how to move forward, Mr Obama said, adding: "The US leaves Iraq with our heads held high."

"That is how America's military efforts in Iraq will end."

According to the Department of Defense, there have been 4,408 American military deaths in Iraq ever since March 2003. Mr Obama spoke at the White House following a video conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

He promised assistance and "a strong and enduring partnership" with Iraqi government. The US declared the end of its combat mission in Iraq in 2010. The deadline for complete troop withdrawal by end of 2011 was set during former President George W Bush's term in office.

However, the issue of a full pullout had been the subject of an ongoing debate. Iraqi leaders had wanted 5,000 US troops to remain in a training capacity. But those trainers would not have received immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.

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Senate cancels break as budget battle heats up

Democrats stepped up their harass in a tense budget battle with Republicans on Thursday as the Senate disregarded its July 4 recess and a top lawmaker accuse Republicans of deliberately sabotaging the financial recovery.

With time running short before a likely default in early August, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said he would hold the chamber in session after that week to work on a budget deal that would permit the country to keep paying all its bills.

One day after President Barack Obama compares Senate Republicans to lazy schoolchildren, the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, said Obama be supposed to come to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to talk about what could pass Congress.

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Blagojevich jury reaches verdicts on 18 counts

Jurors deliberating in the bribery retrial of Rod Blagojevich told a judge Monday they have reached a verdict on 18 of the 20 counts beside the ousted Illinois governor, and attorneys in the case decided that the verdicts should be read.

Judge James Zagel said that will occur Monday afternoon. The jury had returned to the federal courthouse Monday morning subsequent to nine days of deliberations. They had been talking through the confirmation over a three-week period.

Blagojevich, 54, faces allegations that he sought after to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat in swap over for a high-paying job, and schemed to shake down executive for campaign donations. He took the stand at the retrial and unused to all the charges.

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House rejects measure to continue US role in Libya

The House refuses to vote President Barack Obama the ability for U.S. military operations against Libya on Friday but stopped short of cutting off money for the mission, a mixed message reminiscent of congressional disquiet on Vietnam and more recent wars.

In a repudiation of the commander in chief, the House voted overwhelmingly touching a resolution that would have favored letting the task continue for one year while barring U.S. ground forces, a decision the president said he would welcome.The vote was 295-123, with 70 Democrats abandoning Obama one day behind Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had completed a last-minute plea in a Capitol Hill meeting.

But shortly after that vote, the House turned back a Republican-led effort to cut off currency for military hostilities in the Libyan war. The vote was 238-180. The funding compute would have barred drone attack and airstrikes but allowed the United States to carry on actions in support of NATO.

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Obama's task: Maintaining support for Afghan war

President Obama will face a stiff supporting challenge Wednesday in presenting his plan for a gradual end to the U.S. military contribution in Afghanistan. His prime-time address must remind a skeptical electorate and a anxious Congress that the country’s longest war remains worth fighting — and funding — for several more years.

Obama’s generals have requested more time to combine the gain they say have been made since the president dispatch 33,000 additional U.S. troops to the country last year. The escalation, which angered his party’s antiwar base, follows a months-long strategy review to decide how to salvage a flagging war effort.

Since then, public opinion has turned more and more against the war, except for a now-diminishing boost in hold after the killing of Osama bin Laden in May.As he begins the promised withdrawal, Obama’s face will be to provide his generals with the resources to wage the war’s final phase while persuade Congress that, at a time of fiscal strain, maintain most of a $10 billion-a-month war effort is worthwhile.

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A twist in Obama's health care law

President Barack Obama's health care law would let several million middle-class public get nearly free assurance meant for the poor, a twist government amount crunchers say they discovered only after the multipart bill was signed.

The change would involve early retirees: A married couple could have an yearly income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who create long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.

Up to 3 million more public could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That's because, in a major modify from today, most of their Social Security remuneration would no longer be counted as income for decisive eligibility. It might be compared to allow middle-class people to be eligible for food stamps.

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Obama in jubilant Ireland: `I've come home'

He down a pint of Guinness with a far-away cousin and checked out centuries-old parish records tracing his family to Ireland. From the tiny village of Money gall to a huge, reassuring crowd in Dublin, President Barack Obama opened his four-nation trip through Europe on Monday with an unlikely homecoming far detached from the grind politics of Washington and the world.

"My name is Barack Obama, of the Money gall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost anywhere along the way," a clearly tickled Obama — make that Obama — told the spread out throng at Dublin's College Green with his wife, Michelle, right by him. "We suffer very much at home."

Obama's feel-good immoderation in Ireland came at the start of a four-country, six-day trip that is bound to get into stickier matters as he goes. The only hindrance on day one was the exposure of a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland that led the president to leave Ireland with no even a night's stay and land in England on Monday night.

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Senate blocks bill repealing $2B in oil tax breaks

The Senate blocked a bill Tuesday that would cancel about $2 billion a year in tax breaks for the five major oil companies, a Democratic retort to $4-a-gallon gasoline that might fare better when Congress and the White House discuss a deal afterward this year to add to the government's ability to have a loan of.

The bill was beaten on a procedural vote. But Democrats hope to erect their case to contain the measure in a deficit-reduction package being negotiated by key lawmakers and the Obama administration. Lawmakers from both parties are challenging deficit reduction as part of deal to boost the government's capacity to borrow and avoid a record default on U.S. Treasury bonds.

"This bill says that yet the most rich and powerful between us must do their fair share to help us reduce the shortfall," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the bill's sponsor. "Their high-priced lobbyists cannot stop us from doing what is fair and what is right."

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US kills Osama bin Laden decade after 9/11 attacks

Osama bin Laden, the face of global terrorism and draftsman of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was killed in a firefight with elite American forces Monday, then speedily buried at sea in an eye-catching finale to a secretive decade on the run.

Long alleged to be hiding in caves, bin Laden was tracked down in a pricey, custom-built hideout not far from a Pakistani military greenhouse.

"Fairness has been done," President Barack Obama said in a theatrical statement at the White House while a crowd cheered outside and hundreds more congregated at ground zero in Manhattan to celebrate the news.

The military operation took mere minutes.

U.S. helicopters commuter boat elite counter-terrorism troops into the complex identified by the CIA as bin Laden's hideout — and back out over again in less than 40 minutes. Bin Laden was shot in the head, officials said, after he and his bodyguards resisted the attack.

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Obama's deficit plans run into economic reality

President Barack Obama came to the West Coast looking to sell a long-term plan for dipping the nation's deficit. But he couldn't flee the reality that a lot of Americans are still waiting for short-term solutions to their financial problems, from persistent being without a job to the crippled housing market.

Voters in California and Nevada did express both an attention and an understanding about the need for deficit lessening. Yet they made clear that the economic upturn that's given Washington lawmakers the space to start talk about longer-term fiscal matters still hasn't fully taken hold in ways that are meaningful to them.

Obama long has said he knows the economic recovery hasn't come to many parts of the country. But as he shifts into re-election mode, his confront will be to show the public that he's still paying attention on issues like job creation, even as the chat in Washington change to how to bring down the nation's huge arrears.

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Obama to supporters: I understand your frustration

Reduction into his 2012 movement, President Barack Obama is telling his group he understands their frustration over the collaboration he's made with Republicans, while get ready them for more to come.

It's a appropriate warning given the future vote on raising the arrears ceiling and the continuing debate over long-term deficit drop, both issues Obama says can only be solved if Republicans and Democrats work in concert. But further compromises could demonstrate a tough pill to gulp for many of Obama's liberal backers, who have grown tired of watching the president let go ground to the GOP on spending cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy.

During a raucous fundraiser paying attention on young people in San Francisco Wednesday night, Obama said his group is not alone in their aggravation.

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Obama rips GOP plan, yet sees hope for a debt deal

With America's worldwide praise standing suddenly in query, President Barack Obama insist Tuesday that Washington has the following will to slash the massive U.S. money owing in spite of fierce, fundamental difference with Republicans regarding how to do it.

Obama spoke optimistically of conciliation with GOP lawmakers, yet still used a campaign-style town hall event to charge the Republicans of donation a bleak future for the poor, young and aged with their proposal.

The president seemed intention on assuring monetary markets and the watching world that U.S. leaders will get their act jointly to address a suffocating debt — while at the same time trying to encourage voters that only his plan would share the pain quite.

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Obama's tax return: Income down — to $1.7 million

President Barack Obama is creation less money than he used to, although it's still a lot: He and wife Michelle accounted income of $1.73 million last year, mostly from the books he's written, according to his just-filed tax return. That was down from the $5.5 million of a year previous.

The president, who has been agitation to raise taxes on the rich, paid the government $453,770 in federal taxes, regarding a quarter of the income. Just last week, he renewed his push to end Bush-era tax cuts for household with annual incomes above $250,000 — note that that would contain him.

The White House unconfined tax profits for the Obamas and for Vice President Joe Biden and his wife on Monday, the time limit for Americans to file.

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S&P warning: Fix deficit or risk credit rating

A key praise agency issued an unparalleled warning to the United States government Monday, urging Washington to get a grip on its money or risk losing the nation's sterling recognition rating.

For the first time, Standard & Poor's lower its long-term outlook for the federal government's economic health from "stable" to "unhelpful," and warned of serious consequences if lawmakers fail to reach a deal to organize the enormous federal shortage.

A standoff could prompt the agency to strip the government of its top venture rating in the next two years, S&P said. A loss of the triple-A rating would undulate during the American economy, making loans more luxurious and credit trickier to obtain.

The demote was interpreted as a rebuke to President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans, admonish them to put government aside and come up with a long-term fiscal plan as soon as possible.

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Congress OKs big budget cuts — bigger fights await

Congress sent President Barack Obama hard-fought legislation cutting a record $38 billion from central spending on Thursday, bestowing bipartisan hold up on the first major compromise stuck between the White House and lately empowered Republicans in Congress.

"Welcome to alienated government," said House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Republican point man in tough talks with the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that shaped a bill no one claimed to like in its total.

Leader of a rambunctious new greater part, Boehner said the cuts in domestic program were first-time. Yet he also called the measure a less-than-perfect first step in a long campaign against federal red ink, and dozens of rank-and-file conservative voted in opposition to it.

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Obama visits his hometown to restart money chase

President Barack Obama restarted his alarming fundraising operation Thursday with a confront to supporters that the 2012 presidential crusade will be concerning how to fix the country's money problems with no doing harm to "the America we think in."

"We are going to be gifted to present a very clear option to the American people," the president told Chicago hometown supporters in his first fundraisers since formally proclaiming his re-election last week. "We can get our economic house in order, but we can do it in a way that is dependable with our values and who we are as a people. Or we can make a decision to shrink our vision of what America is. And I don't consider in shrinking America."

Bracing for a fight next to re-energized Republicans determined to deny him a second term, the president required Thursday to reanimate supporters who sweep him into the White House in 2008 on promises of change — counting liberals let down at his compromises with the GOP.

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White House says shutdown will delay pay to troops

The Obama management warns Wednesday that a federal shutdown would chip away at the economic recovery, delay pay to U.S. troops fighting in three wars, slow the dispensation of tax returns and limit small commerce loans and government-backed mortgages throughout peak home buying season.

The dire message, deliver two days before the federal government's expenditure authority expires; come into view aimed at jolting congressional Republicans into a finances compromise. Billions of dollars apart, congressional negotiators were working to strike a deal by Friday to avert a shutdown by setting outflow limits from side to side the end of September. The last such shutdown took place 15 years ago and lasted 21 days.

President Barack Obama telephoned House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday and Boehner's office said the orator told Obama he was confident a deal could be reached.

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Obama: Progress, but no deal to avert shutdown

By means of time rising short, President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that his bits and pieces certain that a government shutdown can be keep away from this weekend if negotiators can build on positive talks held at the White House.

Difference remains in spite of the progress, but Obama proclaimed that talks would persist from end to end the night in hopes of avoid a government shutdown this weekend.

"It's going to have need of a sufficient sense of pressure," Obama said, "to inclusive a deal and get it passed and turn away a shutdown."

Obama emerged before reporters to say publicly his dissimilarity with the House Republicans were tapering but that both sides were still stuck in an impasse.

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Obama, Boehner to talk budget cuts at White House

President Barack Obama has beckoned the top Republican in Congress to the White House on Tuesday for talks meant at prevention a government blackout this weekend.

Discussions have stalled on legislation blending instant spending cuts with the money obligatory to run federal agencies from end to end the end of September. Democrats are accusing the GOP of pressing damaging expenditure cuts and attaching a social policy agenda to the must-pass spending bill. House Speaker John Boehner counters that the White House is urgent gimmicky budget cuts.

On a disconnect long-term track, Republicans scheming the House have twisted plans to slash the budget deficit by more than $5 trillion over the upcoming decade, combining extraordinary spending cuts with a basic reorganization of taxpayer-financed health care for the aged and the poor.

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