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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White House worried about Solyndra default

White House officials discussed the political ramifications of a likely default by a troubled solar energy company that received more than $500 million in federal loans, recently released emails show.

Emails released Thursday night show that Obama administration confidentially worried about the effect of a default by Solyndra Inc on the president's re-election campaign.

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an representative from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Jan 31 email to a senior OMB official, "The timing will possible coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

Santorum in White House race; 'In it to win'

SOMERSET, Pa. – Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, just the once the No. 3 Republican in Senate leadership ranks, said Monday he's looking for the GOP nomination for president to protect American freedoms below warning from President Barack Obama.

A blunt-talking favorite between party social conservatives, Santorum said Obama has work to undermine Americans' freedoms and pushed throughout a national health care arrangement that reduces individual choice. He accused Obama of spend billions of dollars that add to future generations' debts and said the president worries the nation's potential.

"I'm ready to lead. I'm ready to do what has to be done for the next generation, with the bravery to fight for freedom, with the bravery to clash for America," Santorum said, speaking the sun-splashed steps of a district courthouse in western Pennsylvania. "That's why I'm announcing today that I'm in succession for president of the United States of America."

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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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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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CIA sends teams to Libya; US mulls aid for rebels

The CIA has sent small teams of effectives into Libya and helped save a crew member of a U.S. warrior jet that not working and the White House said Wednesday it was charging "all types of support" for rebels battling Moammar Gadhafi's troops.

Combat zone setbacks are hardening the U.S. view that the poorly prepared opposition in all probability is incapable of established without critical Western intervention, a senior U.S. astuteness official told The Associated Press.

Lawmakers, in private briefings with top Obama supervision officials, asked tough questions about the cost of the military operation and uttered apprehension about the makeup of the rebels.

Members of upper house quoted officials as saying the U.S. military role would be limited and heard President Barack Obama's director of national intelligence compares the rebel forces to a "pick-up basketball team."

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Obama on Libya: 'We have a responsibility to act'

Energetically defensive American attacks in Libya, President Barack Obama stated Monday night that the United States intervene to stop a slaughter of civilians that would have discolored the world's sense of right and wrong and "been a disloyalty of who we are" as Americans. Yet he ruled out targeting Moammar Gadhafi, warning that annoying to oust him militarily would be an error as expensive as the war in Iraq.

Obama proclaimed that NATO would take command over the whole Libya operation on Wednesday, keeping his promise to get the U.S. out of the lead fast — but offering no guess on when the conflict might end and no details about its costs notwithstanding demands for those answers from lawmakers.

He decline to label the U.S.-led military crusade as a "war," but made an liberal case for why he believed it was in the national attention of the United States and allies to use force.

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Clinton: No interest in job if Obama wins in 2012

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday she does not desire to wait in her job if President Barack Obama wins a second term in 2012.

The nation's top civil servant also resolutely said she neither has plans to mount another White House bid nor attention in other posts, for example vice president or protection secretary.

Clinton, visiting Cairo, was asked whether she would stay on in a second Obama term. She also was asked if she would like the jobs of president, vice president or protection secretary. She to be had single word reactions to each: "No."

Conjecture about Clinton's prospect is always high and she has been mention as a possible descendant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has told Obama he is stepping down. In an interview with CNN, Clinton made clear she has no attention in organization the Pentagon or repeat her 2008 presidential run.

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Rebels retreat from Libyan oil port amid barrage

Libya – With violent bombardments of tank and artillery fire, Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists throw rebel into a frantic retreat from a tactical oil port Thursday in a counterattack that reversed the opposition's go forward toward the assets of Tripoli and now threatens its positions in the east.

The tumult came as the U.S. director of national cleverness stressed that Gadhafi's military was stronger than it has been explained and said that "in the longer term ... the government will prevail." President Barack Obama has called on Gadhafi to step down, and the White House later distance Obama from the director's evaluation.

Hundreds of rebels in cars and trucks increased with machine guns sped eastward on the Mediterranean coastal road in a apparently confused flight from Ras Lanouf as an overwhelming force of rockets and shells broken up a hospital, mosque and other buildings in the oil complex. Doctors and team at the infirmary were hastily evacuated along with wounded from war from the past week.

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Obama: Flexibility OK, but health care law remains

Anxious to effortlessness deepening following tensions with the states, President Barack Obama on Monday told governors he wants to speed up their aptitude to enforce his name health care law on their own terms. But his allowance goes only so far: He warned he won't permit states to grow weaker the law.

He as well told them not to vilify their own states' public personnel while struggling with expenditure cuts.

Hosting governors of both parties on his possess turf; Obama offered them what they frequently request: more flexibility as they cope with painful finances dilemmas. declare that he would "go to bat for anything works," Obama supported letting states proposition their own health care plans by 2014 — three years faster than the present law allows.

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Obama to CEOs: Ask what you can do for America

Echoing John F. Kennedy, President Barack Obama poked big business leaders Monday to "ask yourselves what you can do for America," not presently for company bottom lines, even as he required to soft his uncomfortable relations with the nation's public executives.

Talking to the U.S. board room of Commerce, the president advised the business group of people to help go faster the slow economic revival by growing hiring and unleash some of the $2 trillion piling up on their equilibrium sheets.

"I want to give confidence you to obtain in the pastime," Obama said.

He itemized new efforts by his management to get better the nation's business communications, use up more to hold up entrepreneurs and foster greater modernism. He vowed to address "a heavy business tax code," and go after "pointless and outdated system."

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Barack Obama calls Saleh, hails political reforms in Yemen

US President Barack Obama has greeting taking sides reorganizations in Yemen in a call with his complement Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had proclaimed not to seek re-election in 2013.

"President Obama called President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen on February 2 to greeting the important reform events that President Saleh had proclaimed previous that day, and to stress that President Saleh now needs to follow-up his pledge with tangible actions," White House said in a declaration.

Obama asked Yemeni security forces to show self-possession and refrain from hostility against demonstrators, who are exercise their right to free association, congregation and speech.

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Egypt chaos: Dozens of reporters beaten, arrested

Threatening gangs backing President Hosni Mubarak attacked the media and human rights activists Thursday in an ugly twist in Egypt's crisis as government opponents pressed supporters out of Cairo's main square in a second day of road battles. Organizers called for activists trying to topple the regime to fill every four-sided figure in the huge assets on Friday.

The new vice president widely careful the first successor Mubarak has ever designated fueled anti-foreign feeling by going on state TV and blaming outsiders for fomenting strife. The government has accuse media outlets of being concerned to protesters who want the president to relinquish now rather than hand out out his term, as he has vowed to do.

The Obama administration, for now, was in talks with top Egyptian officials in relation to the prospect of Mubarak directly away resigning and the formation of an intervening government that could organize the country for free and fair elections later this year, U.S. officials said Thursday. The talks were first account by The New York Times.

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Obama, McCain break ice in Oval Office meeting

At the present, additional than two years after incompatible as campaign rivals, President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are putting their association on defrost and searching for some widespread ground.

Obama and McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, met privately for half an hour Wednesday daylight in the Oval Office, the result of outreach between the two subsequent to the Arizona shooting spree that badly wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last month.

"We talked about a wide multiplicity of issues," McCain said later. "Noticeably we talked about migration, we talk about Egypt, and we talked about fiscal issue."

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AP sources: House GOP readies restrictions on EPA

In a sharp confront to the Obama direction, House Republicans intend to reveal legislation Wednesday to ban the Environmental guard Agency from adaptable conservatory gases under the Clean Air Act and expect to go forward the bill quickly, officials disclose Tuesday night.

The bureaucrats said the bill would invalidate all of the steps the EPA has taken to date on the issue, counting a threshold finding that greenhouse gases comprise a danger to the public health and welfare. In adding up, it seeks to strip the agency of its right to use the law in any outlook attempts to crack down on the emission from factories, utilities and other at a stop sources.

Several scientists say that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollution make a payment to global warming, and attempts at regulating them is a most important priority for President Barack Obama as well as environmentalists. Detractors argue the proof is thin and that new rules will drive up the cost of business and cause the loss of jobs.

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WH: Ambassador Huntsman to leave China post

U.S. diplomat to China Jon Huntsman, a Republican with possible presidential ambitions, submit a letter of acceptance to the White House on Monday proclaimed he intends to leave the post April 30, a elder administration official said.

Huntsman, a preceding governor of Utah, was appointed ambassador by President Barack Obama in 2009. Huntsman's plans have generated substantial attention in political circles because his distant policy skill could stand out in a packed GOP field.

Past Monday, White House lecturer Robert Gibbs said Huntsman had learned officials of his desire to end his diplomatic assignment. Bar Gibbs said the White House had no indication that Huntsman would seek to run next to the president.

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Fla. judge strikes down Obama health care overhaul

A federal judge affirmed the Obama administration's health care renovate unauthorized Monday, siding with 26 states that argued people cannot be necessary to buy health indemnity.

Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new law violates people's rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties. He went a step more than a previous ruling against the law, declaring the whole thing unauthorized if the insurance obligation does not hold up.

Attorneys for the U.S. government had argued that the states did not have standing to brave the law and that the case should be dismiss.

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As Arabs protest, Obama administration offers assertive support

The Obama management is openly behind the anti-government demonstrations shaking the Arab Middle East, a posture that is far less tempered than the one the president has taken during past disturbances in the region.

As demonstration in Tunis, Cairo and Beirut have unfolded in current days, President Obama and his senior representatives to the province have thrown U.S. carry clearly in the rear the protesters, speaking daily in errand of free language and get-together even when the protests target longtime U.S. allies such as Egypt.

Escritoire of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that "the Egyptian government has an important chance . . . to take action to the lawful needs and interests of the Egyptian people." She urged "the Egyptian organization not to stop passive protests or block communications, as well as on social media sites."

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