Obama, who had made the goal of pursue dialogue with Iran a cornerstone of his administration's foreign policy at the beginning of his presidency, said he had been successful in getting the international community to isolate Tehran.

"As we've seen, the Iranian government has been more concerned about preventing their people from exercising their democratic and human rights than trying to solve this problem diplomatically," Obama said in an interview on Fox News Channel's Report with Bret Baier.
"That's why we're going to go after aggressive sanctions. We haven't taken any options off the table. We are going to keep on pushing," Obama said.

Obama said prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon was one of his administration's highest priorities.

U.S. officials said on Tuesday the pace of Iran's nuclear weapons development appears to have slow, buying time for a new round of sanctions now and possibly more sweeping measures later.

US first lady Michelle Obama's favorite city-based designer Maria Pinto leaving out of business as sales have waned in a bad economy.

Pinto, whose clientele also includes talk show host Oprah Winfrey, is closing her store Lola Black LLC. In a five-day sale starting here next week, her collection of daywear, eveningwear and accessories would be liquidated at 50-70 % off.

Her designs were carried by major stores like Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys and Takashimaya in New York, with high-end boutiques across the country, reported Chicago Tribune.
But the designer hit a rough patch after sales to retailers started declining. She decided to close her shop and finish wholesale operations in January this year.

Michelle, who has turned into an icon with her beautiful taste in fashion, had worn Maria Pinto designs to several key events during her husband US President Barack Obama's political career, including the night she spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Statistics show that one in three American kids is fat or overweight. These numbers were part of the motivation last month for First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to fight childhood obesity.

During remarks on March 1, the First Lady said that Americans must “move to rally this country around a single, ambitious goal - and that is to solve the trouble of childhood obesity in a generation so that kids born today reach adulthood at a healthy weight.”

In announcing the initiative, Obama stated that a healthy lifestyle, including achieving and maintaining a healthy weight, doesn’t need major life alterations, but rather “small changes that add up.”

Under this equation - and based on the formula that one pound lost equals about 3,500 calories burned - by cutting down or burning off, say, an additional 100 calories each day, a person could lose a pound every 35 days - more than 10 pounds in a year.

US President Barack Obama has warned of a second disaster in Haiti, saying people should be under no illusion that the disaster there is over.

Mr Obama said the situation in Haiti remained "dire" nearly two months after the earthquake struck.

He was speaking after talks with Haitian President Rene Preval in Washington.

Mr Obama told Mr Preval that the US would continue to assist Haiti in its recovery and reconstruction efforts.

Mr Obama said there remained a desperate need for humanitarian help, particularly as seasonal rains could threaten the more than a million Haitians left homeless by the quake on 12 January.

"The challenge now is to stop a second disaster, and that is why at this very moment, thousands of Americans, both civilian and military, remain on the scene at the invitation of the Haitian government," Mr Obama said.

Michelle Obama has recall the time when her girlfriends ditched her in the presidential box on Inauguration Day to get ready for the time-squeezed evening ball.

The US First Lady revealed she got only an hour to clean up for the ball on the chilly day of her president husband's historic inauguration.

"I remember the inaugural procession and how the President and I stood and we waved until every last band walked by," the New York Post quoted her as saying.

"Then we only had less than an hour-ladies, if you can trust that-all of my friends left us in the stands, by the way," she continued.

"'See ya, good luck.' I was like, 'Yeah, thanks.' 'We have to get ready for the ball.' 'Like, yeah, so do I.'

"So at the time I wasn't actually focused on what I was wearing that evening-I was really just trying to stay warm," she added.

President Obama will spell out his vision for the future of American astronauts in space at a conference that the administration is sheduling for Florida next month.

That pleases Florida lawmakers, who have criticize the administration’s desire to eliminate NASA’s program to send astronauts back to the Moon.

“The president’s upcoming space meeting here in Florida provides a chance for meaningful progress,” said Representative Suzanne M. Kosmas, whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center. She requested a conference when she and others in the state Congressional delegation met last month with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and John P. Holdren, Mr. Obama’s science adviser.

The conference will be held April 15. A White House spokesman said Monday that other information, including the agenda, the location and who would be attending, were not yet available.

NASA spent five years and $9 billion on the Constellation moon program. The president’s 2011 budget could cancel all of it. The budget also seeks to nurture the commercial space industry by turning to private companies for transportation to the International Space Station and and to invest in new technologies to make outlook exploration of the solar system easier and cheaper. The budget request would raise NASA’s budget by $300 million, to $19 billion. Mr. Obama, however, has said little publicly about the future of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

First Lady Michelle Obama brings her anti-childhood obesity drive to Mississippi - the country's most heavy state - on Wednesday, when she appears with GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, who has left the door open to a 2012 White House run.

"In Jackson, Mississippi, thanks to the encouragement of the Executive Director of Food Services, Mary Hill, the superintendent now needs elementary school teachers to eat meals with their students," Mrs. Obama said to applause. "And as you can imagine, with teachers sitting at the table - both encouraging kids to eat fruits and vegetables and eating them themselves - fruits and vegetables consumption has gone up there."

"And I'm going to be visiting Jackson on Wednesday, and I am looking forward I'm looking forward to seeing Mary and hearing more about what she's doing. And I'm eager to come to your areas, too," Mrs. Obama said.

Mrs. Obama, Barbour and his wife, Marsha Barbour, will visit two schools to talk about healthy eating and the require for kids to exercise. At the Pecan Park school, Mrs. Obama will tour the walking trail, part of a Mississippi effort to raise physical activity. Mrs. Obama's anti-childhood obesity drive is called "Let's Move;" the Mississippi scheme is called "Let's Go Walkin' Mississippi."

First lady Michelle Obama spent nearly two hours at Brinkley Middle School. Her first stop, a round table discussion in the lunchroom with Governor Haley Barbour, and Mayor Harvey Johnson and school nutritionists, brainstorming on ways to make school lunches better.

Governor Barbour began the meeting addressing Michelle says, "You are a leader and it needs to be done and it's not about party politics it's not about anything except we can have better lives for our children."

The highlight of the visit, a pep rally promoting Lets Move, the first lady's plan to fight childhood obesity, by providing kids better meals and encouraging exercise.

Michelle Obama promised the kids if they did their part, she could get the food and drug administration to put more nutritional facts on food labels, get more grocery stores and farmers markets into the inner city, and give more funding for healthier lunches.

"There are about six point five million kids who can't walk down the street and go to a grocery store because their communities do not have grocery stores. Part of lets move is to eliminate that. Because we can't tell people to buy clean foods if there's no where to buy it, right?" said Obama.

Those in the audience say Michelle Obama inspired them to live a good lifestyle.

The Mexican government says first lady Margarita Zavala meets with Michelle Obama during a visit to the White House.

The President's Office says the two women discuss obesity, diabetes, addictions and the situation of undocumented Mexican minors in the United States. It says they stressed the links between their countries in working on those problems.

Zavala was in Washington on Thursday for a conference on falling demand for drugs. She returned home on Thursday.

President Barack Obama may be struggling to keep support nationwide, but in the predominantly Republican state of South Carolina, he's not doing too badly.

Nearly 48 percent of adults who lived in the Palmetto State approve of Obama's performance as president, a Winthrop University poll found.

That result was a small improvement over the 45 percent of South Carolinians who voted for Obama in November 2008, when Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain carried the state with 54 percent of the tally.

As president, Obama has higher name recognition than Graham or DeMint, which partly contributes to his better showing, Huffmon said.

Nationwide, 51 percent of Americans support of Obama's performance as president and 43 percent disapprove, the Gallup daily tracking poll showed Wednesday.

First lady Michele Obama is much more popular than her husband in South Carolina, where she has family trees.

At a meeting with state governors, Obama spoke about new efforts to get better education for college and for jobs.

Obama plans to make college and career-ready standards in the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Last year the president challenged states to enlarge standards and assessments that could give confidence children to work hard to graduate from high school prepared for college and the workplace.

The president calls for a redesigned Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The act aims to better teacher preparation to get better classroom instruction. The goal is to assist states improve education to successfully prepare students for college and the workplace.

“America’s prosperity has always rested on how well we educate our children - but never more so than today,” said President Barack Obama.

The United States Senate designated to advance a $15 billion jobs-creation measures in which five Republicans joined the majority Democrats giving a major victory to the Obama Administration.

Grateful to the Republicans and Democrats who voted for the bill, the US President Barack Obama in a fast statement on Monday said this is one of many efforts they require to tackle America's economic challenges.

"We will continue to work with Congress on additional job creation measures," he said.

"Jobs remain our top priority, and I look forward to work with members from both parties to get legislation signed, and the American people back to work," Obama said.

President Barack Obama, who is spending billions of dollars to overhaul the U.S. public education system, says there's one sure thing parents can do to assist their kids learn, regardless of financial means: prohibit them from watching television on school nights.

His own daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, Obama told Essence magazine: "The girls don't watch TV during the week. Period."

The first thing they’ll do after school is homework. If they haven't completed by dinnertime, around 6:30 p.m., they pick up where they left off after the meal. And after that, they can study until they hit the sack. Malia's bedtime is 9 p.m.; Sasha's lights go out a half hour earlier, he said.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama also began reading to their daughters when they were babies, and encouraged them to appreciate education.

On Tuesday, President Obama will proclaim plans to break ground on two new nuclear reactors at a Southern Company plant in Burke, Georgia - the first new U.S. nuclear reactors since the incident at Three Mile Island in 1979.

The president will make the statement at the IBEW Local Headquarters in Lanham, Md., where union members can learn application that can be used in the construction of nuclear power plants.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized the Department of Enegery to issue loan guarantees "for projects that avoid, decrease, or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions and employ new or significantly-improved technologies," the White House official said, adding that it has been one of Energy Secretary Stephen Chu’s top priorities to allot $18.5 billion under that authority.

The President has planned tripling loan guarantees for nuclear-power plant construction to more than $54 billion in his FY2011 budget.

Last month the president announces the formation of a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission to review policies for nuclear waste, led by former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and the National Security Adviser to President George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft.

First lady Michelle Obama launches a nationwide campaign last week to fight childhood obesity, part of her effort to teach America's children about improved nutrition and exercise.

Mrs. Obama said the Let's Move campaign will cheer more physical activity for children, healthier food in schools and more accurate food labeling. Some of her plans, such as tax breaks for grocery stores to move into poorly served communities, will require congressional action.

In an interview with ABC News, Mrs. Obama acknowledged her care of burgers and fries, and ice cream and cake, as do most kids. But she said she wants her daughters and the rest of the nation's children to practice improved nutrition and exercise, too.
Mrs. Obama said she tries every day to instill the similar values in her daughters, Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8.

"My kids have to dress up and move. They can't sit in front of the TV," she said. "I have them involved in sports - to compete and to succeed and to run and to sweat. They have to understand."

US President Barack Obama would meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the White House Map Room on 18 February, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has said, informed an official spokesman of the Tibetan government in exile here on Friday.

“He's a spokesman for Tibetan rights. The president looks onward to an engaging and constructive dialogue,” Gibbs has said.

This would be the first meeting between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Obama as the US President obama.

The White House earlier said the problem was discussed when President Obama met the Chinese president in November.

"The President told China's leaders during his trip last year that he could meet with the Dalai Lama, and he intends to do so. The Dalai Lama is an globally respected religious and cultural leader, and the President will meet him in that capacity," Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton had said.

Barrack obama last night hosted a festivity of the music of the civil rights era, describing it as "a movement with a soundtrack".

The president recognized at the start of the evening the debt he owed to those who had risked their lives during the turbulent dismantling of segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, a movement intertwined with music.

"It was music that was not only inspired by the movement, but gave strength in return," Obama said.

At the end of 90 minutes of performance at the White House, he joined the artists on stage. He was pushed to sing a few words of the closing song before, thankfully, allowing himself to be drowned out by those around him, including Smokey Robinson, Jennifer Hudson and Natalie Cole.

Obama's singing might be weaker than his rhetoric but it was better than that of Bob Dylan, who gave the most horrible performance of the night.

Obama said Dylan had interrupted his "never-ending tour" to emerge at the White House. It might have been the near-constant touring, or a cold, or just old age, that added an extra coarseness to his voice. He did not assist by pecking intermittently at his guitar, as if he could not make up his mind whether to play or not.

Obama planned a $100 billion five-year budget for NASA on Monday that includes a $6 billion increase for the space agency. The budget signal a major shift for NASA, with increased spending for new, "transformative technologies" and the cancellation of the Constellation program - the mission former president George W. Bush launched in 2005 to send humans back to the moon by 2020.

NASA's new plan is a good fit for what Ames has already been doing, Braxton said. NASA uses small satellites to test out new technology in space on a small scale, and Braxton said he expects that work to now expand. He added that Ames' supercomputing abilities might be a great part of NASA's renewed focus on climate modeling.

The proposed budget also includes an yearly increase of $80 million for NASA's aeronautics programs. Ames is one of NASA's four primary aeronautics research centers.

NASA has not allocated funds to individual research centers yet, but Braxton said, "we were highly confident that we are going to get more money." He said the center likely would add new works as well. Ames' budget for the 2010 fiscal year total about $690.8 million when it was announced last May, a 1.3 percent raise from the year before.

America has a latest figurehead in its struggle against childhood obesity - Michelle Obama. Last week, the First Lady told mayors from around the US how the current growth in the number of extremely overweight people was so staggering that it now threatens the ¬country's economy, through obesity-induced joblessness; children's education, because their weight issues disrupt studies; and healthcare, which may become besieged by patients with obesity-related ¬diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure..

Acknowledging the time and money pressures faced by many parents who desire their children to eat healthily, Obama admitted: "It wasn't that long ago that I was juggling a full-time job with the round-the-clock role of being a mom. And there were abundance of times when, after a long day at work, when the fridge was empty and everyone was hungry, I just ordered that pizza, because it was easier. Or we went to the drive-through for burgers, because it was quick and cheap. And I wasn't always conscious of how all the calories and fat in some of the processed foods I was buying were adding up. It got to the point where our pediatrician kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You know, you might want to consider making some changes.'"

American Red Cross disaster relief efforts in Haiti received wonderful recognition on Monday during a visit to the Disaster Operations Center (DOC) at Red Cross national headquarters by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

President Obama personally thanked Red Cross employees and volunteers for their part in the work being done to assist the people of Haiti following last week's earthquake. The President expressed his thanks to everyone at the Red Cross for their work, saying to the employees and volunteers present, "tip-top operation, thank you and keep it up; you make us very proud."

Though he spoke straight to those present here in Washington, President Obama's words were for our Red Cross team all across the country. Working jointly, we will get the job done.

Happy Birthday Michelle! The first lady michelle turned 46 Sunday. On Saturday night, President Obama took her to dinner at Restaurant Nora, one of this city's best known particular occasion eateries with a gang of Chicago pals as guests.

Among the guests were Marian Robinson, Michelle's mother; Chicago pal and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Chicago pals Eric and Cheryl Whitaker; and Attorney common Eric Holder and his wife, Sharon Malone.

The Obamas linger at Nora's for four hours. My spy who happened by possibility to be at Nora's told me the presidential party was in the private upstairs room - and the other guests were frisked and wended before being allowed in the restaurant near Dupont Circle.

US President, Barak Obama is said to make a request to Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight the unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to the Associated Press (AP), the Obama administration is makes request on top of a record $708 billion for the US Defence Department next year.

The extra $33 billion in 2010, the AP said would typically go toward the expansion of the war in Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an overhaul of the war plan late last year.

The request for that additional funding will be sent to Congress at the same occasion as the record spending request for next year, making war funding an especially difficult pill for some of Obama’s Democratic allies, it said.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will go to the funeral for Vice President Joe Biden's mother, Jean Biden, the White House has announced. The service will take place tomorrow in Wilmington, Delaware.

Jean Biden, who passed away last week at the age of 92, frequently accompanied her son on the campaign trail.

The vice president said in announcer her death that he and his family "learned the dignity of hard work" from Jean Biden, addition that "her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us."

For all that's going through the political minds of the administration, its critic and its well-wishers, there's perhaps only one thing on the mind of the Obama girls:

The vacation's over. President Barack Obama, wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia returns to the White House on jan 4th, wearing warm riggings against the sub-freezing chill of an unusual cold-spell in the capital.

They left behind the warm influence and shaved ice of Hawaii - the president called his "Snowbama.'' The 20 inches of snow that fell here before Christmas are typically gone, save for the remains of some plowed snowbanks.

For all the political heat the president faces here in Washington, it's value pausing for a moment to see just how the girls have grown, how the president has grayed and how happy the bunch look to be home.

Michelle Obama made an appearance on an episode of Iron Chef America show to endorse healthy eating for children.

The mum-of-two, who became the only US first lady to appear on a actuality television show, stressed on the need to cut down childhood obesity through healthier meals, better school lunches, the use of farmers' markets and do exercises.

Michelle further brought with her a secret ingredient that she later exposed were sweet potatoes from the White House garden.

"And now we're expanding the tours of the garden to any public [state] schoolchildren that come to Washington DC, and we're doing those on a usual basis, and it's just been a wonderful educational addition," she added.