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.