Obama promises

Obama pledges to put 'economy into overdrive' by 2012

President Barack Obama has vowed to put the economy "into overdrive" by 2012, as he announced the head of a new economic advisory panel.

At a General Electric (GE) plant in New York, Mr Obama said he had named the company's head, Jeffery Immelt, to lead a council on jobs and competitiveness.

Mr Obama also called on China to open to "two-way trade" with US companies.

His remarks came amid what commentators describe as a White House effort to court the US business community.
Grim voters

"Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root, and folks can find good jobs," Mr Obama told General Electric workers.

Despite pushing through a $787bn (£492bn) economic stimulus package and other measures, Mr Obama has been criticised for his handling of the US economy, which has seen sluggish job growth in the two years since he took office during the worst economic downturn in decades.

Mr Obama's success or failure in his 2012 re-election bid will depend in part on the performance of the economy and on whether voters see steady job creation, analysts say.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released on Friday suggested just 35% of Americans believe the economy has improved during Mr Obama's presidency.

In one of several moves aimed at winning back corporate support, Mr Obama this week aimed at reducing the regulatory burden on US businesses.

Mr Obama on Friday emphasised the need to build the US export economy, particularly in terms of trade with China, with whom the US has a roughly $262.3 billion (£164 billion) trade deficit.

Shifting the US-China trade relationship toward a more equitable balance was a major issue in White House talks this week between Mr Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"We're going to build stuff, and invent stuff," Mr Obama said on Friday. Regarding China, he said: "That's where the customers are. It's that simple."

Chinese President Hu Jintao was spending the final day of his US state visit in Chicago, where business executives were set to sign 60 deals to highlight relations between the countries.

Latest Gadgets 2011

Developer James Walkerdine said the device helps children work out who is contacting them

Researchers launch mobile device 'to spot paedophiles'

A mobile phone application which claims to identify adults posing as children is to be released.

The team behind Child Defence says the app can analyse language to generate an age profile, identifying potential paedophiles.

Isis Forensics developed the tool after parental concerns over children accessing sites on their mobiles.

But child protection experts warned against such technology lulling people into thinking they are safe.

Child Defence project leader James Walkerdine, based at Lancaster University, said: "This software improves children's chances of working out that something isn't right.

"Parents told us they would much prefer to see software solutions that empowered and educated their children to help them protect themselves."

Child campaigning charity NSPCC hopes the application will encourage children to report the crime - but warned of complacency.

Chris Cloke, head of child protection said: "It can lull us into thinking that the child is safe and therefore we can move onto something else.

"I would certainly say that measures of this sort can be helpful but they need to be seen as one of the wider armoury we have for tackling child sexual abuse."

This new advance comes just days after Barnardo's launched a stark warning to the government over the growing threat of child exploitation, when it released its latest figures on child exploitation.

In its report, Puppet on a String, the charity calls for the Secretary of State for Education to appoint a minister to take forward a national action plan against this crime against children.

Figures suggest about 1,500 children were groomed on the net last year.

British film world

More than £1 billion was spent making films in the UK during 2010, data released by the UK Film Council shows.

A record amount of £1.15 billion was spent making 119 films last year - an 8% rise on 2009's £1.07 billion spend.

International film-makers spent more money than ever in the UK last year, pouring almost £929 million into the production of 28 films.

The figures "highlight the importance of a strong film sector", said the UK Film Council's Tim Cagney.

Mr Cagney, managing director of the agency which is to close, said they underlined "the vital contribution that film makes to Britain's cultural and economic fabric".

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The War Horse, Sherlock Holmes 2 and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy were among the many films made in the UK last year.

Yet the number of indigenous or domestic productions was down in 2010, with the 72 films made presenting an 11% fall on the 83 produced in 2009.

According to Mr Cagney, this was evidence of "how difficult it is to raise finance for making independent British films".

Audiences spent more than £1 billion at the UK and Ireland box office in 2010, where Toy Story 3 was the highest grossing title.

The UK Film Council's statistics cover indigenous productions, UK co-productions and "inward investment" productions with budgets of £500,000 and above.

Films in the data include those in the Harry Potter series, which were made mainly or significantly in the UK with overseas finance.

Last July it was announced the UK Film Council, set up in 2000, would close and that its functions would be delegated to other bodies.

From April the British Film Institute (BFI) will be responsible for distributing lottery money to film-makers based in the UK.

George W. Bush on Stories

 Born: 6 July 1946
Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
 Best Known As: President of the United States, 2001-2009

George W. Bush served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001-2009. Bush is the son of former U.S. president George Bush, who served from 1989-93. (The terms of father and son were separated by the two terms of Bill Clinton.) George W. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968. After serving as a pilot in the Texas National Guard, he attended Harvard Business School and then worked in the oil and gas industries until 1986, when he got involved in his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign. He returned to Texas and was elected governor there in 1994 and again in 1998. Bush won the Republican nomination for president in August of 2000, choosing Dick Cheney as his running mate. In the November general election they ran against Democratic candidate Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman. The election is now remembered for the extremely close and controversial vote in Florida; after a post-election delay of a month while votes were recounted and lawsuits were filed on both sides, Gore conceded the election to Bush on 13 December 2000. Bush led in electoral votes 271 to 267, while receiving fewer popular votes nationwide than Gore: the final official tally was 50,158,094 votes for Gore to 49,820,518 votes for Bush. Bush and Cheney won re-election in 2004 against a Democratic ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards. Bush's public approval ratings plummeted during his second term, thanks to the ongoing war in Iraq, his administration's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and an economic crash in 2008. Bush was succeeded on 20 January 2009 by a Democratic president, Barack Obama.

Bush married his wife Laura Bush (formerly Laura Welch) in 1977; they have twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, born in 1981... In the fall of 2000 Barbara entered Yale, Jenna the University of Texas at Austin; both graduated from their respective schools in 2004... George W. Bush has an undergraduate degree from Yale (1968) and an MBA from Harvard (1975)... In November 2000, days before the presidential election, Bush admitted that in 1976 he was arrested for drunk driving in Maine, an arrest he had previously hidden... He has said that he stopped drinking alcohol entirely in 1986... Bush is the fourth man to win the presidency while losing the popular vote... Bush fainted briefly on 13 January 2002 after a pretzel stuck in his throat while he was watching football on TV; Bush recovered moments later and the incident was not considered serious.

Saddam Hussein's stories

The son of one of Saddam Hussein's generals has been secretly living in Britain as a failed asylum seeker using forged papers.

Abas Fazil also made false claims for benefits at the expense of the British taxpayers when he could not find a job a court was told.

Fazil, 28, fled Iraq before the invasion because he did not want to become a soldier like his father, who is believed to have been a general in Saddam's army.

He arrived in the UK hidden in the back of a lorry in 2002, and claimed political asylum.

Saddam

Guarded: The late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was protected by a large army

But his appeals were rejected meaning he had no right to seek benefits or take up employment, Angela Wrottesley, prosecuting for the Department for Work and Pensions told Doncaster Crown Court.

Last November he showed up at a recruitment agency in the town looking for work, and presented a Home Office Leave to Remain letter in his name, which checks showed was fraudulent.

When he returned four days later officers were waiting for him, he was arrested, and his home in Regent Street, Balby, Doncaster, was searched.

A UK passport in the name of Craig Birtles, but with Fazil's photo inside, was found and he later confessed he had paid an associate £1,000 for the passport in 2005 so he could visit his sister in Iraq.

He also admitted buying the fake Home Office document for £100. While not working Fazil had falsely claimed more than £3,500 in Jobseeker's Allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit.

He pleaded guilty to making false representations to obtain benefits and two offences of identity fraud.

David Taylor, defending, said Fazil was "a victim of the world in which we live".

"He didn't want to remain in Iraq under the Saddam regime because they tried to force him to join the army. Because his father was a general in Saddam's army he knew what they did," he said.

His grandmother and sister gave him gold to flee the country to avoid military service and he was smuggled from Turkey in a truck to the UK where the only word he knew was 'asylum'.

Mr Taylor said Fazil had worked consistently but, when his legal opportunities to seek asylum had expired, he relied on a friend to provide him with documents.

"He has been a fool and he knows the court will impose a custodial sentence," Mr Taylor added.

Fazil, who has already been served with a deportation notice, was jailed for nine months.

Saddam Hussein

       Saddam Hussein was dictator of Iraq from 1979 until 2003, when his regime was overthrown by a United States-led invasion. Hussein had joined the revolutionary Baath party while he was a university student. He launched his political career in 1958 by assassinating a supporter of Iraqi ruler Abdul-Karim Qassim. Saddam rose in the ranks after a Baath coup, and by 1979 he was Iraq's president and de facto dictator. He led Iraq through a decade-long war with Iran, and in August of 1990 his forces invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait. A U.S.-led alliance organized by George Bush  (the elder) ran Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in the Gulf War, which ended in February of 1991 with Saddam still in power. Hussein came under renewed pressure in 2002 from George W. Bush, the son of the first President Bush. Hussein's regime was overthrown by an invasion of U.S. and British forces in March of 2003. Hussein disappeared, but U.S. forces captured him on 13 December 2003 after finding him hiding in a small underground pit on a farm near the town of Tikrit. Late in 2005 he went on trial in Iraq for the 1982 deaths of over 140 men in the town of Dujail. On 5 November 2006 he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was upheld after appeal, and Hussein was executed by hanging in Baghdad on the morning of 30 December 2006.

Extra credit: Before the 1991 Gulf War, Hussein threatened that if international forces led by the United States attacked Iraq, it would be "the mother of all wars," giving rise to a multi-purpose catchphrase: "the mother of all (fill in the blank)"... The U.S. effort in the Gulf War was directed by the elder George Bush and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell; Powell later became Secretary of State under Bush's son George W. Bush... Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were killed by U.S forces in the northern town of Mosul in July of 2003... Saddam Hussein was no relation to King Hussein, the late ruler of Jordan.

Barack Obama Presidential Proclamation: Thanksgiving Day

     A beloved American tradition, Thanksgiving Day offers us the opportunity to focus our thoughts on the grace that has been extended to our people and our country.  This spirit brought together the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe -- who had been living and thriving around Plymouth, Massachusetts for thousands of years -- in an autumn harvest feast centuries ago.  This Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on the compassion and contributions of Native Americans, whose skill in agriculture helped the early colonists survive, and whose rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage.  We also pause our normal pursuits on this day and join in a spirit of fellowship and gratitude for the year's bounties and blessings.

      Thanksgiving Day is a time each year, dating back to our founding, when we lay aside the troubles and disagreements of the day and bow our heads in humble recognition of the providence bestowed upon our Nation.  Amidst the uncertainty of a fledgling experiment in democracy, President George Washington declared the first Thanksgiving in America, recounting the blessings of tranquility, union, and plenty that shined upon our young country.  In the dark days of the Civil War when the fate of our Union was in doubt, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day, calling for "the Almighty hand" to heal and restore our Nation.

      In confronting the challenges of our day, we must draw strength from the resolve of previous generations who faced their own struggles and take comfort in knowing a brighter day has always dawned on our great land.  As we stand at the close of one year and look to the promise of the next, we lift up our hearts in gratitude to God for our many blessings, for one another, and for our Nation.  This Thanksgiving Day, we remember that the freedoms and security we enjoy as Americans are protected by the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.  These patriots are willing to lay down their lives in our defense, and they and their families deserve our profound gratitude for their service and sacrifice.

      This harvest season, we are also reminded of those experiencing the pangs of hunger or the hardship of economic insecurity.  Let us return the kindness and generosity we have seen throughout the year by helping our fellow citizens weather the storms of our day.

      As Americans gather for the time-honored Thanksgiving Day meal, let us rejoice in the abundance that graces our tables, in the simple gifts that mark our days, in the loved ones who enrich our lives, and in the gifts of a gracious God.  Let us recall that our forebears met their challenges with hope and an unfailing spirit, and let us resolve to do the same.

      NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 25, 2010, as a National Day of Thanksgiving.  I encourage all the people of the United States to come together -- whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place of fellowship for friends and neighbors -- to give thanks for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own, and to share our bounty with others.

      IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-third day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fifth.