NEW DELHI INDIA: President Barack Obama has called India’s prime minister to express regret over the loss of lives in the weekend bombing of a cafe in western India that killed 11 people.

A government press release says Obama phoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh early Thursday and condemned the attack.

Authorities say another victim died Wednesday, raising the death toll to 11.

No one has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s bombing in Pune, southeast of India’s financial hub Mumbai. Suspicions, however, quickly fell on Pakistan-linked militant groups blamed for past attacks, including the 2008 massacre of 166 people in Mumbai.

Investigators say the bomb contained RDX explosives, ammonium nitrate and petroleum hydrocarbon oil.

US President Barack Obama will convene a meeting of his Afghan war cabinet today to assess the first major offensive of his troop surge strategy against the Taliban.
The meeting in the secure White House Situation Room also comes after the reported capture by US and Pakistan spies of the Taliban’s top military commander, in what was apparently a huge blow to the Afghan insurgency. Obama will meet top officials including Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command. War commander General Stanley McChrystal and US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry were due to take part in the meeting by video conference, the White House said. US and other media reported on Tuesday that Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was arrested in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi several days ago. The White House refused to confirm the arrest, which would mark a watershed in the US campaign against the Taliban. US, NATO and Afghan troops meanwhile pressed on with a major assault against the Taliban bastion of Marjah in southern Afghanistan, key to Washington’s new strategy for turning around the troubled war.

Barack Obama Does Not Rule out 9/11 Trial in New York, US President Barack Obama said on Sunday he did not rule out trying September 11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City despite local opposition, but noted tough logistical questions involved.
“I have not ruled it out, but I think it is important for us to take into account the practical logistical issues involved,” Obama said in an interview.
“If you have got a city that is saying no, and a police department that is saying no, and a mayor that is saying no, that makes it difficult,” Obama said. But he added, “We have not ruled out anything.”

Barack Obama Rejects NASA’s Moon Mission, US President Barack Obama’s proposed budget gives NASA a 6 billion U.S. dollar 5-year boost but aborts early attempts to return to the moon and turns over space transportation to commercial companies.
The space agency’s budget would grow to 19 billion US dollars in 2011 under the proposed budget, with an emphasis on science and less spent on space exploration. But the plan ends the Constellation program, initially intended to return US astronauts to the moon by 2020. The new budget, which is subject to change by Congress, also extends operations at the International Space Station past its planned retirement date of 2016, suggesting such potential additions as inflatable space habitats. Obama’s proposal hands over more space operations to the commercial sector, saying it will create thousands of new jobs and hold costs down. The budget also proposes a re-vamp of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where staff have feared major cutbacks, as part of making NASA more efficient.

President Barack Obama vowed to make job creation his top priority in 2010, in a bid to restore America’s faith in his change crusade after a first year in office soured by economic misery.
In his debut State of the Union address, Obama vowed to battle a host of “big and difficult” challenges which dragged down his administration and demanded unity from Congress to pull the United States out of the mire.
“I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight. Despite our hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit,” We don?t allow fear or division to break our spirit.”
Obama vowed that he would not “walk away” from his stalled effort to pass comprehensive health care reform and said his administration’s early actions last year had staved off a repeat of the 1930s Great Depression.
The president also promised to redirect 30 billion dollars from a Wall Street bailout fund to help small businesses still reeling from the crisis.
Obama turned towards foreign policy only towards the end of an address dominated by economic challenges, warning Iran would face “growing consequences” if it did not halt its nuclear programme. He said that North Korea was growing ever more isolated as a result of its pursuit of nuclear arms. He said, “In Afghanistan, we are increasing our troops and training Afghan Security Forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011, and our troops can begin to come home. We will reward good governance, reduce corruption, and support the rights of all Afghans – men and women alike. We are joined by allies and partners who have increased their own commitment, and who will come together tomorrow in London to reaffirm our common purpose. There will be difficult days ahead. But I am confident we will succeed.”
“As we take the fight to al Qaeda, we are responsibly leaving Iraq to its people. As a candidate, I promised that I would end this war, and that is what I am doing as President. We will have all of our combat troops out of Iraq by the end of this August. We will support the Iraqi government as they hold elections, and continue to partner with the Iraqi people to promote regional peace and prosperity. But make no mistake: this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home,” Obama said.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview aired on Tuesday that Al Qaeda has been weakened by the U.S. actions against terrorism, and pointed to a taped message purported to be by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about the failed Christmas Day bomb plot as evidence.

“Al Qaeda itself is greatly weakened from where it was back in 2000. Bin Laden sending out a tape trying to take credit for a Nigerian student who engaged in a failed bombing attempt is an indication of how weakened he is because this is not something necessarily directed by him,” Obama told ABC’s Good Morning America.

WILMINGTON, Del: Jean Biden, who raised her son Vice President Joe Biden to believe in what he called “America’s creed … everyone is your equal,” died Friday after falling ill in recent days. She was 92.

In a statement, the vice president said she died in Wilmington surrounded by her family and loved ones. She had suffered a broken hip in a fall in March 2009.

“Together with my father, her husband of 61 years who passed away in 2002, we learned the dignity of hard work and that you are defined by your sense of honor,” he said in the statement. “Her strength, which was immeasurable, will live on in all of us.”

Joe Biden Jr. was first elected to the Senate in 1972, shortly before his 30th birthday. His mother helped out by organizing coffee klatches — part of a family effort that also included Biden’s father, sister and brothers.”Those of you who have met my mom, you know she’s fairly politically astute, and she still runs the show,” the vice president quipped shortly after she fell last year.

“You think I’m joking? I’m not,” he said.

The former Catherine Eugenia Finnegan was born July 7, 1917, in Scranton, Pa. In 1941, she married businessman Joseph Biden Sr., with whom she had four children. The couple moved from Scranton to Claymont, Del., in 1953, when their eldest son, Joe, was 10 years old.According to Biden’s 2007 autobiography, “Promises to Keep,” his mother had some reservations about whether he should risk a promising career as a young lawyer to enter politics.

“You’re not going to run for Senate and ruin your reputation, are you?” he recalled his mother asking.

“And once Mom was reassured that my future was safe, win or lose, she would do anything,” Biden wrote.

Biden was elected vice president as Barack Obama’s running mate. In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, he paid tribute to his mother, who was in the audience.”My mother’s creed is the American creed: No one is better than you,” he said. “Everyone is your equal, and everyone is equal to you. My parents taught us to live our faith, and to treasure our families. We learned the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough.”

Biden said he also learned honor and loyalty from his mother.

“When I got knocked down by guys bigger than me, and this is the God’s truth, she sent me back out the street and told me, ‘Bloody their nose so you can walk down the street the next day.’ And that’s what I did.”

Raised in a family with a strong Irish Catholic tradition, Jean Biden leaned on her faith in comforting her eldest son after his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in December 1972, the month after he was elected to the Senate. His two sons were seriously injured.

“After the accident, she told me, ‘Joey, God sends no cross that you cannot bear,’” Biden recalled.

In his autobiography, Joe Biden recalled being mocked by a seventh-grade nun for his stuttering, an incident that sent his mother to his school in a fury, her children in tow.

“If you ever speak to my son like that again, I’ll come back and rip that bonnet off your head. Do you understand me?” she told the nun.Joe Biden also recalled how when his mother couldn’t find a pair of cufflinks for him to wear to an eighth-grade dance, she fashioned a pair from nuts and bolts, which left him mortified.”Now look, Joey, if anybody says anything to you about these nuts and bolts, you just look them right in the eye and say ‘Don’t you have a pair of these?’” she told him.

Jean Biden is survived by the vice president, daughter Valerie Biden Owens of Kennett Square, Pa., and sons James Brian Biden of Merion Station, Pa., and Francis W. Biden of Florida. She had 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Details of services will be released in coming days, the vice president’s office said.

Barack Obama Vows To Defeat Al-Qaeda, An angry President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned “potentially disastrous” US intelligence failures over a Christmas Day airliner attack were deeper than first thought, and demanded immediate action.
“It is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged,” Obama said in a terse televised statement after meeting US spy chiefs and top national security aides at the White House. “That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.” Obama said two probes into the botched plot to blow up a Northwest plane showed US intelligence missed other “red flags” as well as the already revealed fact that the top suspect was an extremist who had traveled to Yemen.
He said US intelligence knew that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula wanted to strike not only US targets in Yemen but in the United States itself. “The bottom line is this — the US Government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots,” Obama said. “In other words, this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had. “When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way,” Obama said, after meeting top spy chiefs and government agency heads.
“It’s my responsibility to find out why, and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future,” Obama said.
Obama also said he was suspending the transfer of Guantanamo detainees from Yemen. The Christmas attack has raised concerns about Yemen, because the Nigerian man has claimed to have been acting on instructions from al-Qaida operatives in that country. Nearly half of the 198 detainees held at Guantanamo are from Yemen. But Obama reiterated his vow to eventually close the prison camp in Cuba. As for the prison for terror suspects in Cuba, he said, “Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison,” Obama said. Guantanamo, he said, “was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaida” operating in Yemen.

WASHINGTON: What can Washington do to face down a growing threat posed to US national security by al-Qaeda’s affiliates in Yemen? After a failed bomb attack on a US airliner last week, this question is soaring up the national security agenda.

Barack Obama, the president, has pledged to use “every element” of US national power to hunt down those who threaten America’s safety. While the Yemeni affiliate of al-Qaeda – known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) – risks becoming a significant threat to western security, Washington’s policy options are far from simple.

The risk posed by al-Qaeda in Yemen has long been of concern to western intelligence services. In 2000 Yemeni suicide bombers killed 17 people when they struck the USS Cole. The US waged a largely successful counter-terrorism campaign over the next three years, using unmanned drones to kill key operatives. But in the past three years AQAP has been thriving again in eastern Yemen, amid the ravages of its civil war.

Today western intelligence chiefs believe the risk posed by Yemeni jihadism has become especially serious. About 100 Yemenis have been held in the Guantánamo Bay detention centre since 2002. Yemen’s foreign minister said last year that the country hosted 1,000 al-Qaeda militants. These jihadists have claimed responsibility for a range of attacks, notably the attempted assassination of Prince Mohammed bin Naif, the Saudi deputy interior minister, in August.

As Mr Obama examines his options, one possibility can be ruled out: there will be no US invasion of Yemen to echo those in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Most political strategists believe that US public opinion would not tolerate such a move. But Richard Fontaine, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think-tank in Washington, also believes it is unnecessary.

“After 9/11, the US had to invade Afghanistan because it faced a Taliban government that was totally hostile to America and with whom no deals could be done,” he says. “In Yemen you have a weak government led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh with an array of problems. But you do have the possibility of partnering that government to face down al-Qaeda militants.”

Boosting such a partnership is certain to be a key goal for the US. Washington already gives security and intelligence support to Mr Saleh’s government – and may have provided such help for two air strikes conducted by Yemeni forces on December 17 and 24.

However, such cooperation might only go so far, amid signs that Mr Saleh’s government is not as determined to take on al-Qaeda as Washington would like. “There’s a problem of will and a problem of capacity,” says Mr Fontaine.

The next few weeks are almost certain to see European Union governments pressing the US to take a different tack: focusing on trying to boost the economic and political conditions in Yemen in order to ensure that it does not become a breeding ground for jihadism.

European diplomats believe that no matter what is achieved on the security front in the short-term, Yemen’s long-term economic problems guarantee that it could become a failed state over time. Its petroleum output will fall to zero by 2017 and its water resources are running dry, according to analysts. Meanwhile, Yemen’s population will double by 2035.

Barack Obama Hails ‘Historic’ Passage of Senate Health Bill, With the US Senate passing on Thursday its version of legislation to overhaul the US healthcare system, President Barack Obama said supporters were “incredibly close” to enacting the reform package into law.
“We are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform,” Obama told reporters. “With today’s vote, we are now incredibly close to making health insurance reform a reality in this country.”
On a party-line 60-39 vote, Senate Democrats supported the most dramatic shifts in health policy in four decades. The early-morning Christmas Eve vote followed months of political wrangling that consumed the US Congress and put a dent in Obama’s public approval ratings.
The vote clears the way for tough negotiations in January with the House of Representatives, which approved its own version on November 7 that features different approaches on taxes, abortion and a proposed new government-run insurance program.
“With passage of reform bills in both the House and the Senate we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform,” Obama said at the White House after the vote. “Our challenge then is to finish the job,” he said. “For the sake of our citizens, our economy, and our future, let’s make 2010 the year we finally reform health care in the United States of America.”
Once House-Senate negotiators agree on a single bill, each chamber must approve it again before sending it to Obama to sign into law. Republicans promised to continue the battle.