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US begin to mourn the 12 people killed by a gunman at a showing of the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, and a candlelit vigil has been held in Aurora, Colorado.

US President Barack Obama ordered flags flown at half mast.

A man in a gas mask and body armour threw tear gas canisters at a midnight screening, then fired on the crowd, killing 12 and injuring 58.

Suspect James Holmes, 24, was arrested outside the cinema, police said.

He will appear at Arapahoe County District Court, in nearby Centennial, Colorado, on Monday at 09:30 local time.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in Aurora for the vigil.

Candles and flowers were left on the lawn. One letter read: “To all the innocent souls… This is for you. We will never forget. This is Aurora.”

At the Queen of Peace Roman Catholic church, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila told mourners: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. The heart of our Father is stronger than the bullets that killed 12 people.”

In a briefing at the end of the day in Colorado, an emotional Governor John Hickenlooper confirmed that the casualty figure had been revised down one, to 70 people killed or injured.

Thirty people remained in hospital, John Hickenlooper said, with 11 of those in a critical condition.

“It’s an act that defies description. Everyone I’ve talked to all day is filled with an anger that can’t find focus,” he said.

Aurora police chief Dan Oates said the attempt to defuse complex booby-traps, explosive devices and “things that look like mortar rounds” at James Holmes’s home had been abandoned for the night, with federal government experts due to arrive on Saturday.

“I’ve personally never seen anything like what we’ve found in there,” the police chief said.

Suspect James Holmes, 24, was arrested outside the cinema

Suspect James Holmes, 24, was arrested outside the cinema

James Holmes was said to be armed with a rifle, a shotgun and two pistols when he launched his assault. All weapons and ammunition were bought legally within the past few months, Dan Oates said.

Authorities have established no terrorism link, nor any motive, and James Holmes had no criminal record in Aurora.

In New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the suspect had dyed his hair red and told police he was the Joker, Batman‘s infamous nemesis.

Cinemas in that city tightened security at Batman showings following the attack, and the French premiere of the film in Paris was cancelled.

The film’s director, Christopher Nolan, issued a statement expressing his horror.

“The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me,” Christopher Nolan said.

“Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families.”

Despite a strong past academic record, James Holmes was in the process of withdrawing from a doctoral programme in neuroscience at the University of Colorado-Denver.

One neighbor told Agence France-Presse that James Holmes “was always wearing camouflage pants”, adding: “We did not know him well because he talked to nobody. He was always locked up behind his door.”

His family said in a written statement: “Our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved. We ask that the media respect our privacy during this difficult time.”

Police have given no indication of the names of the dead, the last of whose bodies was removed from the cinema at about 17:00 on Friday.

One woman known to have been killed was Jessica Ghawi, also known as Jessica Redfield, an aspiring broadcaster and a regular blogger.

In June, Jessica Ghawi, 24, narrowly missed being caught in a shooting rampage in Toronto, leaving the scene five minutes before a man opened fire at the Eaton Centre shopping mall.

The attack began minutes into the showing at about 00:30 local time, when the gunman apparently entered the cinema through an emergency exit door near the front of the auditorium.

Reports said the attacker had a ticket but left the cinema, pretending to receive a phone call, before returning fully armed.

He wore a bullet-proof vest, tactical body armor and gloves, and was carrying an AR-15 military-style, semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun and two pistols, police said.

He threw two tear gas grenades, then opened fire with a rifle. There was chaos as movie-goers fled, some dressed in costume as heroes and villains.

Ten people were killed at the cinema and two others died later in hospital of their wounds. Among the injured were a four-month-old baby, who was released from hospital after treatment, and a six-year-old child.

One witness said the gunman had been “slowly making his way up the stairs and just firing – picking random people”. At least one person in an adjacent auditorium was injured when a bullet went through the wall, police said.

Another eyewitness, identified only as Pam, said: “He fired a canister into the air. It shot right into the air, then I started to hear the bang, bang, bang of a gun.”

Salina Jordan, 19, told the Denver Post she had seen one girl shot in the cheek, and a girl who appeared to be about nine years old with a gunshot wound to the stomach.

Informed of the massacre at dawn, President Barack Obama spoke briefly to a campaign rally before returning to the White House to address the situation.

“There are going to be other days for politics,” he said.

“This, I think, is a day for prayer and reflection.”

Cinema shooting suspect:

• James Holmes, 24, was a former neuroscience PhD student at University of Colorado-Denver

• Attended high school in San Diego, California, where his parents still live

• He lived in an apartment in north of Aurora, about five miles from the cinema

• Only previous brush with the law was a summons for speeding in October 2011

Colorado gun laws:

• Residents allowed to keep guns in homes, offices and vehicles, but can only carry them in public with a permit

• There are no limits to how many guns can be bought a month, and the state permits sale of automatic weapons

• No waiting period for buying a handgun, both state and federal state law requires criminal background checks

• Since 1998 Columbine massacre, 20 miles from scene of Friday’s shooting, it has become easier to buy guns in US – a national ban on assault weapons sale expired in 2004

 

Republican candidate Mitt Romney has hit back on attacks about his record as CEO of Bain Capital in interviews with US broadcasters.

“I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after 1999,” Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney was responding to reports suggesting he was still listed on Bain’s regulatory filings several years after he said he left the company.

He called on Barack Obama to apologize, after the president said Mitt Romney’s time at Bain should be scrutinized.

The timing is key because between 1999 – when Mitt Romney said he left the company he founded – and 2001, Bain was responsible for closing down American firms and shipping jobs overseas.

Speaking to WJLA-TV a few hours before Mitt Romney’s own media appearances, President Barack Obama said the Republican candidate would have to answer questions about when he stepped down from Bain Capital.

 

Mitt Romney has hit back on attacks about his record as CEO of Bain Capital

Mitt Romney has hit back on attacks about his record as CEO of Bain Capital

“Ultimately, I think Mr. Romney is going to have to answer those questions because if he aspires to being president, one of the things you learn is you’re ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations,” Barack Obama said.

But Mitt Romney said attacks on his record at Bain, an investment company he co-founded in 1984, were “simply beneath the dignity of the presidency of the United States”.

“He [Obama] sure as heck ought to say that he’s sorry for the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team,” he told ABC News on Friday night.

With November’s election now less than four months away, the Obama and Romney campaigns have spent much of the week trading accusations of dishonesty over Mitt Romney’s time at Bain.

In a series of television and web advertisements, the Obama campaign argued that Mitt Romney had “pioneered” outsourcing US jobs during his time at Bain. The Romney campaign responded with their own ad, calling Barack Obama the “outsourcer-in-chief”.

The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission conflicted with Mitt Romney’s statements that he gave up control of the firm in 1999.

The filings list him as “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president” from 1999 to 2001.

That period covers a time when Bain ran companies that fell into bankruptcy, as well as moved jobs abroad – issues highlighted by Obama campaign advertisements.

The Obama campaign has accused Mitt Romney of lying in his official campaign disclosure forms. Barack Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter suggested that Mitt Romney had broken federal law by doing so – an accusation the Romney camp firmly denied.

Mitt Romney and his aides say he left Bain in 1999 to run the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

In a statement, the company said Mitt Romney “remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999”.

Independent website FactCheck.org said on Thursday it had found no evidence that Mitt Romney actively managed Bain after leaving in February 1999, describing him as “a passive, absentee owner”.

The site had previously said that Mitt Romney would open himself up to felony charges if he had actively managed Bain after 1999 but said otherwise on his disclosure form.

 

Rumors of Condoleezza Rice becoming Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate has increased significantly after internet pioneer Matt Drudge reported that she is “near the top” of his shortlist.

Mitt Romney could name his running mate as early as next week, significantly before the traditional time of just before the party convention in late August.

He is widely expected to name a safe, unexciting figure in order to keep the focus of the election on President Barack Obama’s record.

Condoleezza Rice, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser for four years and then his Secretary of State, would be a stunning choice and fly in the face of almost everything Mitt Romney himself and his advisers have indicated they want in a running mate.

Matt Drudge used his Drudge Report website to tease readers with an “exclusive” story: “a surprise name is now near the top of the list: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice!”

He added: “It was Condi who received two standing ovations at Romney’s Utah retreat a few weeks ago, and everyone left with her name on their lips.”

The Stanford University professor has never run for office or faced anything like the intense personal scrutiny vice-presidential candidates have to go through. She has no domestic policy experience and has said he favors abortion rights – a position that would make her anathema to conservatives and some independent voters.

Rumors of Condoleezza Rice becoming Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate has increased significantly after internet pioneer Matt Drudge reported that she is “near the top” of his shortlist

Rumors of Condoleezza Rice becoming Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate has increased significantly after internet pioneer Matt Drudge reported that she is “near the top” of his shortlist

She is very closely associated with George W. Bush and the unpopular Iraq war and has no executive experience. After the 2008 election, she hinted strongly that she voted for Barack Obama rather than Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee.

Aged 57, Condoleezza Rice has never married and is seen as something of an introvert. She has repeatedly made clear over the years that she does not believe she is cut out for the rigors of a political campaign.

The floating of her name could well be a ploy to shift the subject of political conversation away from Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, which is currently taking a hammering, and to appeal to women voters, who tend to lean Democratic. As a black woman, she would also have some appeal to minority voters and independents.

Presidential candidates often indicate they are considering unusual choices and almost always indicate that a woman or a minority is under consideration, in large part to placate different party and voting constituencies.

But Mitt Romney has strongly indicated he will go for a middle-aged white man with executive experience or a Washington track record that goes beyond foreign policy.

His advisers are determined to avoid repeating what they see as the mistake John McCain made in 2008 when he gambled on an inexperienced female – Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska – as his running mate.

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, are considered the favorites.

Also very much in the running are Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, while Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida are much more likely picks than Condoleezza Rice.

Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico probably have a stronger chance than Ms Rice. Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia are also frequently mentioned.

Senior Romney foreign policy advisers like John Bolton, George W. Bush’s hardline ambassador to the UN, are highly skeptical about Ms Rice’s abilities. The memoirs of Vice President Dick Cheney, who holds a fundraiser in Wyoming for Romney this week, and Donald Rumsfeld, depict her unfavourably.

Condoleezza Rice spoke to Mitt Romney donors at the Utah retreat last month and was well received. She later told CBS News: “I talked about the need for American leadership; I talked about the importance of the United States to a more peaceful world, a world that has been quite turbulent in recent years and needs a strong American anchor.

“But I also talked about the essence of America, and perhaps that’s what people resonated with.”

In the same interview she dampened speculation that she might be Mitt Romney’s running mate: “I didn’t run for student council president. I don’t see myself in any way in elective office.”

Condoleezza Rice added: “I’m saying there is no way I will do this, because it’s really not me, I know my strengths. Governor Romney needs to find someone who wants to run with him. There are many people who will do it very, very well, and I’ll support the ticket.”

The news came as Barack Obama apologized for not inspiring the public enough as president, telling CBS This Morning he regretted “thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right”.

 

Drudge Report: ROMNEY NARROWS VP CHOICES; CONDI EMERGES AS FRONTRUNNER

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George Obama, US President Barack Obama’s half-brother, is making his film debut in a documentary where he talks about his non-existent relationship with his relative who is the most powerful man in the world.

George Obama, 30, lives in Nairobi, Kenya and first came into the public eye in 2008 when his half-brother was a rising presidential candidate.

At the time, he was living in a hut in the slum neighborhood of Haruma, which prompted many critics to deride Barack for not providing financial support.

In his interview with conservative journalist Dinesh D’Souza, who based the documentary off his book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage which focuses largely on the President’s views on colonialism, George Obama keeps his comments about his famous relative fairly positive.

In a clip released to The Hollywood Reporter, Dinesh D’Souza asked whether he felt dejected that Barack Obama has never offered to help George, but he simply brushed such claims aside.

“I think he has a family of his own, he’s supposed to help his family,” George Obama responded.

George Obama lives in Nairobi, Kenya and first came into the public eye in 2008 when his half-brother Barack was a rising presidential candidate

George Obama lives in Nairobi, Kenya and first came into the public eye in 2008 when his half-brother Barack was a rising presidential candidate

The journalist didn’t let go, saying that they are blood relatives which should entitle him to be considered a part of Barack Obama’s family, but George still didn’t take the bait.

“Yea, I’m part of his family, but I’m over-age so I can help myself.

“He’s got other issues to deal with. He’s taking care of the world, so he’s taking care of me.”

George Obama says that when he was five or six years old, he met Barack briefly.

“I was just surprised- he is some half white guy,” George Obama said in a clip from the documentary.

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii by his mother Ann Dunham, who was white with various European ancestry.

The two men share the common bond of their father, Barack Obama Sr., but even that was not very strong because of their age gap.

Barack Obama is 50-years-old while George is only 30-years-old, and Barack Sr died in a car accident just six months after George was born.

The President reportedly has seven half-siblings on his father’s side- including George Obama, though the paternity of two of his reported half-brothers, named Abo and Bernard, is questioned.

In the documentary interview, George Obama said that he remembers little about his father except the stories that his mother told him.

“He was really educated,” George Obama said of his deceased father.

“My mom was disappointed in me because I actually didn’t finish my schooling. I really did let her down, I let my father down because he was an intellectual guy.”

That said, George Obama did write a book, entitled Homeland, which was published in 2010.

While many conservatives- including the interviewer- were likely hoping for a more controversial and damning take on his half-brother, George seems to be one of the least problematic members of the wide-ranging Obama family.

By comparison, Barack Obama’s “lost” half-uncle Omar Onyango was arrested for driving under the influence which was coupled with an outstanding deportation warrant.

 

 

Mitt Romney’s campaign increased its fundraising lead over Barack Obama in June, official numbers released on Monday show.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans raised $106 million, $35 million more than Barack Obama and the Democrats, who raised $71 million.

Both camps raised more than in May, when the Romney bid took in $77 million and the Obama camp $60 million.

The totals exclude millions raised by independent groups that support each candidate.

Mitt Romney's campaign increased its fundraising lead over Barack Obama in June

Mitt Romney's campaign increased its fundraising lead over Barack Obama in June

The Obama campaign released the June numbers in an email to donors.

“If we lose this election, it will be because we didn’t close the gap enough when we had the chance,” the email says in a call for donations.

Barack Obama’s campaign has been regularly warning supporters that he is in danger of becoming the first sitting president in history to be outspent by his opponent.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans have an estimated $160 million cash in the bank to spend on the campaign, they confirmed on Monday.

Despite its fundraising bonanza, correspondents say the Romney campaign has struggled recently to gain the initiative.

He has faced renewed scrutiny over his financial affairs in recent days, and several polls show the president retains a lead in some key swing states.

However, a poor jobs report on Friday was seen as a reminder to Barack Obama that the US economy remains weak just four months before the 6 November election.

 

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Josephine Harris, a restaurant owner from Ohio who served US President Barack Obama breakfast on a campaign stop, has died hours later.

Josephine Harris, 70, who owned Ann’s Place in Akron, Ohio, was taken to hospital after complaining of fatigue and a tingling feeling.

She went into cardiac arrest en route and was pronounced dead shortly after 11:00 EST.

Barack Obama arrived the restaurant at about 08:30, ordering two eggs “over easy”, bacon and wheat toast.

Josephine Harris dies hours Barack Obama had breakfast in her restaurant in Ohio

Josephine Harris dies hours Barack Obama had breakfast in her restaurant in Ohio

The Summit County medical examiner’s office said Josephine Harris had died of natural causes and there would be no autopsy.

In a statement, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Barack Obama called her daughter from Air Force One to express “his sorrow and his condolences”.

“He was honored to meet [Josephine Harris] this morning and passed on his feeling that the whole family is in his thoughts and prayers,” Jay Carney said.

The Akron Beacon Journal reported that Josephine Harris had hugged Barack Obama when she met him at the restaurant.

“I’m sure this was her highlight,” Frankie Adkins, her sister, told the Journal.

“She loved Obama.”

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Mitt Romney and the Republicans raised a combined $100 million in June, laying down the gauntlet to a Barack Obama campaign that is scrambling to keep pace.

The figure excludes the millions raised by groups that support the Republican presidential candidate.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have not yet released their fundraising results for June.

Barack Obama spent the day in Ohio as he launched the first bus tour of his campaign for re-election in November.

In May, the Romney campaign out-fundraised its rival, attracting $77 million against the Obama team’s $60 million.

Barack Obama has been warning supporters that he is in danger of becoming the first sitting president in history to be outspent by his opponent.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans raised a combined $100 million in June

Mitt Romney and the Republicans raised a combined $100 million in June

According to Mitt Romney’s campaign aides, much of the money raised in June came from new donors, Politico reported.

Several states, including the key battlegrounds of Colorado, Michigan and Ohio, exceeded their fundraising goals, they added.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama pitched a positive message on Ohio’s economic recovery and the comeback of the state’s car industry.

Ohio’s unemployment rate of 7.3% compares with a national average of 8.2%.

Ohio is a key battleground in presidential elections – no Republican has ever won the White House without capturing it.

A Quinnipiac University poll of Ohio voters last week had Barack Obama leading his rival by 47% to 38% in the state. Earlier, the Obama campaign had run a barrage of attacks on Mitt Romney’s business record.

“I’m betting you’re not going to lose interest,” Barack Obama told voters in Maumee, Ohio.

“I’m betting you’re not going to lose heart. I still believe in you, I’m betting on you.”

The president also touched on his landmark healthcare reform act, which was upheld by the Supreme Court last week.

“It is going to make the vast majority of Americans more secure,” he told supporters. Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal the law if he wins office.

On Friday, Barack Obama will finish his bus tour with appearances in Poland, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said the president had “no new answers” for the economy.

Despite its fundraising bonanza, correspondents say the Romney campaign has struggled recently to gain the initiative.

His team was seen as having been put on the back foot by the president’s order last month halting deportations for children of illegal immigrants.

The Romney camp also delivered conflicting responses to Supreme Court ruling last week on healthcare.

And there were negative headlines this week over a Vanity Fair investigation reporting that much of Mitt Romney’s personal fortune was hidden in a network of opaque offshore investment havens.

Conservative concerns over the former private equity chief’s campaign were vented in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

It accused Mitt Romney’s staff of “slowly squandering an historic opportunity”. The newspaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who called for a Romney campaign shake-up, in a tweet earlier this week.

Meanwhile, pictures of Mitt Romney on holiday with his family this week in New Hampshire prompted conservative radio talk host Laura Ingraham to tell listeners:

“There’s no week to spare, we have a country to save.”

With the economy such a major issue in the coming election, both campaigns will be eagerly awaiting figures due on Friday showing if there was any rise in hiring by US employers during June.

 

The US Supreme Court has ruled that President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare reform (ObamaCare) act is constitutional.

The court upheld a core requirement known as the “individual mandate” that Americans buy insurance or pay a fine.

Of the nine justices on the bench, Chief Justice John Roberts’ vote was decisive in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in favor of the law.

The ruling comes months before the US election, with Republicans vowing to push for a repeal of the bill.

Healthcare is a deeply polarizing issue in the US and Republicans strongly opposed Barack Obama’s legislation.

The state of Florida, along with 12 other states, filed a legal challenge to the bill minutes after Barack Obama signed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law in March 2010.

They were later joined by 13 more states, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and several individuals.

The US Supreme Court has ruled that President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform (ObamaCare) act is constitutional

The US Supreme Court has ruled that President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform (ObamaCare) act is constitutional

Speaking afterwards, President Barack Obama called the court’s decision a victory for the country, saying people would not need to “hang their fortunes on chance” or fear financial ruin if they became sick.

Barack Obama said it was “time to move forward”, and that he would continue to implement and improve the healthcare law.

He added: “We will be better off because we had the courage to pass this law.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the healthcare bill was “bad law yesterday, it’s bad law today”.

“This is a time of choice for the American people. If we’re going get rid of ObamaCare we’re going to have to replace President Obama. My mission is to make sure we do exactly that.”

He called “ObamaCare” a tax rise that would add to the national debt, a “job-killer”, and said it would put the federal government “between you and your doctor”.

Congressional leaders also responded quickly to the verdict. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said: “We’ve passed plenty of terrible laws around here that were constitutional.”

On the Senate floor, he said the only way to fix the law was “full repeal”.

Meanwhile, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, disagreed: “Now that this matter is settled, let’s move on to other things. Like jobs.”

The mandate was eventually upheld by the justices, citing the taxation powers granted to Congress by the US constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts said: “We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.

“We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions.”

A majority of justices agreed that the penalty individuals must pay if they refuse to buy health insurance falls within Congress’ power to levy taxes, upholding the “individual mandate”.

“The mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition – not owning health insurance – that triggers a tax – the required payment to IRS,” Justice John Roberts wrote.

The government’s main argument was that the law was legal under Congress’ ability to regulate “interstate commerce” – but a majority of justices did not agree with this view.

Four dissenting justices said that limits on the power of Congress to regulate commerce and raise taxes “cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.”

“That clear principle carries the day here,” they added.

In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the dissenting justices went further, to say: “In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety.”

While the court described the penalty as a tax, it did not invoke a law that could have prevented the justices from ruling on the case.

Under a law called the Anti-Injunction Act, taxes cannot be legally challenged until after they have been levied. This could have delayed a verdict till 2015 – after the “individual mandate” comes into effect and the first round of penalties have been paid.

They were also not required to rule on the issue of “severability”, which would determine whether other parts of the healthcare law could stand even if the mandate was struck down.

In addition to the individual mandate, the Supreme Court was asked consider another part of the law that deals with the expansion of Medicaid, a government healthcare programme for low-income citizens.

The court ruled to limit that provision but did not strike it down altogether, saying Congress could place conditions on the use of federal funds.

“What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding,” the Supreme Court’s opinion said.

 

Barack Obama’s wide-ranging healthcare reform bill, which is seen as a key achievement of his presidency, is facing its moment of judgement in the US Supreme Court.

The law, dubbed ObamaCare, passed in 2010, requires all Americans to obtain health insurance or face a penalty fine.

But conservative opponents of the president say that “mandate” is illegal under the terms of the US constitution.

The justices are expected to rule on Thursday, and could cut the mandate or strike down the whole law.

The debate over healthcare is a fiercely polarizing issue in the US, and a verdict either way is expected to have a major impact on the race for the White House.

Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, are just five months away from the presidential election.

The president maintains a slender lead in some polls, but is facing a stiff challenge from Mitt Romney and conservative opponents, amid a rocky economic outlook.

ObamaCare, passed in 2010, requires all Americans to obtain health insurance or face a penalty fine

ObamaCare, passed in 2010, requires all Americans to obtain health insurance or face a penalty fine

Mitt Romney told a rally near Washington DC on Wednesday that if the Supreme Court did not quash the law he would “repeal and replace” the bill if he won the White House.

The bitter debate over the legislation has touched such partisan issues as state and individual rights, federal deficits, end-of-life care, and abortion and contraception funding.

The nine-member Supreme Court has several options.

It could decide that it is too early to rule on the case, as many of the law’s provisions – including the mandate to buy health insurance – do not come into force until 2014.

It could also dismiss the challenge to the mandate on a technicality, ruling that the penalty constitutes a tax lawfully imposed by Congress. Few observers expect the court to choose this option.

The meat of the case concerns the challenge to the individual mandate, which the justices could decide oversteps Congress’ right to regulate interstate commerce.

Analysts say that questioning from several conservative justices during oral arguments at the court in March revealed a deep level skepticism on the bench.

The court could decide to strike down the mandate and send the bill back to Congress to find a way to make the rest of it work. It could also overturn the entire law, ruling that the need to buy health insurance is integral to the legislation.

The Supreme Court is composed of nine justices, five seen as conservatives and four as liberals. It has delivered several divisive wafer-thin majority rulings in recent years, prompting criticism from liberals.

A 5-4 ruling in 2010 known as Citizens United changed campaign finance laws in the US to allow unrestricted fund-raising by independent groups not directly affiliated with candidates.

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found public approval of the court at its lowest level since records began in 1987.

The healthcare law – officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but commonly dubbed ObamaCare by opponents – was passed in 2009 without a single Republican vote in Congress, and signed into law by President Obama in June 2010.

Polls suggest many Americans would be pleased to see the law overturned.

However, individual elements of the bill are popular, and some people are opposed because they do not think it goes far enough.

The bill has already enabled millions of Americans aged under 26 to obtain health insurance by staying on their parents’ coverage for longer than previously allowed.

Patients with pre-existing medical conditions have also been able to obtain health insurance since the passage of the law.

 

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Australian Genevieve Cook first met Barack Obama in 1983 in the kitchen of a mutual friend’s New York flat.

In those days most Americans, even supposedly cosmopolitan New Yorkers, couldn’t tell a Cockney from a Kiwi.

But Barack Obama had met many Aussies while living in Indonesia as a young boy with his mother and stepfather, and it turned out he and Genevieve Cook – the daughter of a prominent diplomat – had lived in the country at the same time.

As the night wore on, they sat close together on an orange beanbag in the hall while Genevieve Cook swigged Baileys Irish Cream straight from the bottle.

They were amazed at how much they had in common: both were children of divorced parents, both had lived all over the world and had never felt truly at home anywhere.

They exchanged phone numbers and the self-assured Barack Obama didn’t waste time. Within days, he was cooking her dinner at his apartment.

“Then we went and talked in his bedroom,” Genevieve Cook recalled.

“And then I spent the night with him.

“It all felt very inevitable.”

Barack Obama and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989.

The US president has reinforced this notion by making only fleeting mention of ex-girlfriends in his carefully calibrated memoirs, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Barack Obama gives the impression of a man in such a hurry to save the world that he had no time for such distractions as romance.

But now, in a blistering new biography, Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist David Maraniss has pulled his exes out of the shadows.

In so doing, David Maraniss has revealed an unflattering picture of a president so desperate to sell an image of himself as a pioneering race warrior that he has air-brushed many of the “white” elements from his life – including that string of well-heeled, well-educated white girlfriends.

Barack Obama’s version of events, in his autobiography, is a moving story of a mixed-race child struggling to find his black identity after being deserted as a young child by his Kenyan father.

It tells how his grandfather was imprisoned by the British for helping the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya – an assertion that Barack Obama’s step-grandmother later embellished with claims he was also tortured – for which David Maraniss found no evidence.

Delighted Republican opponents are picking over the inconsistencies (38 at the last count) between Barack Obama’s own memoirs – published in 1995 as he prepared to launch his political career – and the facts uncovered by David Maraniss.

Time and again, Barack Obama, who has had to fight hard to convince other African Americans of his “black credibility”, appears to have burnished his radical credentials, not least by playing up the roles of black people in his life and playing down the roles of the white.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in his romantic life.

For Genevieve Cook – to whom admittedly the President alludes in his memoirs – wasn’t the first white girlfriend in his life, nor the last.

As a young student in the early Eighties at Occidental College, a small arts university in Los Angeles, Barack Obama developed a serious crush on another student Alexandra McNear, who was co-editor of a college literary magazine which published two of his poems.

Australian Genevieve Cook first met Barack Obama in 1983 in the kitchen of a mutual friend’s New York flat

Australian Genevieve Cook first met Barack Obama in 1983 in the kitchen of a mutual friend’s New York flat

Alexandra McNear, described by David Maraniss as “lithe and mysterious, with the face of a young Meryl Streep and a literary bohemian air”, had just the sort of rarefied upbringing that might impress an ambitious young man.

Both her parents were established writers and her father, Erskine McNear, was the scion of a property empire. In the summer of 1981, Barack Obama and Alexandra McNear moved to New York, she to do a theatre course, he to finish his degree at Columbia University, so he could explore his black identity in a more African American city.

Far away from family and friends, Barack Obama’s first summer in New York in 1981 might have been lonely but, suggests David Maraniss, for the presence of Alexandra McNear.

She recalls admiring his intellect, his sense of humor and his good looks.

After a first date at a dimly lit Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, they embarked on a two-month affair.

Alexandra McNear remembers it as a “summer of walking miles in the city, lingering over meals at restaurants, hanging out at the apartments, visiting art museums and talking about life”.

When she went back to Los Angeles, their relationship continued, largely through an exchange of passionate if pompously intellectual letters.

They discussed everything from T.S. Eliot to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche – but mainly they discussed Barack Obama.

Supremely self-absorbed, Barack Obama forever harped on about his search for meaning and identity.

He seemed oblivious to her feelings, once remarking that, tempting as it would be to run off with her when he finished his degree in New York, it would mean living “in some sense of compromise and retreat”.

Barack Obama’s self-obsession would have left many women cold, if not bored to death, but Alexandra McNear persevered.

Perhaps she appreciated his toe-curlingly pretentious notes on literature, like his observation that T.S. Elliot’s poem The Waste Land “contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Munzer [a somewhat obscure Reformation theologian] to Yeats”.

Alexandra McNear told her diary that Barack Obama was “the closest friend I had, and that I really loved him but didn’t know if we could sustain a relationship”.

Her instincts were correct.

A few months later, while Barack Obama was visiting his mother in Honolulu, he wrote to inform Alexandra McNear with cold detachment that he felt their relationship was changing from romantic love to “the more quotidian, but finer bonds of friendship”.

Alexandra McNear went on to scandalize her family by marrying a former Serbian boxer and convicted bank robber called Bob Bozic.

Next for Barack Obama was Genevieve Cook, whom he met at that mutual friend’s flat at a Christmas Party in 1983.

Barack Obama had graduated and was in a dull office job as he worked out what he wanted to do with his life.

Genevieve Cook was three years older than him, and an assistant teacher at a private school in Brooklyn.

As David Maraniss observes, “there had been girlfriends before her but none quite like Genevieve”, who “engaged him in the deepest romantic relationship of his young life”.

Genevieve Cook is mentioned in Barack Obama’s memoirs as a mystery woman.

While never naming her, Barack Obama wrote: “There was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. She had dark hair with specks of green in her eyes.

“Her voice sounded like a wind chime. We saw each other for almost a year.”

Genevieve Cook shared many of Barack Obama’s obsessions. The daughter of a former Australian ambassador to the U.S., and a moneyed art historian who later remarried into a prominent American family, Genevieve Cook, too, religiously kept a diary.

And, like Barack Obama, she had a burning passion to save the world.

Within two months of meeting, they were seeing each other every Thursday night and at weekends.

On Sundays, Barack Obama would lounge around in his cheap, cockroach-infested flat in the less salubrious end of the Upper West Side, bare-chested in a blue and white sarong as he drank coffee and did the New York Times crossword.

His bedroom, Genevieve Cook recalls, smelt of “running sweat, Brut spray deodorant and smoking”.

Barack Obama loved to cook and they would read together and discuss writers into the night.

Like Alexandra McNear, Genevieve Cook was attracted by the “mental exhilaration” of his intellect, marveling at how mature he was at 22, but dismayed by his remoteness and wariness about commitment.

Needless to say, Barack Obama was as self-obsessed as ever.

When Genevieve Cook told him that she loved him, Barack Obama’s response was not “I love you, too”, but “thank you”.

Genevieve Cook described him as “an uncommon, earnest young man” and confided to her diary: “He is very beautiful – more than he thinks himself to be.”

But there was another side to him she found unsettling.

“The sexual warmth is definitely there – but the rest of it has sharp edges and I’m finding it all unsettling,” she wrote.

“His warmth can be deceptive. Though he speaks sweet words and can be open and trusting, there is also that coolness.”

They often talked about race and Barack Obama would confide that he felt like an “imposter” as there was “hardly a black bone in his body”.

Genevieve Cook eventually told him he “needed to go black” (to date a black woman), whereas he countered that he would never find a black woman “he would feel truly comfortable with”.

They moved into a flat together but their intellectual discussions eventually turned into fights over issues like the washing-up.

In the end, Genevieve Cook tired of his emotional “withheld-ness, his lack of spontaneity”, and broke up with him in 1985.

Genevieve Cook insists she couldn’t have been more sympathetic about his confusion over his racial identity but that’s not how Barack Obama portrayed it in his memoirs.

He recounts taking his New York girlfriend to see a black play after which she “started talking about why black people are so angry all the time”.

They had a “big fight” in front of the theatre and she burst into tears and said she couldn’t be black.

All very dramatic but Genevieve Cook insisted to David Maraniss that it never happened.

The only play she saw with Barack Obama was entirely different – British actress Billie Whitelaw performing a monologue written by Samuel Beckett. And there had been no row over race, she said.

Barack Obama had to admit to David Maraniss the incident happened not with Genevieve Cook in New York but with someone else, though he wouldn’t elaborate.

Did it really happen? He mixed dates and places to protect former girlfriends’ identities, he said.

Soon after that period, Barack Obama made strides in his career, moving to Chicago to work as a community organizer.

In a moment of acute foresight, Genevieve Cook had told her diary that while she was not the woman for Barack Obama, “that lithe, bubbly, strong black lady is waiting somewhere”.

She may or may not be “bubbly”, but “strong” certainly sums up Michelle Obama.

However, before Barack Obama met Michelle, he went on to have a relationship with another white woman in Chicago.

The woman, who like Genevieve Cook was an anthropology graduate, was barely mentioned in Barack Obama’s memoirs, but by then he was trying to establish his African-American credentials by toiling in an impoverished and predominantly black area of Chicago.

David Maraniss does not identify this new woman either, but says the relationship was “serious” and “ended much like the one with Genevieve, when Obama was ready to make his next career move”.

Within four years, Barack Obama had met Michelle in Chicago and the rest we know. He finally had the partnership he wanted history to record – with a strong black woman, a descendant of slaves who had pushed her way up from humble roots.

But Michelle Obama, at least, is not a “dream”, unlike some of the other fantasies in his own autobiography.

 

World leaders meeting at a G20 summit in Mexico have urged Europe to take all necessary measures to overcome the eurozone debt crisis.

They voiced unease over what one top official described as “the single biggest risk for the world economy”.

But European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said “the challenges are not only European, they are global”.

Sunday’s victory of a pro-bailout party in the Greek election did not give stock markets the expected boost.

Antonis Samaras, the leader of the New Democracy party that narrowly won the poll, is holding urgent talks to form a coalition.

Antonis Samaras also reiterated that he would seek changes in the terms of a bailout agreement reached with the EU and IMF.

While Europe is clearly the big danger, there are also problems elsewhere in the world’s major advanced and emerging economies, starting with the two largest national economies, the US and China.

The slowdown in India is something else for the G20 to fret about at the Mexican resort of Los Cabos.

World leaders meeting at a G20 summit in Mexico have urged Europe to take all necessary measures to overcome the eurozone debt crisis

World leaders meeting at a G20 summit in Mexico have urged Europe to take all necessary measures to overcome the eurozone debt crisis

A draft of the statement to be released on Tuesday is expected to call for a coordinated global plan for job creation and growth, reports say.

And if growth weakens, the proposed document says, countries without heavy debts should “stand ready to co-ordinate and implement discretionary fiscal actions to support domestic demand”, according to Reuters.

In a separate development, China pledged $43 billion to the IMF’s crisis-fighting fund.

The move comes after a meeting of the Brics group of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The five nations all offered to increase their contributions to the IMF in exchange for greater influence in the organization.

US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks on the sidelines of the summit, urging an immediate end to violence in Syria.

In a joint statement following their first meeting since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency, they said they shared a belief that Syrians should determine their own future.

The two countries have been at odds over how to resolve the crisis.

On Monday, many world leaders expressed alarm in Los Cabos at what they saw as a lack of progress in dealing with the eurozone crisis.

World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said: “We are waiting for Europe to tell us what it’s going to do.”

Meanwhile, Jose Angel Gurria, the Mexican head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said the crisis was “the single biggest risk for the world economy”.

Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), warned about the danger of contagion from the eurozone crisis.

He said that global volatility and uncertainty was fuelling a trend towards protectionism, which was not only stalling free trade but starting to reverse it.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on eurozone leaders to make structural changes to solve the debt crisis.

But Jose Manuel Barroso mounted a strong defense of the EU’s handling of the crisis so far.

“Frankly, we are not coming here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy,” he told reporters.

He added that he expected G20 leaders to “speak very clearly in favor of the approach the EU is following”.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for rules to allow protectionism for countries facing a financial crisis.

“It is time to stop pretending and come to an honest agreement on the acceptable level of protectionist measures that governments can take to protect jobs in times of global crisis,” he said.

“This is particularly important for Russia as our country will join the WTO this year and we intend to take an active part in the discussions on the future rules for global trade.”

US President Barack Obama had earlier talked about the importance of avoiding protectionism, which is the process of making imports more expensive to protect domestic jobs.

 

US President Barack Obama had a busy day yesterday as he appeared at not just one, but two A-list fundraising events in Manhattan – raising a total of $4.5 million.

However, Barack Obama’s re-election campaign will not have to pay the full cost of his jaunt to New York City, because he combined the trip with an official event which will be charged to the taxpayers.

Before the fundraisers, one at Sarah Jessica Parker’s house and one at the five-star Plaza Hotel, Barack Obama scheduled a visit to the World Trade Center site.

Following his visits across New York Barack Obama headed home to the White House in Washington DC aboard the presidential helicopter, Marine One.

Barack Obama has now held more fundraising events than the last six presidents combined, leading to his opponents coining the derisive nickname “Campaigner in Chief”.

He frequently combines the events with his official duties, which allows his re-election campaign to defray the President’s travel costs by charging part of them to the public purse.

For a trip like yesterday’s, involving both official duties and campaign events, a formula is applied so that the campaign pays part of the costs – but it still works out cheaper than making a trip purely for campaigning.

Barack Obama must be accompanied by Secret Service protection and fly on Air Force One at all times for security reasons, further increasing the cost of his travel.

The World Trade Center, which Barack Obama has visited several times before, is a major building project and recipient of generous federal aid, as well as an iconic national memorial.

It is unclear what prompted Barack Obama to return to the site – where he took the chance to hail “the American spirit” – on this occasion.

Before the fundraisers, one at Sarah Jessica Parker's house and one at the five-star Plaza Hotel, Barack Obama scheduled a visit to the World Trade Center site

Before the fundraisers, one at Sarah Jessica Parker's house and one at the five-star Plaza Hotel, Barack Obama scheduled a visit to the World Trade Center site

The intimate dinner at the house of Sarah Jessica Parker and her actor husband Matthew Broderick banked about $2 million, with 50 people paying $40,000 each to attend.

Speaking in a dimly-lit, art-filled room, Barack Obama told supporters they would play a critical role in an election that would determine a vision for the nation’s future.

“You’re the tie-breaker,” he said.

“You’re the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.”

Among the celebrities on hand to hear Barack Obama’s remarks were Oscar winner Meryl Streep, fashion designer Michael Kors and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who moderated a private question-and-answer session between the President and the guests. Matthew Broderick, who was starring in a Broadway musical, was absent.

The night’s second glitzy fundraiser, which included a performance from Mariah Carey and a speech by singer Alicia Keys, yielded the Obama campaign at least $2.5 million.

Some New Yorkers reacted with anger at the prospect of footing the bill for Barack Obama’s fundraising visit to the city.

Much of downtown Manhattan was temporarily sealed off for the duration of Barack Obama’s visit, and the street in the West Village neighborhood where Sarah Jessica Parker’s house is situated was closed to pedestrians.

Some pedestrians bemoaned the disruption caused to the New York streets by the presidential motorcade – Mary Grach told ABC that Barack Obama’s visit was “really inconveniencing a lot of commuters”.

She added: “There has to be a better way to go about it rather than putting out how many thousands of riders out of commission, and having to find another way home.”

In 2004, Democrats criticized George W. Bush for combining fundraisers with official duties, and Republicans have responded in kind this year.

Barack Obama has been furiously fundraising ever since a Supreme Court decision removed most restrictions on spending by super PACs, outside groups which raise money to promote causes and candidates.

The President initially opposed super PACs, but earlier this year he relented and allowed top officials to speak at fundraising events organized by such groups.

The Republican party has officially complained about Barack Obama’s campaign activities.

In a letter, Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee chairman, alleged: “Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as <<official events>>, thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than his campaign, to pay for his re-election efforts.”

During the 2008 election, Barack Obama declined public money for his campaign, allowing him to raise an unlimited amount privately.

He ended up spending around $730 million, almost double the amount raised by his rival John McCain.

Neither Barack Obama nor his Republican opponent Mitt Romney is expected to take public financing for November’s election.

 

Two of the biggest ever wildfires in the US have hit states of Colorado and New Mexico and hundreds of firefighters have joined efforts to tackle them.

The Colorado blaze shrouded the state capital, Denver, some 60 miles (100 km) away in smoke on Tuesday.

A woman has died in the blaze, which has burned about 43,000 acres (68 sq miles) and is still growing.

A huge fire is also burning in New Mexico – one of a total of 19 fires in nine drought-stricken western states.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said on Monday that one person had died in Colorado, after investigators found remains in a home that had been burned in the fire.

Two of the biggest ever wildfires in the US have hit states of Colorado and New Mexico and hundreds of firefighters have joined efforts to tackle them

Two of the biggest ever wildfires in the US have hit states of Colorado and New Mexico and hundreds of firefighters have joined efforts to tackle them

Although the remains have not been conclusively identified, the family of Linda Steadman, 62, has issued a statement saying she died in a cabin that she loved.

They reported her missing after the fire started on Saturday, sheriff’s officials said.

President Barack Obama called the Colorado governor to offer federal personnel, equipment and emergency grants – but was unable to reach his New Mexico counterpart due to poor reception in the fire zone, the Associated Press reported.

The High Park Fire – as it has been dubbed – is still growing, with only 5% contained, reported a national incident information website.

The same website says 30% of the 36,000-acre (56-sq-mile) Little Bear Fire in New Mexico has been contained.

About 118 structures have been damaged or destroyed by the blaze in Colorado – believed to have been started by lightning – and hundreds of people were forced to evacuate, officials say.

Some 600 firefighters are on the scene and up to 200 more are expected.

Additional resources have had to be called in as state and federal authorities rushed to tackle the blaze.

The US Forest Service said on Monday it would contract one air tanker from Alaska and four from Canada to add to the aircraft already combating the fire. Two more air tankers were also being mobilized in California.

Five of the forest service’s 13 tankers have already been deployed to the scene, a spokesman said.

Congressmen from Colorado said in a letter to the forest service that the need for more aircraft was “dire”.

But incident commander Bill Hahnenberg told the Associated Press: “We are a very high priority nationally. We can get all the resources we want and need.”

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US President Barack Obama says European leaders must make difficult decisions to steer the eurozone away from crisis.

Speaking at the White House, Barack Obama said the US would support Europe implement the hard solutions needed to solve the ongoing debt crisis.

He said a deep new recession in Europe would have an impact on the US economy.

Greece’s future in the eurozone was a matter for the Greek people, he said, but “further hardship” must be expected if it choose to leave the euro.

Barack Obama says European leaders must make difficult decisions to steer the eurozone away from crisis

Barack Obama says European leaders must make difficult decisions to steer the eurozone away from crisis

Outlining a series of “specific steps” Europe needed to take to ensure stability within the eurozone, the president was at pains to say he would not “scold” Europe.

Barack Obama said European leaders needed to stabilize the continent’s financial system and inject capital into weak banks “as soon as possible”.

“The solutions are hard, but there are solutions,” Barack Obama said, saying the US was offering advice, but that “these decisions are fundamentally in the hands of Europe’s leaders”.

Barack Obama also reprised his calls for the US Congress to pass the remaining parts of his own jobs plan, in order to strengthen the US economy against possible shocks from Europe.

 

It appears that President Barack Obama made a rude joke about First Lady Michelle Obama and oral sex at a Beverly Hills fundraiser for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Leadership Council.

Talking to some 600 supporters at the event on Wednesday night, Barack Obama referred to Ellen DeGeneres, the stand-up comedian and television host and a lesbian.

“I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in push-ups but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down,” he said.

The crowd erupted into what the Los Angeles Times described as “bawdy laughter”.

In the pool report of the event, Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News, wrote that this was a line that Barack Obama “let hang, naughtily, provoking laughter from the crowd”.

It remained unclear, however, whether Barack Obama uttered a deliberate double entendre about his wife having oral sex with a lesbian or whether he simply stumbled into using a phrase that was misinterpreted.

Barack Obama made a rude joke about First Lady Michelle Obama and oral sex at a Beverly Hills fundraiser for the LGBT Leadership Council

Barack Obama made a rude joke about First Lady Michelle Obama and oral sex at a Beverly Hills fundraiser for the LGBT Leadership Council

The LA Times plumped for the latter interpretation, reporting that “the president seemed briefly caught off-stride when the audience interpreted as off-color a joke he made about a push-up competition between DeGeneres and his wife, initiated by the talk show host in February”.

After the bawdy laughter, the newspaper continued: “Obama kept a straight face. <<That’s what I heard>>, he added. <<I just want to set the record straight. Michelle outdoes me in push-ups as well. You shouldn’t feel bad>>.”

Political reporters immediately picked up on the obscene reference.

“I hope @MichelleObama yells at @BarackObama tonight. Or at least withholds pushups,” twteeted Meredith Shiner, a reporter for Roll Call.

Barack Obama was very much amongst friends at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel event, part of a two-day fundraising swing through California and Nevada during which he is expected to raise more than $15 million for his re-election bid.

At a similar event in New York this year Barack Obama was heckled by people shouting: “Marriage!”

After recently coming out in favor of gay marriage, however, this time he was greeted with chants of: “Four more years!”

Ellen DeGeneres, whose decision to come out of the closet in 1997 prompted headlines and predictions that her career was over, introduced Barack Obama at what was a who’s who of gay Hollywood and those whose work had taken gay themes into the mainstream.

Max Mutchnik, creator of Will and Grace was a co-host. Lance Black, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk and the singer Cher attended.

Barack Obama spoke for 30 minutes and highlighted measures that have been applauded by the gay lobby, including his repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule banning open homosexuality.

He equated gay rights with civil rights struggles for equality of treatment based on sex and race, stating that his achievements had been part of “this constant progression to include more and more people in the possibility of the America dream”.

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Republican candidate Mitt Romney raised almost $17 million more than President Barack Obama’s re-election effort in May, according to new figures.

Mitt Romney and the Republicans raised $76.8 million, while the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party brought in $60 million.

Mitt Romney now has $107 million cash on hand, almost matching the $115 million Barack Obama’s campaign had by the end of April.

Barack Obama’s May total included $15 million raised at the home of George Clooney, with tickets costing $40,000.

Members of the public also bought $3 raffle tickets to win a spot at that star-studded event.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney raised almost $17 million more than President Barack Obama's re-election effort in May

Republican candidate Mitt Romney raised almost $17 million more than President Barack Obama's re-election effort in May

Both presidential candidates are in the midst of a hectic fund-raising schedule as they prepare for the long campaign ahead of November’s election.

Barack Obama is campaigning this week in California and Nevada, while Mitt Romney has been in Texas.

The monthly campaign fundraising totals do not include millions of dollars being raised and spent by independent committees backing each campaign.

May’s fundraising figures were the first since Mitt Romney became the official Republican nominee, having won the required numbers of delegates during the primary season to ensure he will face Barack Obama in November.

Announcing its fundraising totals early on Thursday, the Obama campaign said on Twitter that 572,000 people donated in May, 147,000 of them for the first time.

His campaign also reported that 98% of the contributions were less than $250.

In its statement shortly afterwards, the Romney campaign reported that donations of $250 or less made up 93% of all donations and $12 million of the total amount raised.

“Our strong fundraising is a sign that Americans are tired of President Obama’s broken promises and want a change of direction in the White House,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

Barack Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt used Twitter to play down Mitt Romney’s fundraising haul: “Reminder on RNC/Romney camp fundraising: 1st month joint committee was in existence, so all their primary donors wrote their maxout checks.”

Both the camps raised considerably more in May than in April, when the Obama campaign and the Democrats brought in $43.6 million, slightly ahead of their opponents.

 

Barack Obama has caused an outcry in Poland after referring to a Nazi death camp as “Polish”.

President Barack Obama made the remark at a ceremony in which he posthumously awarded Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The White House says Barack Obama “misspoke” and regrets the comment but prominent Poles want an apology.

Poles suffered a brutal Nazi wartime occupation and reject any suggestion of responsibility for Nazi crimes.

Poles are particularly sensitive to comments linking their country to the Holocaust.

For years, they have objected to any description of Nazi German death camps as “Polish” because it can indicate involvement in the mass murder of millions of European Jews in camps built on their land.

Barack Obama has caused an outcry in Poland after referring to a Nazi death camp as "Polish"

Barack Obama has caused an outcry in Poland after referring to a Nazi death camp as "Polish"

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stopped short of calling for an apology but said he wanted to see more than an expression of regret.

“I am convinced that today our American friends are capable of a stronger reaction… than just the correction itself and the regret which we heard from the White House spokesperson,” Donald Tusk said in a statement.

But Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski was more forthright.

“The White House will apologize for the outrageous mistake,” he tweeted.

At the Medal of Freedom ceremony, Barack Obama spoke of Jan Karski’s efforts to draw attention to Nazi crimes in Poland.

Jan Karski had travelled first to London and then to the US to tell wartime President Franklin Roosevelt what he had witnessed.

“Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself,” Barack Obama said.

Jan Karski later became professor of history at Georgetown University and died in Washington aged 86 in 2000.

Almost six million Poles died in World War II. More than half were Jews, many of them killed in Nazi death camps including the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

Some 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz, including 300,000 Polish Jews.

Polish diplomats and overseas organizations have campaigned to stop the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” as a shorthand description of Auschwitz or Treblinka.

“We should use this huge gaffe to make sure nobody, nowhere in the world, ever says that again,” Polish Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa said.

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Republican Mitt Romney has secured his place as the challenger to Barack Obama in November’s US presidential election, following a primary in Texas.

Projections show Mitt Romney easily won enough votes to pass the threshold of 1,144 delegates needed for the nomination.

Mitt Romney said he was “humbled”. He is the first Mormon from a major party to contest the presidential election.

He is set to be officially anointed as the Republican nominee at the party convention in Florida in late August.

Mitt Romney has been the presumptive nominee for several weeks as his rivals withdrew or suspended campaigning.

With 1,086 delegates secured as he entered the Texas race, Mitt Romney only needed 58 to pass the 1,144 mark.

Republican Mitt Romney has secured his place as the challenger to Barack Obama in November's US presidential election, following a primary in Texas

Republican Mitt Romney has secured his place as the challenger to Barack Obama in November's US presidential election, following a primary in Texas

In early returns, Mitt Romney had captured more than 70% of the vote. Texas awards 152 delegates proportionally.

He will surpass his father, George Romney, a former Michigan governor who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 1968.

Opinion polls suggest Mitt Romney is locked in an extremely close race with Barack Obama in November.

“I am honored that Americans across the country have given their support to my candidacy and I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee,” Mitt Romney said in statement.

As polls closed, the former Massachusetts governor was attending a fundraiser in Las Vegas with real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

He spent the day campaigning in Colorado and Nevada.

Ahead of Tuesday’s private fundraiser, the Obama campaign released a video focusing on Donald Trump’s comments falsely alleging that the president was born in Kenya.

The video seeks to draw a contrast between Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee, who once corrected a woman after she called Barack Obama a Muslim.

“Why won’t Mitt Romney do the same?” asks the clip.

On Monday, Mitt Romney stopped short of condemning Donald Trump’s comments.

“I don’t agree with all the people who support me. And my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” Mitt Romney told reporters.

The Obama campaign video against Donald Trump is the latest in a series of attack ads.

On Monday, the Romney campaign released an attack ad criticizing Barack Obama over a federal loan to a solar panel maker which later went bankrupt.

On Tuesday Mitt Romney also met casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who gave millions to supporters of Newt Gingrich’s campaign during the primary season.

Experts say the outcome of November’s election could depend on what happens in a handful of battleground states, including Colorado and Nevada, as the candidates vie for the support of independent voters.

The next question of the campaign is who Mitt Romney will pick as his vice-presidential running mate.

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A new book by biographer David Maraniss that delves into Barack Obama’s teenage years gives fresh insight into the president’s marijuana-smoking days as a high school student in the 1970s.

The book reveals how a teen Barack Obama and his friends formed The Choom Gang – slang for smoking marijuana – in which he invented inhaling techniques and rode a car called the Choomwagon.

In the book, Barack Obama: The Story, David Maraniss calls the future president “Barry” and reveals he “was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends”.

One was “total absorption” or “TA”, the rules of which stated that if you exhaled early, “you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around”.

Another idea was “Roof Hits” – rolling up car windows to stop smoke blowing out and going to waste.

“When the pot was gone, they tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the ceiling,” David Maraniss writes in the book, excerpted on Google Books and due out June 19.

“Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,” an old school friend told the author.

And if that rule didn’t give enough of an insight into how much Barack Obama loved his marijuana, David Maraniss goes on to reveal he was known for his “interceptions” when a joint was being passed around.

“He often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted <<intercepted>>, and took an extra hit,” David Maraniss writes.

In the book, Barack Obama The Story, David Maraniss calls the future president “Barry” and reveals he “was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends”

In the book, Barack Obama The Story, David Maraniss calls the future president “Barry” and reveals he “was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends”

The anecdotes are from Barack Obama’s time studying at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii and Occidental College in Los Angeles.

It is not the first time the spotlight has fallen on his teenage use of marijuana. In his 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama made the admission himself.

Barack Obama wrote about some of his smoking haunts, including “a white classmate’s sparkling new van”, “in the dorm room of some brother” and “on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids”.

“Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it,” Barack Obama adds in the memoir.

But David Maraniss is quick to point out that Barack Obama was surrounded with the drug in Hawaii – where a wide selection of varieties were on offer – and that “Barry” did not fit the stereotype of a teen pot smoker.

“In fact, most members of the Choom Gang were decent students and athletes who went on to successful and productive lawyers, writers and businessmen,” David Maraniss writes.

But they weren’t all destined for great futures. Ray, who dealt pot to the group and was known for his ability “to score quality bud”, was later killed by a “scorned gay lover” armed with a hammer.

Ray gets another mention in Barack Obama’s school yearbook as the teenager wrote his thanks to: “Tut [his grandmother], Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good times.”

One of Barack Obama’s friends, Mark Bendix, had a Volkswagen microbus that they called “the Choomwagon”, the book continues, and they would use it to drive up Mount Tantalus in Honolulu.

Once parked, they “turned up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult and Stevie Wonder, lit up some <<sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds>> and washed it down with <<green bottled beer>> (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St. Pauli Girl)”.

The book also documents Barack Obama’s early democratic leanings, explaining that the group operated by consensus and any member could veto a suggestion.

“Whenever an idea was broached, someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of that era) and indicate that the motion was not approved.

“They later shortened the process so that you could just shout <<V>> to get the point across,” he wrote.

As well as in Dreams from My Father – in which he wrote he “got high [to] push questions of who I was out of my mind” – Barack Obama has been forthcoming about his use of marijuana.

When Bill Clinton’s claimed that he had tried marijuana but insisted he “didn’t inhale” in 2006, Barack Obama said: “That was the point, wasn’t it?”

Yet since coming into power in 2008, Barack Obama’s support for the substance has waned, enforcing strict penalties for drug use – that would have prevented his presidency if he himself had been caught.

 

It appears Barack Obama may have got worse high school grades than George W. Bush after new evidence showed the current president was among a college class with poor average SAT scores.

Doubts about the supposedly superior intellect of Barack Obama were first raised after he refused to release his academic record.

Barack Obama has also made some factual errors during his time in the job – although he is still a very long way behind his gaff-prone predecessor.

But now it has emerged that Barack Obama was among a 1981 intake of transfers to New York’s Columbia University that was at the time branded one of the worst ever.

The president, who moved from Occidental Community College in Los Angeles, was among 67 students whose average combined math and verbal score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test is a 1,100, according to a report obtained by Breitbart News.

By comparison, George W. Bush – who earned a history degree from Yale in 1968 – got 1206 out of a possible 1600 points in the same test he took at Andover boarding school in Massachusetts.

If Barack Obama, who majored in political science at Columbia, were near the average of that year, it would mean he had worse high school grades than a president derided by many as the dumbest in history.

Barack Obama may have got worse high school grades than George W. Bush after new evidence showed the current president was among a college class with poor average SAT scores

Barack Obama may have got worse high school grades than George W. Bush after new evidence showed the current president was among a college class with poor average SAT scores

Of course, Barack Obama went on to distinguish himself by going on to earn the second highest honor in a graduate law degree at Harvard .

And he became the first black president of the prestigious legal journal, the Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama also taught at the University of Chicago for twelve years – with eight years spent as senior lecturer in constitutional law.

But, the possibility that Barack Obama got lower high school scores than George W. Bush, would take some of the shine off his image as an intellectual heavyweight.

In his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama describes himself as an unfocused high school student whose mother criticized him for being a “loafer”.

Barack Obama also describes his attitude toward his studies at Occidental as ‘indifferent’ and called himself a “bum” who was notorious for partying.

However, despite his apparent lack of focus, he was able to win a place at Columbia.

Of the 450 students applied to transfer to the Ivy League university in 1981, only 67 were admitted, according to the Columbia Spectator.

This compared to 650 applicants just four years before, signifying that those who wanted to study there has lower grades.

A November 18, 1981 article in the Columbia Spectator revealed the SAT average for the transfer intake that year.

It stated: “On paper at least, the quality of the students accepted [as transfers] has declined along with the number of applicants, the officials say.”

In that story, Robert Boatti, the then Assistant Dean of Admissions, also attributed the drop in transfer application to the College’s policy of requiring transfer students to take courses in its core curriculum and to the limited availability of financial aid for them.

“He had said that many come from community colleges, rather than the nation’s top schools.

“Even the unhappiest people don’t transfer from Harvard,” Robert Boatti added.

 

0

NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago in a summit dominated by the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

They want to forge a common stance as they prepare to hand over security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.

Some members have pledged aid to help Afghan forces tackle the Taliban insurgency on their own.

President Barack Obama warned of “hard days ahead”, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his country was fully aware of the responsibilities.

Barack Obama urged leaders to “pool resources”, and vowed to stand united to complete the Afghan withdrawal.

A number of NATO leaders have arrived from Washington, where they attended G8 talks that focused on the euro crisis.

The G8 group of leading industrial nations promised to promote growth alongside fiscal responsibility and insisted on the need for Greece to stay in the eurozone.

US President Barack Obama said there was an “emerging consensus” that European countries must now focus on jobs and growth.

The statements represented a shift away from Germany’s pro-austerity stance.

More than 50 leaders are attending the NATO meeting in Chicago.

Among them are heads of state and government from the 28 NATO countries, as well as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari.

NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago in a summit dominated by the withdrawal from Afghanistan

NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago in a summit dominated by the withdrawal from Afghanistan

As talks began President Obama spoke of a “transformational decade” in Afghanistan and the enormous sacrifices of the American people on the road to peace, stability and development.

The summit comes as several NATO leaders are under domestic pressure to withdraw troops from Afghanistan before 2014.

The new French President, Francois Hollande, has promised to pull out the country’s forces by the end of this year.

However, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said such moves were part of the plan.

“We are now in a process of gradually handing over lead responsibility for security to the Afghans and that process will be completed by the end of 2014 and during that process you will see withdrawal of troops, a shift from combat to support,” he said.

“It’s not a contradiction of our strategy, it’s a part of our strategy,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen added.

Some nations – including the US, Australia, Britain, and Germany – have made pledged to an international fund set to help Afghan forces after the NATO pullout.

The US is expected to pay half of an estimated $4 billion needed every year.

More than 10 years after the US toppled the Taliban regime, violence is continuing unabated in Afghanistan. According to UN figures, the number of deaths reached a record 3,031 in 2011 – the great majority caused by militants.

Earlier this month the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive. On Saturday a suicide bomber killed at least 10 people, a number of them children, at a checkpoint in the eastern province of Khost.

The Obama administration is hoping that President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan will agree to reopen key NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, which were closed in November after US air strikes killed Pakistani troops.

Pakistan’s co-operation is regarded as key to the success of the international mission in Afghanistan, as 130,000 US-led troops fight a Taliban insurgency.

Also on the agenda at the NATO summit are plans for a US-led missile defense system for Europe, aimed at countering a possible threat from Iran.

The leaders are expected to announce the first phase of the scheme, with the deployment of US warships armed with interceptors in the Mediterranean and a radar system based in Turkey.

Russia has voiced strong opposition to the plan, saying it undermines the value of its nuclear deterrent.

The summit is taking place amid heavy security in Chicago.

Leaders from the Occupy movement have said they will join forces with anti-war demonstrators which have held protests ahead of the NATO meeting.

 

Thousands of protesters were expected to march in downtown Chicago today to the lakeside McCormick Place convention center where President Barack Obama and dozens of other world leaders will meet for the NATO summit.

Newlyweds Tim and Beth Alberts left the church in the city centre on Saturday after exchanging their vows and found themselves in the middle of a mass demonstration.

With her mouth open aghast at the sight of the anti-capitalist activists, a furious Beth Alberts was caught on video telling the wedding party: “Let’s get out of here.”

Newlyweds Tim and Beth Alberts left the church in the city centre on Saturday after exchanging their vows and found themselves in the middle of a mass demonstration

Newlyweds Tim and Beth Alberts left the church in the city centre on Saturday after exchanging their vows and found themselves in the middle of a mass demonstration

Both Chicago residents, Tim Alberts is a law clerk at Brady, Connolly & Masuda and Beth Alberts is a medical aesthetician at Cellular Intelligence Med Spa.

Hundreds of protestors paid little heed to the newlyweds on their march through the city. The anti-NATO protests were also aimed at Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget cuts.

There were high tensions and frequent clashes between protesters and police today as violence broke out in pockets around the city.

Police in riot gear surrounded the downtown areas of Grant Park and the Loop and also patrolled train stations.

Protesters began arriving at 6.30 a.m. at the park and set up under the trees to shade themselves from the sun.

Following the rally in the park, protesters planned to march to the convention center at McCormick Place. Around the NATO summit, concrete barriers have been set up along with black, anti-scale fencing. Some businesses and homes in the area have taken the precaution of boarding up their windows.

Chris Geovanis of the Chicago and New Media Collective told the thousands gathered in the park that police had interfere with the march and hurt some protesters, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson also appeared and said the protests must remain non-violent.

He said: “We learned from Dr. King in Birmingham. We march in a disciplined, non-violent way. We cannot afford to have our message hijacked by acts of provocation.”

There have been 18 arrested over the past week – not including the five people arrested on suspicion of two separate terrorist plots to use Molotov cocktails during the summit.

 

G8 leaders of the world’s most powerful economies say they want debt-stricken Greece to remain in the eurozone.

In their summit communique, G8 leaders also committed themselves to promoting growth alongside fiscal responsibility.

However, the leaders acknowledged “the right measures are not the same for each of us”.

Greece’s possible exit from the eurozone was high on the agenda, following inconclusive elections there.

The leaders of France, Germany, the US, the UK, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia have been meeting at Camp David in the US state of Maryland.

“We agree on the importance of a strong and cohesive eurozone for global stability and recovery, and we affirm our interest in Greece remaining in the eurozone while respecting its commitments,” the statement said.

The global economic recovery was showing signs of progress, they said, but “significant headwinds persist”.

G8 leaders are divided on whether to continue with austerity or back stimulus measures instead.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel favors austerity, while newly elected French President Francois Hollande wants to pursue policies for greater growth, as does President Barack Obama.

G8 leaders of the world's most powerful economies say they want debt-stricken Greece to remain in the eurozone

G8 leaders of the world's most powerful economies say they want debt-stricken Greece to remain in the eurozone

There are caveats but the first line of the communique – about promoting growth and jobs – means Presidents Obama and Hollande have won the day.

However, it is not clear that Angela Merkel has got their message and is prepared to act on it, our correspondent adds.

US officials said Angela Merkel would hold a one-on-one meeting with Barack Obama later on Saturday.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said there would be another key meeting in June in Rome, where he would host Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel.

Earlier, UK Prime Minister David Cameron called for deficit reduction.

“There is a growing sense of urgency that action needs to be taken, contingency plans need to be put in place and the strengthening of banks, governments, firewalls and all of those things need to take place very fast,” he told reporters at Camp David.

The likelihood of Greece leaving the euro is growing.

The office of the Greek interim prime minister said on Friday that Angela Merkel had suggested the country hold a referendum on euro membership on election day, but the German chancellor’s cabinet dismissed this as “false”.

Greek voters will again go to the polls on 17 June after earlier elections failed to produce a viable coalition to run the country.

A caretaker government was sworn in this week after elections.

Investors fear any refusal by Athens to impose deep spending cuts agreed under a bailout deal could result in the country quitting the bloc of 17 countries that use the euro.

Two opinion polls published on Saturday showed the anti-bailout left-wing Syriza bloc neck and neck with centre-right New Democracy, both on about 25%.

Larger countries such as Spain or Italy struggling to ease their debt loads might then become vulnerable, potentially triggering wider eurozone upheaval and even a global financial crisis to rival the one of 2008.

The G8 summit has now moved on to other issues, including food security, energy and climate, partnerships in North Africa and the Middle East and the war in Afghanistan.

After the G8 summit ends on Saturday evening, most of the leaders will decamp to Chicago to join a larger group of international officials for a NATO summit on Sunday and Monday, at which Afghanistan is expected to be the main item on the agenda.

Three men arrested in Chicago on suspicion of planning to throw petrol bombs at the NATO summit have been charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device.

Prosecutor Anita Alvarez said the campaign headquarters of President Barack Obama and the home of mayor Rahm Emanuel were among the targets.

 

The political row over President Barack Obama’s heritage was dramatically reignited today as a 1991 booklet boldly announced that he was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii”.

In the cover for a 1991 promotional booklet by Barack Obama’s then-publisher Acton & Dystel, he is as “the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, [who] was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii”.

The information, which could be used as more ammunition against the incumbent, comes months before what will likely be a close campaign between Barack Obama and likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The 36-page promotional booklet was exclusively obtained by Breitbart, and was sent out to colleagues within the publishing industry in the early 1990s.

A later biography, which can still be found on Acton & Dystel’s archives, reads: “Barack Obama is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

“He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, <<Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance>>, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.”

The blue, teal, and silver booklet was printed in part to celebrate Acton & Dystel’s 15th anniversary, and also to display the breadth and depth of authors the imprint published.

Other authors featured include Ralph Nader, former Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill, and pop group New Kids on the Block.

Miriam Goderich, who now works at partner company Dystel & Goderich, is listed as the pamphlet’s editor.

The political row over President Barack Obama’s heritage was dramatically reignited today as a 1991 booklet boldly announced that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii

The political row over President Barack Obama’s heritage was dramatically reignited today as a 1991 booklet boldly announced that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii

Acton spoke with Breitbart about the cover, saying that “almost nobody” wrote their own biography, though non-athletes were “probably” approached to confirm the veracity of it.

Barack Obama later left Acton & Dystel, submitting a book proposal to Simon & Schuster imprint Poseidon Press worth more than six figures.

The book, tentatively called Journeys In Black And White, was later abandoned for the autobiography Dreams From My Father.

A note from Breitbart’s senior management at the top of the article offers the following disclaimer: “It is evidence – not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.”

President Barack Obama released his birth certificate to the public last April. He said during a press briefing at the time that he was “puzzled at the degree to which this thing just keeps going on”.

He said: “We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.”

The president concluded his speech by acknowledging that some people – despite the evidence – would not let go of the issue.

“I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest,” he said.

“But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Though the White House was certainly hoping to silence the “birther” movement by releasing the president’s birth certificate, grumbles and murmurs have been commonplace since the April 27, 2011 release.

On May 12, Colorado Republican Congressman Mike Coffman brought up the issue at a fundraiser, saying: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America.

“I don’t know that. But I do know this – that in his heart, he’s not an American.

“He’s just not an American.”

According to 9 News, Mike Coffman was first met with silence, but after several moments, fundraiser attendees offered tentative applause.

However, the congressman issued an apology later in the week, writing: “I have confidence in President Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy as President of the United States.”

He further qualified his statement by saying: “I don’t believe the president shares my belief in American Exceptionalism. His policies reflect a philosophy that America is but one nation of many equals.

“As a Marine, I believe America is unique and based on a core set of principles that makes it superior to other nations.”

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Edward Klein’s book, The Amateur, claims that Michelle Obama prepared divorce papers to separate from Barack Obama in 2000 following his disastrous attempt to win a House seat in Chicago.

When Barack Obama lost miserably, the future First Lady was supposedly disgusted that her husband had ignored her warnings not to take on the four term incumbent Bobby Rush.

Their marriage – in its eighth year at the time – was “on the rocks” with Barack Obama so depressed some of his friends feared he was suicidal.

The claims mark the second time the Obamas have faced allegations they were on the verge of divorce after reports in 2010 suggested they were having difficulties.

Michelle and Barack Obama admitted that in the past they did go through a rough patch but that they patched things up and grew closer together.

The Obamas have now been married for 21 years and have two children, Malia, 13, and Sasha, nine.

In The Amateur, Edward Klein’s unauthorized account of Barack Obama’s life and first term in office, it is claimed that the future president was over ambitious in his attempt to take on House member Bobby Rush for the black South Side seat in Chicago.

In a crushing blow, Barack Obama lost by two votes to one prompting claims from Bobby Rush that he was an “educated fool”.

Edward Klein writes: “After Obama’s humiliating defeat he was broke and deeply in debt and it looked as though he might be finished in public life.

“During the dark days that followed his defeat, he turned to Michelle for comfort. But she was in no mood to offer him sympathy.

“After all he had refused to listen to her warnings about taking on the formidable Bobby Rush. He had put his family in a precarious financial position. And he had dashed Michelle’s hopes of creating a stable and secure future.

“As a result their marriage was on the rocks, and Obama confided to friends that he and Michelle were talking about divorce.

“Michelle actually had divorce papers drawn up, one of her friends told me.”

Michelle Obama prepared divorce papers to separate from Barack Obama in 2000 following his disastrous attempt to win a House seat in Chicago

Michelle Obama prepared divorce papers to separate from Barack Obama in 2000 following his disastrous attempt to win a House seat in Chicago

In desperation Barack Obama begged friends to help him open an office to stay in politics – but did not tell his wife for fear of her wrath if she found out.

The couple appear to have worked out their differences, however – Barack Obama ran for a Senate seat in Illinois and won it in, assuming office in 2005 and restoring his wife’s faith in him.

The Amateur also includes a number of other claims about Barack Obama, including an interview with his former pastor Jeremiah Wright which could ignite the debate about his religion.

During the “birther” row about where Barack Obama was born he faced repeated accusations that not only was he born in Kenya, he was in fact a Muslim and not a Christian as he claims to be.

Asked by Edward Klein if he converted Barack Obama from Islam to Christianity, Jeremiah Wright said: “That’s hard to tell.

“I think I convinced him that it was okay for him to make a choice in terms of who he believed Jesus is. And I told him it was really okay and not a put down of the Muslim part of his family or his Muslim friends.”

Barack Obama was supposedly known as “Black Jesus” by his former senior campaign adviser David Axelrod because of his messiah complex, Edward Klein writes.

He also had a run-in with Steven Rogers, a wealthy businessman who became the Gund Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Early in his campaign for the U.S. Senate he gave Barack Obama $3,000 and arranged for thousands more dollars to be donated to him on one condition: he come and speak at the school when he got elected.

After becoming a Senator Barack Obama is said to have gone back on his offer because he was too busy and told Steven Rogers: “Come on man, you should know better when politicians make promises.”

In a furious tirade Steven Rogers screamed at him: “You’re a dirty rotten m*****f*****. What kind of s*** are you trying to pull? F*** you, you big-eared m*****f*****.”

A year later, Barack Obama finally showed up but by then Steven Rogers’ had all but written him off as a friend.

In extracts which had already been made public Edward Klein claims that Michelle Obama is so jealous of her husband receiving female attention she orders women who are close to him in the White House to be watched.

The First Lady is supposedly paranoid Barack Obama will cheat on her as John F. Kennedy did to his wife.

In the book, Edward Klein adds more detail and claims when Barack Obama was studying at Harvard as a law student she would fly into jealous rages when she saw him with other women.

She was supposedly so territorial that she “drove a lot of Barack’s friends away”, Edward Klein writes.

The only reason they got married at all was that Michelle Obama “insisted” upon it – because she wanted to “remake him” as she wanted and not let him have an easy life.

The book claims that once her husband assumed office Michelle Obama began to wield power behind the scenes to such an extent that Barack Obama shares a “co-presidency” with her.

Edward Klein also alleges that Barack Obama twice snubbed Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, and that he and Michelle privately made disparaging comments about her family – and even their clothes.

He writes: “Caroline heard there was a lot of nasty s**** being said about the Kennedys by the president and Michelle.

“There were catty remarks about how badly the Kennedy women dressed and how their houses were shabby and threadbare.

“Caroline got the impression that most of this negativity was coming from Michelle, who didn’t want the Kennedys to be part of the administration for fear that they would have too much influence over the president.”

Among others who were also shut out of the White House were Oprah Winfrey who Edward Klein claims was given the cold shoulder for being too fat.

The title of the book comes from a supposed outburst last August by former U.S. President Bill Clinton who branded Barack Obama “an amateur”.

He also urged his wife Hillary to quit her post as U.S. Secretary of State and challenge Barack Obama for the Democratic ticket in this year’s elections, telling her: “Your country needs you! Your country needs us!”

The White House has denounced the book and said that Edward Klein has a record for making things up.

Bill Clinton has also denied he insulted the President.