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Barack Obama,in full Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961,Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.),44th president of the United States (2009 ) and the first African American to hold the office. Before winning the presidency, Obama represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate (200508). He was the third African American to be elected to that body since the end of Reconstruction (1877). In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.

Obamas father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a teenage goatherd in rural Kenya, won a scholarship to study in the United States, and eventually became a senior economist in the Kenyan government. Obamas mother, S. Ann Dunham, grew up in Kansas, Texas, and Washington state before her family settled in Honolulu. In 1960 she and Barack Sr. met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii and married less than a year later.

When Obama was age two, Barack Sr. left to study at Harvard University; shortly thereafter, in 1964, Ann and Barack Sr. divorced. (Obama saw his father only one more time, during a brief visit when Obama was 10.) Later Ann remarried, this time to another foreign student, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia, with whom she had a second child, Maya. Obama lived for several years in Jakarta with his half sister, mother, and stepfather. While there, Obama attended both a government-run school where he received some instruction in Islam and a Catholic private school where he took part in Christian schooling.

He returned to Hawaii in 1971 and lived in a modest apartment, sometimes with his grandparents and sometimes with his mother (she remained for a time in Indonesia, returned to Hawaii, and then went abroad againpartly to pursue work on a Ph.D.before divorcing Soetoro in 1980). For a brief period his mother was aided by government food stamps, but the family mostly lived a middle-class existence. In 1979 Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite college preparatory academy in Honolulu.

Obama attended Occidental College in suburban Los Angeles for two years and then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where in 1983 he received a bachelors degree in political science. Influenced by professors who pushed him to take his studies more seriously, Obama experienced great intellectual growth during college and for a couple of years thereafter. He led a rather ascetic life and read works of literature and philosophy by William Shakespeare, Friedrich Nietzsche, Toni Morrison, and others. After serving for a couple of years as a writer and editor for Business International Corp., a research, publishing, and consulting firm in Manhattan, he took a position in 1985 as a community organizer on Chicagos largely impoverished Far South Side. He returned to school three years later and graduated magna cum laude in 1991 from Harvard Universitys law school, where he was the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review. While a summer associate in 1989 at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin, Obama had met Chicago native Michelle Robinson, a young lawyer at the firm. The two married in 1992.

After receiving his law degree, Obama moved to Chicago and became active in the Democratic Party. He organized Project Vote, a drive that registered tens of thousands of African Americans on voting rolls and that is credited with helping Democrat Bill Clinton win Illinois and capture the presidency in 1992. The effort also helped make Carol Moseley Braun, an Illinois state legislator, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. During this period, Obama wrote his first book and saw it published. The memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995), is the story of Obamas search for his biracial identity by tracing the lives of his now-deceased father and his extended family in Kenya. Obama lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago and worked as an attorney on civil rights issues.

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Barack Obama | biography - president of United States ...

President Obama won a big victory for his trade agenda Friday with the Senates approval of fast-track legislation that could make it easier for him to complete a wide-ranging trade deal that would include 11 Pacific Rim nations.

A coalition of 48 Senate Republicans and 14 Democrats voted for Trade Promotion Authority late Friday, sending the legislation to a difficult fight in the House, where it faces more entrenched opposition from Democrats.

The Senate coalition fought off several attempts by opponents to undermine the legislation, defeating amendments that were politically popular but potentially poisonous to Obamas bid to secure the trade deal.

This is an important bill, likely the most important bill we will pass this year. Its important to President Obama, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and primary author of the bill, said at the close of debate.

TPAs fast-track provisions would allow Congress, under strict timelines, to consider trade deals with a simple up-or-down vote without any amendments or requirements of a Senate super-majority to end debate. That would help Obama complete the final details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the other 11 nations, a bloc that represents about 40 percent of the global economy.

The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Friday to strengthen the administration's hand in global trade talks. The vote was 62-37. (AP)

If TPA clears Congress, Obamas negotiators will push to conclude the Pacific trade pact and then send it to Congress for final approval, possibly later this year or early next year. The legislative package also includes new funding for labor training for workers that are certified for having lost their jobs because of foreign competition.

Obamas aggressive push for the trade agenda has upended his relationship with his long-standing allies in the labor movement, as well as anti-corporate liberal activists who strongly supported his 2008 and 2012 elections. It sparked sharp exchanges, played out in the national media, with a liberal icon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), leading to one of Obamas normally closest allies, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), to question whether he was being sexist for singling her out for criticism.

Unions and progressive activists have mobilized their forces against TPA for more than a year now, believing that defeating the fast-track authority would probably also kill negotiations on the Pacific trade deal.

On Friday, union leaders narrowly lost their bid for passage of an amendment designed to create strict regulation of global currency markets, offered by Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), whose states have been ravaged by losses of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition.

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Obama wins trade victory in the Senate - The Washington Post

First lady Michelle Obama welcomed President Obama to Twitter Tuesday night with some impressive moves in a slick new workout video, "FLOTUS-style." As part of her Let's Move! program's #Gimmefive challenge, the First Lady showed off five ways to exercise and stay healthy.

While many have taken the opportunity to greet President Obama's arrival on Twitter:

Few have been quite so inspirational.

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Let's Move! program, the #Gimmefive challenge is an effort to "encourage Americans across the country to give out high-fives when they see someone making healthy choices," and to list five things they are doing "to eat better, be more active, and lead a healthier life," according to the Let's Move! website. First lady Michelle Obama started the Let's Move! initiative five years ago as a way to combat childhood obesity and promote healthy habits.

Between jumping rope, lifting weights, and boxing, maybe now we know how Obama got those famously sculpted arms.

Your move, POTUS.

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May 13, 2015. Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter James Taylor poses for a portrait in New York.(The Associated Press)

Barack Obama supporter James Taylor doesn't just think the U.S. president is great he believes Obama is the greatest of all-time.

"I've been watching politics since (Dwight) Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and Obama is my favorite, favorite president," Taylor said in an interview Wednesday. "I am just thankful for every day that he's in office. I am so proud that he represents my country and I think he represents me I think he represents the America that I know."

Taylor, 67, is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. The pop icon performed "America the Beautiful" at Obama's second inauguration in 2013.

"I had a really tough time during the Cheney-Bush years, I did, and I had a hard time accepting that that administration represented me because I don't think they did," Taylor said.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer also called Obama's family "precious" and said he appreciates the U.S. leader because he's "sane" and "balanced."

"He promised to give us a health care system, it's a work in progress, but he has put us on a road to that," Taylor said. "I'm so grateful for what he's done for gay rights and for the emancipation of gay people. Particularly from my point of view, I think that was so overdue and so important, and so important for America to be ahead of the curve on this."

Taylor criticized Congress in Obama's defense.

"I've never seen a Congress that has been so obstructive and so contrary and so committed to doing anything that will foul up this administration. I just think it's an absolute scandal that he has had so little cooperation," he said. "So anyway, you hit a nerve and I'll go on forever. But I'll just say it a third time: Every day that Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are in the White House is a day that I am thankful for."

Obama isn't the only politician Taylor is supporting: The singer said he's on the Hillary Rodham Clinton train, too.

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The Interior Department wrote in a statement that Shell could begin drilling in the Chukchi Sea once several environmental conditions are met, including a sign-off from agencies assessing the impact on endangered species. State agencies must also approve the plan.

The move has upset environmental activists who are concerned the drilling will have detrimental effects.

RELATED: Keystone vote: Senate fails to override veto

Shell, if it obtains the remaining permits, would be the only company drilling in the federal waters in the Arctic.

Abigail Ross Hopper, the director of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said her agency had taken "a thoughtful approach" to Shell's requests for drilling permits in the Arctic.

"As we move forward, any offshore exploratory activities will continue to be subject to rigorous safety standards," she said.

Shell has been pressing for years to gain permission from the federal government to tap Arctic Ocean oil reserves, a move environmentalists have protested for the perceived risks to the environment and wildlife.

The Interior Department estimates there to be more than 20 billion barrels of oil and 90 trillion cubic feet of natural gas beneath the freezing Arctic waters near Alaska.

Tim Donaghy, a senior research specialist for Greenpeace, panned Monday's decision.

"Instead of holding Shell accountable and moving the country towards a sustainable future, our federal regulators are catering to an ill-prepared company in a region that does not tolerate cutting corners," he said.

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