WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday promised an all-out rescue and humanitarian effort to help the people of Haiti overcome a “cruel and incomprehensible” tragedy, the ruinous earthquake that ravaged the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
The president said the relief effort is gearing up even as the U.S. government is working to account for Americans who were on the island nation when the disaster struck late Tuesday afternoon.
Obama said he named U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Rajiv Shah to coordinate American efforts, and the president called upon all nations to join in helping stricken Haitians.
Obama spoke Wednesday in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. Later, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters the president had no plans to go to Haiti.
“We’ve mobilized resources to help rescue efforts. Military overflights have assessed the damage, and by early afternoon our civilian disaster assistance team are beginning to arrive,” the president said. Obama adjusted his Wednesday schedule, canceling a jobs event in Maryland to better monitor the situation in Haiti.
Obama encouraged Americans who want to help to go to http://www.whitehouse.gov to find options for contributing to the aid effort.
The president received updates on the situation in Haiti and the U.S. response Wednesday morning from his national security adviser and the Department of Homeland Security.
It would take some days for the ship, in port in Baltimore, to be serviced, supplied and arrive at Haiti, one official said.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake caused thousands of buildings to collapse in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, trapping untold numbers

All but one American employed by the embassy have been accounted for, State Department officials said.

Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said there are about a dozen wounded people — embassy staff, American citizens and family members of local embassy personnel — being treated at the embassy or the ambassador’s residence for non life-threatening injuries like broken bones. The first Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) from USAID is expected to arrive in Haiti from San Jose, Costa Rica around 1:30 p.m. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that U.S. military personnel worked throughout the night in response to the disaster in Haiti.

“An awful lot of people are working in that direction right now.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who is U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said in a statement: “My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti.

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WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to announce a new fee Thursday on the country’s biggest financial firms to recover up to $120 billion in taxpayers’ money used to prop up corporations during the economic crisis, a senior administration official said.
In proposing a multiyear levy on big banks, Obama is targeting an industry whose political deafness has vexed his administration. The $120 billion recovery goal is the most that administration officials expect to lose from the government’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that bailed out banks, automakers and other financial firms.
Congress would have to approve any fee plan.
The proposed levy could put Obama on the popular side of public opinion that is decidedly against Wall Street and angry over shortfalls in a $700 billion bank bailout fund.
Obama’s announcement would come one day after the nation’s top bankers testify before the congressionally created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The hearings come at an ultra-sensitive time for the banking industry. In addition to Obama’s fee proposal, Congress is writing a full-scale overhaul of financial regulations.
The administration official said Obama’s plan has been in the works since August and would seek modifications to the law that sent billions of dollars in bailout money in 2008 and 2009 to a flailing Wall Street that was approaching collapse.
The 2008 law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires the president to seek a way to recoup unrecovered TARP money from financial institutions, but five years after the law was enacted. The administration’s plan raises a series of questions.
Administration officials already have ruled out a fee on financial transactions. An industry official said consideration of a levy now would be premature.
“Current law doesn’t trigger this tax proposal for another four years,” said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group for some of the largest financial firms.

Banks have been repaying their infusions, in part to get out from under compensation limits imposed on the bailout recipients. Banks have also paid dividends from the government help.

With public anger over the bailout still strong, Obama has embraced populist rhetoric in an effort to shame bank executives into paying back the government more quickly and their executives less lavishly.

Funds collected from such a levy would go to pay down the $1.4 trillion deficit amid the Obama-backed stimulus package and aid to Detroit’s automakers.

Washington spent about $245 billion to help banks in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, much less than President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department secured to keep financial firms afloat.

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WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sought to slam the book shut Monday on a controversy stemming from remarks about President Barack Obama’s race and dialect, and a string of forgiving statements from prominent blacks made clear his leadership post is not in immediate jeopardy.
While nationally prominent Democrats ranging from Obama to the Rev. Al Sharpton have rallied to his side, the impact of the gaffe in Reid’s home state of Nevada is unpredictable. The 70-year-old majority leader is seeking re-election this fall, and recent polls show him trailing potential Republican rivals.
Republicans have called on Reid to step down as majority leader, a move that would undermine his re-election chances in Nevada, where he is running as a powerful senior lawmaker who can deliver for his home state.
Reid’s remarks in his home state were his first in public since the weekend disclosure that he had described Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a light-skinned African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Those reflections appear in a new book, “Game Change,” by Time magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann.
Two days later, Reid said he agreed on that last point, and sought to shore up his civil rights credentials. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Sharpton also said Reid did not deserve to lose his leadership position as a result of his comments. New York Gov. David Paterson, who is black, said Reid’s remarks were reprehensible and degrading, but he said Reid shouldn’t lose his leadership post as a result.
Obama, asked about the controversy in a TV One interview, said Reid “used some inartful language in trying to praise me.”
Reid has a history of sparking controversy with off-the-cuff remarks, and possibly as a result, he rarely makes appearances on television interview programs. Several months later, in comments to high school students in Nevada, Reid said the president was a loser, then called the White House swiftly to apologize.
While Democrats quickly coalesced around Reid, Republicans sought political gain in the controversy.
Lott spoke at a 100th birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond, who sought the White House a half-century earlier on a platform of racial segregation.

Steele did not mention that it was Bush’s White House and fellow Republicans, embarrassed by the comments, who ultimately pushed Lott from his leadership position.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the GOP leader, refrained from criticism.

___

Associated Press writer Oskar Garcia in Apex, Nev., contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a “smoking gun” that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.
White House aide John Brennan cited “lapses” and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt.
“There is no smoking gun,” Brennan said. The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other “countries of interest” will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs. All passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the agency said.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard the Northwest airliner, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Brennan cited “a number of streams of information” — the 23-year-old suspect’s name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son’s increasing radicalization — and “little snippets” from intelligence channels. It didn’t, and she clarified her remarks to show she meant that the system worked only after the attack was foiled, Brennan said.
He said the situation was not like before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when intelligence agencies failed to share tips and information that might have uncovered the plot.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that any agency or department was reluctant to share” information.

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SAN’A, Yemen – Western embassies in Yemen locked up Sunday after fresh threats from al-Qaida, and the White House expressed alarm at the terror group’s expanded reach in the poor Arab nation where an offshoot apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner.
President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, cited “indications al-Qaida is planning to carry out an attack against a target” in the capital, possibly the embassy, and estimated the group had several hundred members in Yemen. Britain and the United States are assisting a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen as fears grow about the increasing threat of international terrorism originating from the country.
The Obama administration claims that the suspect in the plot against the Detroit-bound plane was trained and armed by the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen. Brennan blamed a series of what he called lapses and human errors in U.S. intelligence and security defenses for allowing a Nigerian man to board the plane with explosives. The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other “countries of interest” will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs.
Yemen is a poor, decentralized and predominantly Muslim country on the Arabian Peninsula. Given the active threat from al-Qaida, “we’re not going to take any chances,” Brennan said from Washington during appearances on four Sunday talk shows.
The Yemeni government, which issued no official comment on the embassy closures, is friendly to the West but the population is often mistrustful of Western motives and influence. Yemen has pledged to clamp down on militancy, but government control is weak outside the capital and the country has a history of freeing some alleged militants and tolerating others.
Brennan said Westerners are at risk in Yemen until the government gets a better handle on extremism.
Seven of 42 Guantanamo detainees freed by the Obama administration were returned to Yemen, Brennan said, but doubts about the country’s ability to police further freed detainees is a major obstacle to Obama’s plan to shut down the facility. Brennan said the Obama administration is trying to head off the threat now.
Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend. The U.S. and Britain are funding a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen, and Britain plans to host an international conference Jan. 28 to come up with a strategy to counter radicalization in Yemen.

The United States has increased military cooperation with Yemen, with intelligence and other help to back two Yemeni air and ground assaults on al-Qaida hide-outs last month that were reported to have killed more than 60 people. Officials, however, say there are no U.S. ground forces or fighter aircraft in Yemen.

On Thursday, the U.S. Embassy sent a notice to Americans in Yemen urging them to be vigilant about security.

Yemeni security officials said over the weekend that the country had deployed several hundred extra troops to Marib and Jouf, two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country and where airliner suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab may have visited last year.

“There is no smoking gun,” Brennan said. Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.

Brennan cited “a number of streams of information” — the suspect’s name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son’s increasing radicalization — and “little snippets” from intelligence channels.

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