Barack Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) - Tuesday is for celebrating. Wednesday Barack Obama gets down to business, with a schedule packed with diplomacy, war discussions and economic meetings. Obama has been promising major changes on "Day One" of his administration. Among them, giving the Joints Chief of Staff a new mission to end the Iraq war "responsibly and deliberately but decisively. " A top adviser says that's what Obama plans to do Wednesday. Obama also recently told USA Today he will assemble a team on Day One to deal with violence in Gaza and other Middle East problems.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama has arrived in Washington at the end of a majestic train ride across the frigid mid-Atlantic seaboard, moving another step closer to the presidency. Celebratory crowds braved subfreezing weather to salute Obama along his 137-mile journey to the nation's capital from Philadelphia. For his part, Obama often couched his moment of triumph in sobering words, saying the country is burdened by staggering problems like the economy, global warming and war. He will take the oath of office in three days, succeeding George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama will cross the same marble floor as every president since Andrew Jackson on Thursday when he enters Blair House, his new temporary home. To his right will be the room where Abraham Lincoln put up his feet. Upstairs is the room where Harry S. Truman looked out after an assassination attempt and said, according to a guard, "What the hell is going on down there?" The government's official guest residence is rich in history, luxurious in appointment and - after the departure of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard - finally vacant for Obama and his family to move in. History of Blair House "They're going to have a lot of fun running around that house, I can tell you," said Mario Buatta, one of two designers who led a renovation in the Reagan years.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama wants more transparency and strict guidelines for using the second $350 billion of the bailout fund Congress approved last fall to stabilize the nation's financial system. Obama's economic team has been talking with the Bush administration about having Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ask Congress as early as this week for access to the $350 billion remaining in the bailout fund. If Congress rejected such a request, a presidential veto could still free up the money, unless Congress overrode the veto.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Promising to protect the United States while adhering to its core human values, President-elect Barack Obama formally unveiled his intelligence team Friday, praising their integrity, management skills and willingness to tell him the truth. "We must adhere to our values as diligently as we protect our safety with no exceptions," Obama said. Obama picked retired Adm. Dennis Blair as the national intelligence director and Leon Panetta to head the CIA. He called them "public servants with unquestioned integrity, broad experience, and strong managers with the core pragmatism that we need in dangerous times.

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama warned of dire and long-lasting consequences if Congress doesn't pump unprecedented dollars into the national economy, making an urgent pitch Thursday for his mammoth spending proposal in his first speech since the election. "In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse" if Washington doesn't go far enough to address the spreading crisis, the Democrat said as fresh economic reports showed an outlook growing increasingly grim.

WASHINGTON (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that reforming massive government entitlement programs - such as Social Security and Medicare - would be "a central part" of his effort to control federal spending. Obama made the pledge but provided few details as he named Nancy Killefer as his administration's chief performance officer, creating a new White House position aimed at eliminating government waste and improving efficiency. Noting that the Congressional Budget Office had just estimated he would inherit a $1.2 trillion federal deficit for fiscal 2009, Obama promised to cut unnecessary spending.

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) - A former Hutchinson News photographer returns to the White House for a second time as the official presidential photographer. Fifty-four-year-old Pete Souza (SOO'-zuh) first served as chief White House photographer for the late President Ronald Reagan. This week Souza accepted the request of President-elect Barack Obama to return to the White House in the same capacity. Souza told the News Tuesday that the invitation came in a telephone call from Robert Gibbs, incoming White House press secretary.

CHICAGO (AP) - Swiftly completing his Cabinet, President-elect Barack Obama named four officials to oversee transportation, labor, trade and small business policy in his new administration Friday but warned that economic recovery may take years. Little more than a month before he takes office, Obama noted his speed in putting his full economic team in place, saying he had done so at an earlier point than any president in history because of the magnitude of the troubles the country faces.