Barack Obama

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (born in Nyanza Province, Kenya) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.

Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Since announcing his candidacy in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War and implementing universal health care as campaign themes.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation, and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. His father went to Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies, then returned to Kenya, where he died in an auto accident when the younger Obama was twenty-one years old.

Kerala's Communists Balk at U.S. Stores -- and U.S. Jobs

A highway or a river? On the road in Kerala, India during ferocious monsoons.Trivandrum, Kerala - It's raining so hard the highway looks like a river and the windshield wipers can't move fast enough to clear the glass. But Reji Shokla, my fearless driver, races on past a woman swimming to her house, a grove of battered coconut trees, a Western Union billboard and a poster of Che Guevarra. Was that a cow with blue horns mooing at me? Welcome to Kerala. At the southernmost tip of India, this diverse state is grappling with change -- and resisting, as well as it can. Citizens have mounted campaigns against liberalization, globalization and Westernization, while benefiting from them as well. I've talked to a lot of different people over the past few days, and what I hear is: change brings good and bad; but when bad comes, America is most often the face of it. First the good: Kerala has the highest literacy rate (for men and women), life expectancy and standard of living in India. It has a religiously mixed population of roughly 55% Hindu, 25% Muslim and 20% Christian, and is relatively peaceful (though there is evidence of mounting extremism in the north). The economy is driven largely by remittances from overseas, which account for about one fifth of the state's income. Kerala educates workers who go abroad as nurses and technicians and send cash home. Now the bad: Kerala has relatively high unemployment (20%), domestic abuse, alcoholism, and suicide. Tourism creates a somewhat unstable economy that, for example, was badly shaken by September 11, 2001 and by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Farmers are losing their livelihoods to competition. Remitted money is often spent on huge houses for lucky individuals with relatives abroad rather than on infrastructure development for the community....

washingtonpost.com Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:41:07 EDT

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/07/24/BL2007072401872.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
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