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Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged Thursday that the campaign was no longer pleading ignorance about the story of a man who has appeared in both a super PAC ad and a campaign ad. "No one is denying he was in one of our campaign ads. He was on a conference call telling his story," Psaki told reporters on Air Force One. Missouri steelworker Joe Soptic starred in an Obama campaign ad and participated in a conference call with the campaign in May, as POLITICO reported Wednesday.

MUMBAI: Implicitly acknowledging the decline of American dominance, Barack Obama on Sunday said the US was no longer in a position to "meet the rest of the world economically on our terms". Speaking at a town hall meeting in Mumbai, he said, "I do think that one of the challenges that we are going face in the US, at a time when we are still recovering from the financial crisis is, how do we respond to some of the challenges of globalisation? The fact of the matter is that for most of my lifetime and I'll turn 50 next year...

WASHINGTON – Grilled by skeptical lawmakers, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday acknowledged his agency had been lax in overseeing offshore drilling activities and that may have contributed to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "There will be tremendous lessons to be learned here," Salazar told a Senate panel in his first appearance before Congress since the April 20 blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

After months of denying any technical problems with its smart meter program, PG&E publicly acknowledged Monday a range of glitches affecting tens of thousands of the digital meters But the San Francisco-based utility said it had found just 8 meters that inaccurately reported a customer's energy use. It would not say how many of the 5.5 million meters installed so far have been tested for accuracy after installation. PG&E detailed 43,376 cases in which the meters were involved in other kinds of problems. It said 23,000 meters were installed improperly, 11,376 failed to retain consumer usage information and 9,000 had...

President Obama's counterterrorism chief acknowledged Saturday that the country is safer since the attacks of September 11, 2001, saying that government actions have made the nation "less hospitable" to terrorism. But he also called some of the precautions taken after the attacks "over the top". John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, told Islamic law students at NYU that the Bush administration, "deserves a lot of praise and credit for the work they did after 9/11 as far as making this country safer and stronger," but countered that statement by saying that prejudice and discrimination have...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the United States bears a substantial share of the blame for the current economic crisis but the world must work together to ease the strains. "The rest of the world needs the U.S. economy and financial system to recover in order for it to revive," Geithner told the Economic Club of Washington. "Just as importantly, we need the rest of the world to recover if we are to prosper again here at home." But a balanced recovery will mean that other countries cannot be "dependent on the U.S. consumer."

LOS ANGELES – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is in the midst of divorce proceedings with his wife, acknowledged in a statement published Tuesday that he is in a relationship with a Spanish-language television reporter. “It is true that I have a relationship with Ms. Mirthala Salinas,” Villaraigosa said in a statement published in the Los Angeles Daily News. “As I've said I take full responsibility for my actions, and I once again ask that people respect my family's privacy. For my part, I intend to stay focused on my job, and to work as hard as I can every day...

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Saturday acknowledged lawmakers' doubts about a U.S. immigration proposal, but argued it will help resolve the status of 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. With the proposal taking fire from both Republicans and Democrats, the Senate is expected to begin debate on immigration next week. Bush used his weekly radio address to open what is likely to be an intense effort to persuade Americans to support the plan as the answer to long-simmering U.S. immigration problems. "It will help us resolve the status of millions of illegal immigrants...

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that her unsuccessful health care reform effort in 1993 makes her more effective on the issue now as she seeks the presidency. "I know there's a big difference between setting a goal and being able to get all the players at the table to agree to it and get it enacted," she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I think I know what not to do as well as having picked up some very important experience in the last 14 years about how to proceed." This week,...

JERUSALEM - Israeli soldiers killed six Hezbollah fighters in four skirmishes in Lebanon after the U.N.-imposed cease-fire took effect Monday, the army said. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he took sole responsibility for the offensive, and acknowledged "deficiencies" in the way the war was conducted. The developments came as Lebanese civilians defied an Israeli travel ban and streamed back to their homes in war-ravaged areas. In an address to parliament, Olmert said the cease-fire agreement eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah and restored Lebanon's sovereignty in the south. And Defense minister Amir Peretz said the...

WASHINGTON - Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged Tuesday the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course. Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country. Google's rivals accommodated the same demands — which Brin described as "a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with" — without international criticism, he said. "We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide...

SPACE CENTER, Houston - After a two-year struggle to keep big chunks of foam from coming off the shuttle fuel tank during launch, NASA acknowledged Tuesday even marshmallow-size pieces could doom the spacecraft under the worst circumstances. Shuttle systems engineering manager John Muratore said it is a risk NASA and the nation must accept for flights to resume anytime soon. It would take years and a total redesign of the fuel tank to completely eliminate foam loss and to ensure the 2003 Columbia tragedy would never be repeated, Muratore and other officials said. NASA expects pieces of insulating foam no...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged using steroids during his years as a champion body builder and said he would still have used them even knowing what he knows now about the adverse effects of the performance-enhancing drugs. In an interview to be broadcast Sunday, Schwarzenegger told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "I have no regrets about it, because at that time, it was something new that came on the market, and we went to the doctor and did it under doctors' supervision. We were experimenting with it. It was a new thing. So you can't roll the clock back and...

MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox (news - web sites) acknowledged an increase in his personal security Monday after authorities alleged that a member of his staff channeled information to drug lords. Federal authorities last week detained Nahum Acosta, director of the office coordinating the president's travel, alleging he passed at least part of Fox's plans to an organized drug gang, according to Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Information on the president's movements is restricted for security reasons. "I've intensified the vigilance not only inside the prisons and within police institutions but also within the administration because this...