September 25, 2014

United States President Barack Obama, speaking yesterday at the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, declared that the Islamic State [of Iraq and Syria] (ISIS) understands only “the language of force” and that the United States will “work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.” “Today, I ask the world to join in this effort . . . for we will not succumb to threats, and we will demonstrate that the future belongs to those who build, not those who destroy.” Referring to recent ISIS atrocities, including beheadings, the president stated that this band of radical Sunni Muslim jihadists has forced “us to look into the heart of darkness.”

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States in 2008 and took office in January 2009. He was reelected in 2012. (The White House)

The president noted, however, that the military campaign against ISIS is only the most urgent of a number of challenges facing the international community: from resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine and eradicating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to forging a unity government in Afghanistan and confronting climate change. The president was particularly blunt in his remarks regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military incursion into Ukraine: “[His] is a vision of the world in which might makes right, a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another . . .”

A United Nations (UN) General Assembly session brings together delegates from nearly all the world’s nations. The UN works to settle disputes among countries, maintain world peace, and help people better their way of life. (© Mario Tama, Getty Images)

Yesterday’s speech was the culmination of three days of diplomacy personally conducted by President Obama. On September 23, he spoke before more than 120 world leaders during a daylong UN climate summit. Asking for cooperative action on climate change, the president declared that climate change promises to define the next century more dramatically than any other global threat, including terrorism: “No nation is immune . . . We cannot condemn our children and their children to a future that is beyond their capacity to repair.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Joseph Conrad
• Heart of Darkness
• The Middle East: From Fall to Spring (a special report)
• Russia in the Post-Soviet World (a special report)
• Syria: The Roots of the Rebellion (a special report)

May 12, 2014

The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., reopened today, after a nearly three-year effort to repair damage caused by an earthquake in August 2011. The 5.8-magnitude quake, whose epicenter lay about 85 miles (135 kilometers) southwest of the capital, had rumbled under much of the northeastern United States. The shaking loosened stones in the hollow monument, damaged an elevator, and caused some 150 cracks to appear on its outer surface. The cracks left the structure vulnerable to Hurricane Irene, which rolled over the Eastern Seaboard a few days after the earthquake. Water seeped in, especially at the monument’s pyramid top. Despite the damage, National Park Service officials said that the monument remained structurally sound.

A team of engineers inspects the Washington Monument for damage in September 2011. A month earlier, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake rattled Washington, D.C., and other parts of the northeastern United States. (AP Photo)

The 555-foot (169-meter) obelisk was built as a tribute to George Washington, the American colonists’ military leader during the American Revolution and the first president of the United States. Completed on Dec. 6, 1884, the monument was dedicated on Feb. 21, 1885. It opened to the public on Oct. 9, 1888. The construction was financed by public donations and some government funds. The recently completed $15-million repair project was funded equally by a donation from David Rubenstein, an American financier and philanthropist, and an appropriation by Congress. The monument is among the most popular attractions in Washington, D.C. Added during the repair project were new exhibits on the top floor.

Additional World Book articles:

• Martha Custis Washington
• Mount Vernon
• First in War, First in Peace… But Not in Libraries (a Special Report)

November 8, 2012

Barack Obama was reelected president of the United States on November 6, winning at least 303 Electoral College votes, compared with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s 206 votes. In defeating Romney, the president carried the swing states of Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin. He also took Michigan and Minnesota, where Republican super PAC’s (political action committees) spent millions trying to influence voters. Romney won North Carolina and Indiana, which the president carried four years ago. The president holds a narrow advantage in Florida, where the counting of ballots continues.  Obama is the first president to win reelection with unemployment above 7.2 percent since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

Barack Obama won reelection with at least 303 votes in the Electoral College. (The White House)

Republicans remain firmly in control of the House of Representatives. Democrats retained their majority in the U.S. Senate, taking over highly contested Republican seats in Indiana and Massachusetts while holding on to most of those they already had, including in Virginia and Missouri.

Six of the newly elected senators are women, raising the total in the chamber to 20, the most ever. One new member, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, will become the Senate’s first openly gay member. Voters in both Maryland and Maine approved referenda allowing same-sex couples to marry–the first time same-sex marriage has been approved by a popular vote in the United States.  Minnesotans rejected a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in that state. In Washington state and Colorado, citizens voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Additional World Book articles:

• Joe Biden
• Election campaign
• Electoral College
• Paul Ryan
• Election 1936 (a Back in Time article)
• 2008 Elections: A Pivotal Choice (a special report)
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)

November 7, 2012

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the first African American elected to that office, secured a second term in the White House on November 6 after a costly, closely fought battle against challenger Mitt Romney. In winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College, President Obama, a Democrat, overcame charges by his Republican opponent that his policies were unlikely to restore economic prosperity after the severe economic crisis of 2008-2009. President Obama won a preliminary total of at least 59,600,000 popular votes and 303 electoral votes, 33 more than the 270 needed to capture the presidency. Florida remained too close to call as of Wednesday morning.

President Barack Obama was reelected president of the United States on November 6, 2012. (The White House)

Shortly taking office in January 2009, President Obama signed a bill allocating $787 billion for stimulus programs and tax cuts to revive the economy. President Obama also took steps to bail out troubled American automakers and to strengthen the financial industry. In addition, he promoted and signed legislation that boosted government support for pay equality for women. His signature achievement was the passage of a historic health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which included provisions extending health care coverage to about 30 million uninsured Americans. In December 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, a law ending the ban on openly homosexual soldiers in the armed forces.

In 2009, President Obama filled a campaign pledge and withdrew all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities. The Iraq War was declared officially over on December 15, 2011. He also set a timetable of 2014 for the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan. In May 2011, President Obama announced that a team of Navy SEALs had shot and killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qa`ida, the group responsible for the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.

In November 2010, voters gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives. For the remainder of President Obama’s first term, passing legislation became exceedingly difficult. The president also came under significant criticism by a loose collection of conservative political activist groups called the Tea party movement.

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was Kenyan and his mother was American. He graduated from Columbia University in New York City in 1983. In 1985, he worked in Chicago for a church group that helped poor neighborhoods in the city. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991. While there, he became the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review, an important monthly law journal (magazine). Obama then practiced law in Chicago. He worked especially on civil rights issues. He also taught law at the University of Chicago.

Beginning in 1997, Obama served in the Illinois Senate. In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. That election and his stirring keynote address to the Democratic National Convention earlier that year gave him significant national exposure. Obama declared his intention to run for president in February 2007. He won the Democratic nomination against a wide field of competitors, including Senator Joe Biden and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton. Obama then chose Biden as his vice-presidential running mate and, after taking office as president, tapped Mrs. Clinton to be his secretary of state.

Additional World Book articles:

• Economic Crisis: The Banking Meltdown (a special report)
• Economic Crises, Then and Now (a special report)
• Economic Crisis: The Government Jumps In (a special report)
• Economics, United States (2011) (a Back in Time article)
• Economics, United States (2010) (a Back in Time article)
• Economics, United States (2009) (a Back in Time article)
• Economics, United States (2008) (a Back in Time article)

November 6, 2012

Tens of millions of Americans go to the polls to decide whether President Barack Obama, a Democrat, should be reelected or replaced by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate. The very long, very costly, hard-fought campaign dealt largely with who could better heal the battered U.S. economy and the role of government in the lives of Americans. Polls show the race is neck and neck, though the president holds a slender lead in such crucial swing states as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Governor Mitt Romney

President Barack Obama

U.S. citizens are also voting on 11 state governorships, one-third of the seats in the 100-member U.S. Senate, and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. Political experts predict that Democrats will retain control of the Senate and Republicans will hold their majority in the House. Turnout is described as heavy, even in those areas of New Jersey and New York that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy one week ago.

Additional World Book articles:

• Joe Biden
• Electoral College
• Paul Ryan
• 2008 Elections: A Pivotal Choice (a special report)
• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)

April 11, 2012

Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign yesterday, ending his quest to become the Republican Party’s nominee in 2012.  “We made a decision over the weekend, that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting,” stated the former Pennsylvania senator at a press conference. An aid confirmed that he had called Mitt Romney earlier in the day to tell him of his decision.

Santorum’s move leaves Romney, the former of governor of Massachusetts, as the party’s nominee in all but name only. His remaining challengers, Newt Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul of Texas, have failed to pick enough convention delegates to be considered serious contenders.

Rick Santorum (U.S. Senate)

Additional World Book articles:

• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)
• 2008 Election: A Pivotal Choice (a special report)

March 21, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the March 20 Illinois Republican primary for the nomination for president of the United States. The former Massachusetts governor won decisively, taking 46.7 percent of the vote. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum came in second with 35 percent. Texas Representative Ron Paul came in third with 9.3 percent of the vote, while Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, took fourth place with only 8 percent. A voter turnout of only 24 percent made this Illinois’s lowest turnout for a presidential primary in 70 years.

The win follows Romney’s overwhelming victory in the Puerto Rico primary on March 18, in which he took all of the territory’s 20 delegates. Romney had 522 delegates going into the Illinois primary and will take at least 41 of that state’s 54 delegates. He thus widened his lead over Santorum (who will take at least 10 of the Illinois delegates, adding to his previous total of 252) as the candidates head into the Louisiana primary on March 24.

Mitt Romney won the Puerto Rico and Illinois Republican primary elections, putting him well ahead of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in the delegate count. (Courtesy of Abby Brack, Romney for President, Inc.)

March 13, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum won both the Alabama and Mississippi Republican primaries on March 12. The former senator from Pennsylvania took 35 percent of the vote in Alabama, compared with the 29 percent scored by both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. In Mississippi, Santorum received 33 percent of the vote, compared with 31 percent for Gingrich and 30 percent for Romney.

Rick Santorum (U.S. Senate)

Political experts suggested that with these victories, Rick Santorum can now claim to be Romney’s only credible rival for the nomination. However, Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, still has a commanding lead in the delegate count in the race to the Republican convention in August–494 out of the 1,144 needed. By comparison, Santorum has 251, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has 131, and Congressman Ron Paul has 48.

Additional World Book article

• Tempest in a Tea Party (a special report)
• 2008 Election: A Pivotal Choice (a special report)