McClatchy reports on the Middle East's love affair with U.S. President Barack Obama: The poll of six Arab nations found that residents think that Obama will have a positive impact on the Middle East — a region marked by war, religious disputes, ethnic and sectarian violence — as well as on the United States and the rest of the world. Obama scored highest in Jordan, where 58 percen...

In his acceptance speech Wednesday in Oslo, Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, urged Barack Obama to give high priority to the Middle East during his first year in office.

When Barack Hussein Obama started out as president seven months ago, it all looked so simple. Obama felt he had a handle on the entire Middle East situation. Having managed to finesse a good majority of American Jews, a core Democrat constituency, into voting for him, he figured he had the leverage he needed to ingratiate himself and America with the Muslim world by pressuring Israel to make far r...

Barack Hussein Obama,just ater his State of the Union without a teleprompter: "The Middle East is a problem that has plagued the region for centuries." Yes, indeed. The Middle East Plagues itself! Of course, if he meant the Arab-Israeli conflict, either he unaware how long the modern nation of Israel has been in existence and is thus not the student of history he claims to be..or he just admitted ...

Obama kicks off Middle East visit TOP STORY: In his first stop on a diplomatic mission aimed at restoring the U.S. relationship with the Middle East, President Barack Obama stopped in Riyadh to hold talks with Saudi King Abdullah on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran's nuclear program, and oil prices. Obama may be hoping to entice the Saudis toward a significant gesture toward Israel, but Arab l...

In his acceptance speech Wednesday in Oslo, Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, urged President-elect Barack Obama of the United States to give high priority to the Middle East during in his first year in office.

The White House press advance folks obviously did a good job in selecting the journalists for President Barack Obama's Middle East round table interview. He wasn't asked anything tough about, for instance, human rights or the promotion of democracy in the Muslim world and the forum was, er, rather friendly. Here's a selection of parts of the questions he was asked. The full transcri...

Barack Obama has announced that physicist John Holdren and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco will take up two of the top scientific posts under his administration. John Holdren will be Executive Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the president’s science adviser. Jane Lubchenco will be in charge at the National Oceanic

Few could argue against the conclusion that Barack Obama's visit to Afghanistan and Iraq, which produced great pictures, and his two days in Jordan and Israel, when he skillfully navigated the sensitivities of Middle East politics, were a great success for his campaign. Barack Obama arrives in London on the final leg of his world tourBut Germany and France? Not so much. There seems to be a consens...

Tackling the crisis in the Middle East will be the "first and most immediate" issue for incoming US President Barack Obama, Gordon Brown said today.