It’s official now, people!  Even though Barack Obama has one of the most followed Twitter accounts with over 3 million followers, he has never sent out a tweet up until earlier today.  President Obama admitted to never using Twitter when he was at a Chinese youth event in Shanghai.  The White House communications team used the President’s name on the Twitter account to send out messages.  This is not surprising because a lot of the communications between the President and American citizens is handled by White House staff.

So what was the President’s first tweet ever?  He wrote this message in third person: “President Obama and the First Lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now.”  And the first tweet did not come from his own account, it was from the Red Cross account.  President Obama was in Haiti to assess the damage that took place and offer help.

A Colorado Department of Transportation employee may be in trouble for forwarding an e-mail to friends that contains this fake image of President Barack Obama shining the shoes of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. The 73 year old unnamed woman forwarded this e-mail to at least 4 friends.

The e-mail contained a statement from a non-government employee saying “It appears he (Obama) has found his niche.” The original photo was taken by Ted Szukalski and was of a man shining a woman’s shoes. The government employee may be reprimanded for suspension. The meeting will take place next week.

President Barack Obama was doing a tour in China this week. On one of his stops, he was at a town hall in Shanghai. The town hall meeting was streamed online and one of the questions he was asked was about Twitter. Twitter was blocked in China since this past July.

A student asked the U.S. President “Do you know about the great firewall and should we be able to use Twitter?” The President replied: “I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.” That must be a disappointment to some of the President’s 2.6 million followers that actually believed Obama was sending out some tweets.

In actuality, it was staff members at The White House that were sending out the tweets. There is a difference in opinion regarding the President not sending out tweets himself. Some believe that it is wrong that Twitter verified his account and some believe it is a good thing that the U.S. President is not sending out tweets. I am going with the latter.

The U.S. President has a lot on his plate to deal with on his plate. Between the struggling economy, the war overseas, depletion of natural resources, financial bail-outs, automotive bail-outs, etc. — I think that should give the President enough to do every minute of his day.

Why do people tweet? For networking purposes. Why should people network? To gain respect and authority. Who has the most authority in the United States? The President. What more can the President gain by interacting with Twitter followers? I’d rather see him spending time ensuring a positive economic future than retweeting Ashton Kutcher.

American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the television network that The Walt Disney Company owns was responsible for the news about President Barack Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass” spreading. Kanye West stole the microphone from Taylor Swift when she received an MTV VMA award and the news exploded in the media. West personally apologize on his blog about the situation, but it was too late — he already came off as looking as a jerk. Even the President called him a jerk.

Some of ABC’s employees overhead a conversation between President Obama and John Hardwood of CNBC. A conversation between the two that was off the record made its way on Twitter and was never meant to be the official words from the President.

When asked about whether Obama’s daughters were annoyed by what Kanye West did, the President replied “I thought that was really inappropriate.” He added “What are you butting in (for)? … The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She’s getting her award. What’s he doing up there?” Then he added “He’s a jackass.”

After realizing that he went too far, the President said “Cut the president some slack. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my plate.”

When ABC employees overheard the conversation, they turned to Twitter. Terry Moran wrote “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential” on Twitter. The tweets have been deleted shortly after they were originally written.

Too late to crowd control ABC, the word is out. The President has expressed his opinion about Kanye West’s behavior.

Firas Alkhateeb, a student at the University of Illinois uploaded a satirical image on Flickr of President Barack Obama with a paint job that resembles the Joker in the movie The Dark Knight.  The image has spread all over the Internet since it was uploaded last December.

Yahoo! recently decided to remove the image (above) from Firas’ Flickr account and sent him an e-mail.  The e-mail stated that the image was deleted “due to copyright-infringement concerns.”

The problem with this e-mail is that there are tons of satirical pictures of former President George W. Bush all over Flickr.  Ryan Tate of Valleywag suggested that Yahoo! may not want to disappoint the Obama administration in The White House because of several lucrative contracts between the two parties.

Another possible reason why the image was deleted would be because many Flickr users clicked the “Report Abuse” button on the image so Yahoo! caved and had it removed several months later.  President Obama has a huge fan base on the Internet.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Michigan earlier this week to announce over $1 billion in grants for companies developing batteries made for electric vehicles.  Michigan will get the largest portion of a $2.4 billion package in federal grants.  VP Joe Biden announced the grant at the NextEnergy facility in Detroit, Michigan.

The grant will be made through the U.S. Department of Energy out of a total $787 billion stimulus program that was approved by the Obama administration.  The stimulus grants will be split among about 50 projects across 25 states.  The biggest shares will be given to the state of Michigan and the state of Indiana.  About 11 Michigan manufacturing and research facilities itself will be receiving grants.

“We know that, even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we have never surrendered. We don’t give up,” said President Obama on a factory floor at an RV maker in northern Indiana.  “We don’t surrender our fates to chance. We have always endured. We have worked hard, and we have fought for our future.”

The big three automotive companies in Michigan will receive over $400 million to develop hybrid and electric vehicles along with batteries.  The following Michigan battery companies have been selected to receive about $850 million in grant money:
- A123 Systems in Romulus, MI
- LG Chem and Compact Power Inc. in Troy, MI
- KD Advanced Battery Manufacturing Group LLC
- Johnson-Controls-SAFT Advanced Power Solutions LLC
- Sakti3 in Ann Arbor, MI

All of the battery companies are expected to create 6,800 jobs within the next year to 18 months.  About 30,000 jobs can be created by 2020.

[via Crain's Detroit Business]

On March 17, Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling were detained for their investigative reporting in North Korea.  A couple of days ago, former President Bill Clinton visited North Korea to discuss diplomacy with the country’s leader Kim Jong-il.  Clinton was there for a 20 hours visit and came back with the two detainees.

This humanitarian mission put former Vice President Al Gore and Clinton back to work together again.  Current TV was co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.  President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton requested Bill Clinton to take on the mission.

This was the first time that Jong-il met with someone from the West since he had a stroke one year ago.  The release of the two Current TV reporters was a sign of North Korea’s “humanitarian and peace-loving policy” as reported by the Korean Central News Agency.

Clinton apologized for the behavior of the two detainees and expressed the current President’s gratitude.  The visit to North Korea came at a tense time as the country is ramping up a nuclear plan.

The President left at about 8:30AM local North Korean time on a private plane to L.A. with the journalists yesterday.  The women were sentenced with 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the country at the time of their arrest.  The two women were doing a report on women and human trafficking.

When Hillary Clinton decided to take on the mission, she suggested sending several candidates to North Korea to lobby for the release of the two women.  Bill Clinton emerged as the preferred choice by the North Korean people and the government.  Clinton agreed to make the trip as long as the Obama administration did not object.  Mrs. Clinton is currently touring in Africa.

About two weeks ago, The North Korean Foreign Ministry disapproved of Mrs. Clinton’s remarks when she discussed their nuclear program.  The Ministry called her “a funny lady” and said that “sometimes she looks like a primary-school girl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”

Euna Lee is a U.S. citizen that was born in South Korea.  And Laura Ling is the younger sister of Lisa Ling, who is a correspondent for CNN, Oprah, and National Geographic Explorer.

This was truly one of the most epic news stories I’ve written about and further proves how diplomacy can create freedom.

Gary McKinnon is a hacker in the U.K. that was responsible for one of the biggest military hacks of all time.  He tried to break into NASA’s security data to find out if UFOs exist.  McKinnon claimed that he did not cause any damage to NASA’s systems as part of the hack, but the U.S. government claims he stole 950 passwords and deleted files responsible for replenishing supplies of an Atlantic fleet.

This event took place in 2001 and the estimated damage was about $700,000.  The U.S. government filed to have McKinnon extradited from the U.K. to face trial.  A British Court ruled that they would not stop the extradition last week.  But now McKinnon’s mother is attempting to make a plea with U.S. President Barack Obama to stop the litigation.

The U.K. court that said that they would not stop the extradition based their decision on the fact that they do not have enough evidence to reflect upon the seriousness of the charges being held against him by the U.S.

“After so many years, it would be refreshing to see Mr. McKinnon actually have his day in court,” stated Scott Christie, who served as a New Jersey assistant U.S. attorney and was one of the first prosecutors brought into the case. “But as I’ve come to learn, nothing is certain until he actually steps foot on U.S. soil, so I will withhold my feelings of relief.”

“Obama, please hear about us,” pleaded McKinnon’s mother Janis Sharp. “Stand by us and make this world a better place, a more compassionate place. Please hear us, Obama. I know you’d do the right thing.”

McKinnon’s attorney Edward Fitzgerald said that McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that is related to autism.

Making the case more interesting, rock group Pink Floyd singer David Gilmour is apparently recording a song for an upcoming CD that is made to support McKinnon.