Michelle Obama showed off her hula-hooping skills October 21 at the White House, in an attempt to highlight the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

The White House lawn hosted children for a “healthy kids fair” to talk about eating right and getting exercise. One in three American children is overweight, which could cause a serious health problem for the nation in years to come, Mrs. Obama said. “None of us wants that for our children and for our children’s futures,” she said.

The first lady also spoke about the Healthier U.S. School Challenge, a program designed to encourage schools to eliminate junk food, provide healthier food options and find ways to incorporate more physical activity into students’ days. Perhaps this will be an incentive for some of the schools – Michelle Obama promised to visit some of the challenge participants.

President Obama became the first president to light a ceremonial Diya at the White House to mark the observance of Diwali, the “festival of lights.” He also used the occasion to sign a new initiative aimed at expanding opportunities for Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage.

Diwali, holy to Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and some Buddhists, has a different significance to each faith, but the president said the lamps symbolize “the victory of light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance.” The festival is a time for both rejoicing and reflecting on the less fortunate, he said.

“In that spirit of celebration and contemplation, I am happy to light the White House Diya, and wish you all a Happy Diwali, and a Saal Mubarak,” he told White House guests at the October 14 ceremony.

The president then signed an executive order to set up a commission to find the most effective ways of helping Americans of East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian heritage, as well as descendants of Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

There are “very real challenges” facing certain Asian-American communities, he said, such as having higher than average rates of diabetes and Hepatitis B, higher school dropout rates, low college enrollment rates, and economic disparities, particularly among those of Hmong, Cambodian and Malaysian descent. In addition, Obama said many continue to face language and workplace barriers, and have been victims of hate crimes.

The U.S. government can provide help, he said. For example, the Small Business Administration can offer loans to Asian-American entrepreneurs, the Department of Health and Human Services can fund research on the diseases that disproportionately affect them, and the Justice Department can uphold their right to vote, as well as provide language assistance at the polls. The two year commission will collect data on the many communities in order to find the most effective means of helping them.

Gays and lesbians are still struggling for acceptance and equal rights in the United States, and President Obama has told them “I’m here with you in that fight.”

The president spoke to 3000 people at a black-tie dinner of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington October 10, and said he would end the U.S. military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which has allowed gays to serve their country only if they can keep their sexual orientation secret. He also said he expects Congress to pass legislation extending the definition of a hate crime to include violence based on sexual orientation so he can sign it into law. Members of Congress are also working to pass an employee non-discrimination bill that would prohibit a worker from being fired simply for being gay.

Obama compared the struggle for gay rights to the African-American Civil Rights movement, and said “we cannot — and we will not — put aside issues of basic equality,” despite the many other urgent challenges facing today’s United States.

“My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians,” Obama said. “You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.”

What is the status of gays and lesbians in your country? Is sexual orientation an issue of public debate, a non-issue, or something that cannot be freely discussed?

President Obama has authorized up to 80,000 refugees to enter the United States during the 2010 fiscal year (FY), which begins today, October 1. In a presidential determination, he specified what is known as the “refugee ceiling” or the maximum number of refugees allowed from each world region. The figure includes an “unallocated reserve” designed to accommodate unforeseen crises, and specifies that immigrants from Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and those identified by U.S. embassies as having “exceptional circumstances” will, “if otherwise qualified” to enter the U.S., also be considered refugees.

The president said his administration is “committed to maintaining a robust refugee admissions program,” which has been an important part of the overall U.S. effort in “support of vulnerable people around the world.” Citing the recent global economic downturn, Obama said an in-depth review of the program was done “with the goal of strengthening support to both the refugees and the communities in which they are being resettled.”

I decided to do a little review of my own, comparing the latest figures with those of a few previous years (FY 2007-FY2010). Not surprisingly, I found that presidents adjust the numbers and allocations for refugee admissions each year, perhaps to reflect the latest needs assessments from their advisers.

There were some interesting developments. For example, in FY 2008 then-President Bush increased the allowed number of refugees from 70,000 to the current 80,000 level, and much of that went towards allowing a dramatic increase in refugees (+22,500) from the Near East and South Asia. In FY 2009, an additional 9,000 were allowed from those regions and President Bush specified that those coming from Iraq would be considered refugees. But during both years, Bush made cuts to the numbers of refugees coming from Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

By comparison to the previous two years, President Obama’s adjustments today were fairly modest. He increased the number of those coming from Africa by 3,500, with the current level now at 15,500. The Latin America/Caribbean region was increased by 500 to 5,000. East Asia and the Near East/South Asia were both decreased by 2,000 for a total of 17,000 and 35,000, respectively, and the numbers for Europe/Central Asia and the unallocated reserve were unchanged at 2,500 and 5,000 respectively.

Marking World Refugee Day on June 20, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States is the world’s largest donor for refugee relief, contributing $1.4 billion in 2008, and “nearly 3 million refugees have made new homes in the United States, more than any other nation in the world.”

What are your thoughts on President Obama’s refugee quota? How do you think these kinds of decisions should be made?

 
The September 30 tsunami, caused by a major earthquake in the Pacific Ocean, is the most severe natural disaster to occur since President Obama’s term began, and it has directly affected the U.S. territory of American Samoa, making the disaster a domestic priority.

The earthquake, measuring between 8.0 and 8.3 on the Richter scale, was detected by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, which then projected the path of a probable tsunami and issued a regional warning that extended from American Samoa to New Zealand. However, the wave, which got as high as 7.5 meters (25 feet), struck Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga within just minutes of the quake, so most living there were unprepared. As I write this, news accounts list the death toll at more than 100 people.

A separate earthquake whose epicenter was 7,600 km (4,700 miles) away hit Indonesia, killing at least 75 people. [UPDATE - the death toll has climbed to nearly 800 people as of October 1.] Indonesia had previously been among those warned about a possible tsunami resulting from the quake near Samoa.

Because American Samoa is a U.S. territory, President Obama was able to declare a “major disaster” for it, and allow immediate assistance from the federal government in Washington to cover temporary housing, home and business repairs, clean-up, unemployment aid and temporary loans. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is dispatching two disaster recovery teams from Hawaii to assess the damage, and the agency is preparing to send relief supplies to survivors from provisions it had pre-positioned in a Hawaii distribution center.

The president said the U.S. Coast Guard is also being deployed to support “the deployment of resources to those areas in need of immediate assistance.”

Offering condolences to the families of those who died, Obama pledged a “full, swift and aggressive response,” and said that along with responding to the needs of the American territory, “We also stand ready to help our friends in Samoa and the region.” The United States and other countries most recently responded to assistance requests from the Philippines as it tries to prevent floods from Tropical Storm Ketsana from turning into a humanitarian disaster.

You may have noticed that President Obama is not a fan of nuclear weapons. At a speech in Prague this past April he called for their abolition. He has been working with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and launchers. And he has also been trying to prevent Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons of their own.

Today marked another indication that nuclear nonproliferation is a huge priority of the Obama administration when the president called a summit meeting of the United Nations Security Council and became the first U.S. head of state to ever chair the body. It was also only the fifth time the Security Council has met at the head of state level since its formation in 1946. The first was held in 1992 to discuss the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.

Can you guess what the topic was today?

What President Obama and the other heads of state achieved from this summit was the first U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and which sets out a broad framework on how to reduce nuclear dangers in pursuit of that goal.

The spread and use of nuclear weapons is a “fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations,” Obama said. If one nuclear weapon exploded in a major world city, it would kill thousands, and “it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.”

The president said every country has the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but those which already have nuclear weapons “have the responsibility to move toward disarmament,” and those who don’t “have the responsibility to forsake them.”

What do you think? Is a world without nuclear weapons achievable? How can this goal become a reality?