Live Election Coverage..Round the Clock News, Videos, Links and more..

President Barack Obama has been meeting the press almost every weekday, and has been accessible even during his administration's slip-ups. When Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination after the uproar over his more than $140,000 taxes backlog, Obama admitted that he had 'screwed up'.

But Obama has been more circumspect at other times. After talking about his economic stimulus package, a few days after signing office, Obama quietly signed an order allowing federal funds to go to organizations that support abortion. Because of the timing of the event, it barely caused a media blip even though this was a divisive and controversial act.

Obama is a gifted communicator - unlike his predecessor. He is going to try to reach Americans directly through a new website and a YouTube video of the weekly presidential address. But the traditional media is powerful and he cannot ignore it.

In his first month in office, President Barack Obama's campaign promise of sweeping ethical reforms is being put to a severe test, and not always passing. The strict ethics rules he imposed on his first day in office seem to have many exceptions.

Two of his cabinet nominees have large tax arrears (Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle). One former military contractor's lobbyist has become the deputy defense secretary (William J. Lynn III). And others who were lobbyists in deed if not registered in name have been appointed to government (Mark Patterson, who represented Goldman Sachs; William J. Corr, who lobbied for the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids).

The White House press secretary said that these were the 'right people for very important jobs'. Does this mean that it's okay to break the law if you are a good guy with the correct skills?

President Barack Obama is trying to build bipartisan support for his economic stimulus package, as he promised during the election campaign.

His main legislative initiative - for stimulating the economy - include tax cuts suggested by Republicans; the family-planning part of the legislation will probably be removed because it is opposed by Republicans (this will not affect the economic part of the package). He has named a Republican, Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois, to be Secretary of Transportation.

Today (Tuesday), he goes to the Capitol to talk with Republican leaders in the House and Senate so that his economic package has more support from both sides of the aisle.

Whether or not he wins over Repulican lawmakers, his initiatives have already got him support from more Republican voters across the country than he had on election day.

EU ministers at Brussels said on Monday that they are willing to help the US close Guantanamo, but they were silent on whether they would allow former Guantanamo inmates to settle in their countries.

This has been an issue for some time: Guantanamo inmates cleared for release often cannot go back to their home countries (Syria, Somalia, Libya, among others) because they are at risk of torture or abuse there. While EU nations have often sharply criticised the US for detaining suspects without trial in this prison, few of them have been willing to accept released prisoners. They have cited internal opposition as well as security concern.

German Parliamentary leader, Wolfgang Bosbach, said their country had not established, run or used the prison - it was not their responsibility to accept released prisoners.

President Barack Obama spent Wednesday, his first day in office after the inauguration, hard at work. He signed an executive orders for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, limiting lobby influences in the White House, and halting regulations pending review in federal agencies.

Anderson University professor Michael Frank said that Obama's transition has been better organized than most other presidents. His focused agenda, and the fact that the Democrats have control over both the House and the Senate, will also help him get more accomplished in the first few days in office than recent Democratic presidents have been able to do.

President Barack Obama used his first day in office in a flurry of activity reversing many Bush policies. He signed executive orders for freezing the salaries of his senior aids and disclosing official information which the Bush presidency could not have been claimed under the Freedom of Information Act.

In effect, this order will make it easier for journalists and historians to access Bush administration records that would otherwise have been held as government secrets.

These set the tone for the change that has been a keynote of his campaigne.

Some of Obama's closest advisors - Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, and others - are Wall Street insiders, and he might not go as fast as his supporters want on financial reforms. Since the election (when he said that the last thing needed is Washington not keeping an eye on Wall Street), he has struck a more moderate note, saying that there is a need for balance rather than heavy-handed regulation.

Henry Paulson is a former CEO of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Rubin and Summers both advocated deregulation when they worked in the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton. Wall Street employees actually contributed more to Obama's campaign than they did to McCain's. The securities and investment industries were the third biggest contributors to Obama's campaign, after the education and legal fields.