Holder Seen as Obama choice for justice post:WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has signaled to Eric H. Holder Jr., a senior official in the Justice Department in the Clinton administration, that he will be chosen as attorney general, but no final decision has been made, people involved in the process said Tuesday.As a top adviser to Obama, he has long been considered the front-runner for the job of attorney general because of his extensive record as a prosecutor and a judge and a well-honed reputation inside Washington. Obama’s advisers appear to have overcome concerns that Holder’s involvement in a presidential pardon scandal as President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 might cloud his nomination for the job.Word that Holder was likely to be nominated as attorney general leaked out as Obama also began settling on other members of his team and signaling his policy priorities upon taking office. Obama is set to hire Peter R. Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, as the White House budget director, people involved in the transition said. They said the leading candidate at this point for another top post on the economic team, director of the National Economic Council, is Jacob Lew, who was Mr. Clinton’s budget director.While Obama has yet to name any of his cabinet secretaries, his early choices for White House staff positions and the names currently at the top of the list for staff and cabinet jobs suggest that his administration could be heavily stocked with Democrats who served under Clinton. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, under consideration to be secretary of state, was said by an adviser to be torn about giving up her Senate seat.
Obama talks with UN chief plus Colombian, African leaders:
WASHINGTON: US president-elect Barack Obama Wednesday telephoned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plus the presidents of Colombia, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa, his office said. Obama returned their calls "and expressed his appreciation for their congratulations on his election," the Democrat's transition office said in a statement, offering no further details.Obama has been pursuing a near-daily round of calls to foreign leaders since his election triumph over Republican John McCain on November 4. Apart from Ban, the latest calls were to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe. A source close to Uribe told AFP that the pair spoke for about 10 minutes on NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the trade pact Obama has indicated he is willing to re-negotiate when he takes office in January. Uribe had been open in his support for McCain and now faces increased scrutiny over human rights abuses in his nation from Obama, who opposes a US-Colombia free trade pact currently frozen in the Democratic-led Congress.
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