The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for nuclear disarmament, in a session chaired by US President Barack Obama.

The resolution calls for further efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms, to boost disarmament and to lower the risk of “nuclear terrorism”. It was the first time a US president had chaired a Security Council summit. The resolution comes amid growing concerns among Western powers over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

President Obama made a forceful call Wednesday for a new era in global relations, urging the United Nations to move past old divisions and disputes to reassert itself as a leading force in confronting the most pressing issues of today.

In his first speech as president to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama sought to distance his young administration from unilateral policies of his predecessor, while pledging a U.S. commitment to work with the United Nations in forging a better common future for all.

“The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation — one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations,” Obama said in concluding a speech that received strong applause.

“The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” Mr Obama told the Security Council after the resolution was adopted. He said the next year would be “absolutely critical in determining whether this resolution and our overall efforts to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons are successful”.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the resolution “a fresh start toward a new future”. The resolution does not specifically mention countries by name, such as North Korea and Iran, but reaffirms previous Security Council resolutions relating to their nuclear plans.

The resolution commits member nations to work toward a world without nuclear weapons, and endorses a broad framework of actions to reduce global nuclear risks.

President Obama joined other world leaders Tuesday in calling for immediate and substantive steps to combat climate change, saying failure to act now would bring “irreversible catastrophe.”

Speaking to a special summit on climate change at the United Nations, Obama pledged the full commitment of the United States to a global response after what he called years of responding too slowly to the magnitude of the challenge.

However, Obama’s speech lacked specific details on cutting greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. He also warned that the global economic recession could hinder the ability of countries to take necessary steps to combat climate change.

“We seek sweeping but necessary change in the midst of a global recession, where every nation’s most immediate priority is reviving their economy and putting their people back to work,” Obama said. “And so all of us will face doubts and difficulties in our own capitals as we try to reach a lasting solution to the climate challenge.”

Progress in the negotiations involving almost 200 countries has been slowed by disputes over the roles of industrialized powers and major greenhouse gas emitters such as the United States and emerging nations such as China that have become major emitters in their rush to economic development.

China will increase efforts to improve energy efficiency and curb the rise in CO2 emissions, President Hu Jintao has told a UN climate summit in New York. Mr Hu gave no details about the measures, which should mean emissions grow less quickly than the economy. The US, the world’s other major emitter, said China’s proposals were helpful but figures were needed.

About 100 leaders are attending the talks, ahead of the Copenhagen summit which is due to approve a new treaty. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said failure to agree a treaty in December would be “morally inexcusable”.

Negotiators for the Copenhagen summit are trying to agree on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol to limit carbon emissions.

IMPORTANCE OF BABY STEPS

President Barack Obama has said he intends “to get something done this year” on healthcare reform. In an interview for ABC News ahead of his key speech to Congress, he said he was open to new ideas and would not be “rigid or ideological”.

Mr Obama said the speech would offer “a lot of clarity about what I think is the best way to move forward”. Members of Congress are preparing to fight over the details of the reforms, as they return after the summer recess. The president is expected to speak about the politically divisive option of having a publicly run insurance scheme.

When asked if Americans will find out in his speech whether or not he is willing to sign a healthcare reform bill without a public scheme, he said: “Well, I think the country is going to know exactly what I think will solve our healthcare crisis.” Mr Obama said the speech will be directed at the American people, as well as members of Congress.

At stake for the president: getting Democratic factions on board with his plan and convincing Americans of the need for health care reform. “Wednesday night’s health care speech may be one of the toughest he has faced,” said David Gergen.

Obama, for the most part, has issued broad reform ideas, but he has left most of the specific legislative details to leaders in Congress, who have faced sometimes contentious negotiations.

GOP strategist Ed Rollins said that Obama must be “clear and very honest” with Americans on the specifics.

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, added that Obama must speak to the uninsured on what he’ll support and show Americans how he’ll “help them find insurance and keep insurance.”

Some have even deemed it one of the key legislative speeches of his presidency to date.

TIME FOR ACTION

In a country of deep divisions and ideological extremes, impressions of Obama around here fall somewhere in the middle. Eight months into his presidency, he’s not the hero who will fix all the problems, nor is he the villain who caused them. Instead, he is seen as a bridge that leads toward the country’s next era — a guide into the new unknown.

He inherited two wars and a complicated recession and, while grappling with those, is trying to revamp the nation’s health care and energy policies as he tackles a slew of other ambitious agenda items.

Complicating matters is public that both wants him to stanch the bleeding but is also, as always, skittish about true change. And he’s is trying to do it all during a national transition that many fear could leave American dominance in doubt.

“He stepped into a time when there were probably the most problematic things going on,” says Dan Moschetta, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from this southwestern Pennsylvania city, 260 miles west of the Washington where Obama lives. “If he could get to all the issues, I’d say he was Superman.”

As Obama heads into an autumn filled with challenges as immense as the summer’s, public opinion suggests both opportunity and political peril. Polls show people in the U.S. are split over how he’s performing, and that’s echoed in the voices of more than three dozen people in this ailing but resilient corridor.

Here, three politically different states come together: Democratic-tilting Pennsylvania, GOP-leaning West Virginia and the perennial swing state of Ohio. Once the country’s economic engine, the area self-identifies strongly with hard work, family and patriotism.

It’s also a place that first felt the United States’ producing economy shift toward a consumer economy when steel mills, glass factories and pottery barns that dotted the Ohio River shut down in the 1970s, victims of globalization’s birthing pangs. The way people around here feel is notable. This is a relatively conservative area that, at any other time, could reasonably be expected to reject a Democrat out of hand. And like elsewhere in America, patience is not natural in an instant-gratification society that tends to demand quick results from its leaders and to view politics in black and white.

Why the middle ground, then? Does it hint at a new flexibility? Or is it quintessential American optimism, tempered by the pragmatism of a country growing up? Are the nation’s problems subverting knee-jerk politics?

Or perhaps this is a reflection of Obama himself as he straddles issue after issue with a management style that’s both pragmatic and idealistic, but also leaves him open to criticism that he’s failing to lead.

Also perhaps this: Facing the possibility of American decline, people may simply be at a loss for what to do — and looking, as so often before, to their president to guide them.
“This is really a whole new chapter in the state of America, and there’s nothing we can do but keep doing what we’re doing and hope it gets better,” says Phil Axworthy, 58, a software developer taking a coffee break in Pittsburgh’s Market Square. “I’m scared,” says college sophomore Mary Lesniewski, 19, as she reads a book on the green at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Will the country turn around by the time she graduates? “With the help of God, maybe,” she says.

People here manage to be at once optimistic and pessimistic. They say the country eventually will persevere and rebound. But they also say they’re aren’t as confident that the next generation will have it better than they do or that the United States will be as powerful as, say, China.

When it comes to Obama, they are wary but not ready to abandon him. They like him personally but are not embracing his policies. Yes, he inherited a country in chaos, but the troubles, they say, may be too great for him alone to reverse.

DIFFICULT ISSUE, SIMPLE SOLUTION

President Obama sat down for a beer at the White House Thursday night with a top African-American professor and the police officer who arrested him earlier this month. They were joined by a previously unannounced guest, Vice President Joe Biden. Sgt. James Crowley and Henry Louis Gates Jr., both dressed in suits, sat down with Obama and Biden, who both had their white dress shirt sleeves rolled up.

Video from the meeting showed mugs of beer being delivered to the men, who sat at a round table at the edge of the White House’s Rose Garden, munching peanuts and pretzels from silver bowls.

Cambridge police sergeant Jim Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar he arrested after responding to a report of a possible break-in at Mr Gates’s home, will sit down with Mr Obama on Thursday for a conciliatory beer.

Admittedly, it is tempting to view the invitation as the ultimate conflation of the age of Obama and the age of Oprah. Aside from the choice of beverage, there is something very daytime television, something very soft focus, something very soft sofa, about this attempt to defuse the controversy.

An older woman approached Whalen, worried that she’d just witnessed two men breaking into a home. That’s when Whalen, a first-generation Portuguese-American, called 911 from her cell phone — alerting police to 17 Ware St. — the home, as it turns out, of renowned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Whalen’s call — now clearly the well-intentioned act of a passerby — ignited a firestorm over race and police relations, a national debate that went all the way to the White House. It was a call she says she never expected to be “analyzed by an entire nation.”

Gates was arrested by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley for disorderly conduct, a charge that was later dropped. Exactly what happened inside Gates’ home may never be known, but it seems clear that the key players in this saga brought their own personal history with race to the moment. That was true of Gates and Crowley, as well as the nation’s first African-American president.

All three will meet for a beer today at the White House to help chill the furor over Gates’ arrest and, in Obama’s words, try to turn the events of the past two weeks into a “teachable moment.”

Mr Gates was held for disorderly conduct, after he allegedly criticised police behaviour during the incident at the scholar’s home on 16 July. President Obama – a friend of Mr Gates – got involved in the case, saying the police had acted “stupidily”.

Yet startling and novel as Mr Obama’s attempts to defuse the controversy are, he is merely upholding a long tradition. Presidential racial politics have often been conducted with gestures, symbols and photo opportunities, and this is but the latest example of a well-worn genre.

By extending this invitation, Mr Obama also appears to be signalling that neither Prof Gates nor Sgt Crowley was wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong. The beer at the White House, then, marks an attempt to balance white fears about black lawlessness, whether real or imagined, with black middle-class grievances about white racism, whether real or imagined.

Will having a beer with President would put the Professor Henry Gates and Sgt Crowley issue to rest for good?

DEADLINES PASSING FAST

Critics say that all of the moving parts of the Obama stimulus plan are barely moving at all—that the broad package of economy-goosing goodies isn’t being managed aggressively enough to produce results.

The mortgage-modification program has barely scratched the surface of the 1.6 million properties headed for foreclosure, and the Feds are still fine-tuning programs aimed at would-be refinancers and car buyers.

But for consumers, it might all be moving too fast. Blink and you might miss the whole “cash for clunkers” program, which starts on July 24 and will only be on the table for a little more than three months. Also, there’s a good chance the $8,000 refundable tax credit for first-time home buyers will expire before lenders figure out how to use it. Laid-off workers, car shoppers, and homeowners have to keep up with ever-shifting program guidelines and procedures while keeping a list of varying deadlines in mind.

CARS
The “cash for clunkers” program starts formally on Friday, July 24, but some hungry dealers have jumped the gun and started offering cash for old gas guzzlers earlier in the month. They are also heaping incentives on top of the government giveaway; Chrysler is going to match the $3,500 or $4,500 federal rebates. Of course that just means consumers have to bargain that much harder on the actual price of the car; they can find all of the program guidelines at cars.gov.

The funding for that program runs out on Nov. 1, but it isn’t the only federal cash-for-cars deal on the table. Through 2009, the IRS also allows new-car buyers to deduct the sales and excise taxes they pay on their cars, even if they don’t typically itemize deductions.

HOUSES
There’s an $8,000 refundable tax credit for first-time home buyers on the table, but they’ve had trouble using it. That’s because most home-shopping newbies don’t have the cash for a down payment.

In May, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said Federal Housing Administration lenders could create bridge loans that fronted the $8,000 to buyers until they got that cash back on their taxes next spring or summer. States programs, there’s a list at the Web site of the National Council of State Housing Agencies. Would-be home buyers had better start lining that cash up; they have to close on their homes by Dec. 1 to get that deal.

LOAN MODIFICATION
Then there’s the modification mess. The original stimulus plan gave lenders the go-ahead to refinance problem loans that were worth as much as 105 percent of the homes they were written on, but that wasn’t nearly high enough for the big loans and deflating houses in many markets.

Then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said they would allow loans they owned to be revised even if they were as much as 125 percent of the home’s value—but not until September.
Now that date’s been pushed to Aug. 1.

TROUBLED MORTGAGES
Historically low interest rates still prevail, so that could be a good deal for borrowers with good credit scores and lousy mortgages—if they can get their banks to go along with the program.The second leg of the mortgage-relief plan was aimed at the foreclosure-bound, but that program has had its problems. The Treasury pushed banks to renegotiate troubled mortgages, but the lenders didn’t really have the staff or the infrastructure to hit the ground running.

This program is soon to scale up, says Treasury official Herbert Allison. Beginning on Aug. 4, the Treasury will begin monitoring and reporting on how well each individual lender is doing under the program, and all participating lenders have been called into Washington for top-level meetings next week.

LOAN VIOLATIONS
Troubled borrowers do have recourse, says Sylvia Alayon of the Consumer Mortgage Audit Center, a Florida firm that examines loans for frauds and flaws. Her company scours bad loans for foreclosure-prevention lawyers who are trying to get workouts for clients; she says that in 98 percent of the loans she sees there are some violations (often missing disclosures from the early days of the loan) bad enough to use as a negotiating wedge with reluctant lenders.

HEALTH INSURANCE
Workers who lose their jobs between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, qualify for government-subsidized health insurance through their employers, thanks to the stimulus bill that was passed in March.

It will pay 65 percent of their monthly health insurance for nine months, beginning Feb. 17, 2009. To get the subsidy, laid-off workers have to apply for continued coverage under their employer’s benefit plan, typically called COBRA benefits.

But by the time this bill was signed, many ex-employees had already opted out of those continuing job benefits, thinking they couldn’t afford them without the subsidy. A lot of confusion ensued, and some workers have reported that their employers are erroneously denying their requests for subsidized COBRA coverage.

In mid-July, the government finally set up a Web site to provide assistance for people who want to appeal those decisions at ContinuationCoverage.net. It should be live for at least the first nine months of 2010, when laid-off workers can continue to get these benefits. Unless Congress passes health-care reform—or another stimulus plan—that changes it all again.