Humble Beginning

Barack Hussein Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii. Obama’s parents were separated when he was 2 years old and later on divorced.

Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. In his early teens, he was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy and graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s South Side. During this time, Obama said he “was not raised in a religious household”. Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988.

In February 1990, he was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991. On June 3, 2008 he won the Montana primary election giving him enough delegates to become the first Black American presidential candidate to win a major political party’s presumptive nomination for the office of President of the United States, which later on became the first African-American president in America. President Obama also became the first president to light a ceremonial Diya at the White House to mark the observance of Diwali, the “festival of lights.” And in that occasion he sign a new initiative aimed at expanding opportunities for Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage. Gays and lesbians which 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”.

Moreover, among of Obama’s policies were laid out during his weekly radio and Internet address, Mr Obama said too many small business owners remain unable to get credit despite administration steps to jump-start lending, which was virtually frozen when the financial crisis took hold last year. “These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis, and now it’s time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs,” Mr Obama said. Further he stressed that “It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system and more broadly shared prosperity.”

Furthermore, President Barack Obama says overhauling the health care system, while helping millions of people, also will test whether policy makers can “serve the national interest despite the unrelenting efforts of the special interests.” The administration is building momentum for the president’s overhaul effort after the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 this week for a bill that would extend health care coverage to millions of people. One Republican, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, supported the bill, and the measure faces considerable opposition from the health care industry, labor unions and large business organizations.

To date, there is no doubt that President Barack Obama deserves the Nobel peace award. His prominence as a world leader, with a distinct and clearly defined posture toward attaining some semblance of peace on this earth, is being recognized by the Nobel Committee. His efforts have been sincere and gallant, against fiercely formidable odds. Receiving a Nobel Peace award is not meant to be an indication that the recipient has attained peace throughout the world, but in recognition of the potential impact of that individual’s effort towards that end. To keep you abreast of recent developments, just visits the above mentioned for more details and information’s.

Aerobic Exercise No Big Stretch For Older Adults But Helps Elasticity Of Arteries

Just three months of physical activity reaps heart health benefits for older adults with type 2 diabetes by improving the elasticity in their arteries – reducing risk of heart disease and stroke, Dr. Kenneth Madden told the 2009 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress, co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.

Dr. Madden studied adults between the ages of 65 to 83 with controlled Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol to see how increased activity might affect stiffness of the arteries.

“The theory is that aerobic activity makes your arteries less stiff and makes artery walls more elastic,” says Dr. Madden, a geriatric specialist at the University of British Columbia.

An improvement was seen in the elasticity of the arteries of the group that performed the activity compared to those who didn’t exercise. “There was an impressive drop in arterial stiffness after just three months of exercise. In that time we saw a 15 to 20 per cent reduction.”

The subjects were divided into two groups to either receive three months of vigorous physical activity (one hour, three times per week) or to get no aerobic exercise at all. Subjects were classified as sedentary at the beginning of the study but gradually increased their fitness levels until they were working at 70 per cent of their maximum heart rate, using treadmills and cycling machines. They were supervised by a certified exercise trainer.

Dr. Beth Abramson, spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, stresses the importance of lifestyle factors on heart health, especially with our aging population. “Almost everyone can benefit from active living,” she says. “The Foundation recommends that, like adults of any age, older adults – with the consent of their physicians – need 30 to 60 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week.”

Dr. Madden says that the exercise requirements may be viewed as controversial because of the age of the participants but the exercise level was safe and well tolerated. “There seems to be a knee-jerk reluctance to getting these older adults to exercise yet we used a vigorous level of activity and didn’t have any trouble keeping participants in our study. They enjoyed the activity,” Dr. Madden says. “People always underestimate what older adults can do.”

Dr. Madden notes that realistically, seniors need someone to help them get started. “We need to learn how to do it effectively and how to do it safely,” he says. “It could mean visiting your family doctor to find out about provincially funded programs, or joining programs for seniors that are offered at many local community centres.”

Dr. Abramson recommends that seniors choose activities they enjoy, such as walking, gardening, golfing, dancing, or joining a yoga or tai chi class. If weather is a barrier, she suggests climbing stairs at home, joining a mall-walking group, or strolling the halls of their apartment building or retirement residence.

In his next project, Dr. Madden wants to find out if there is a less expensive but equally effective way to reduce the stiffness of arteries in older adults. “Our first step was to prove that it was at all possible for older adults to have reduced narrowing in their arteries due to exercise,” he says. “Now we want to find out just how rigorous the levels of activity need to be to demonstrate the same results. The next step is to try studying a home-based walking program using pedometers. This is something easy for doctors to prescribe and cheap and easy for participants.”

The HeartWalk Workout, a special activity program developed by the Heart and Stroke Foundation to help people with cardiovascular problems get regular, healthy physical activity is available online at heartandstroke.ca. It helps people slowly build up exercise tolerance until they can walk at least 30 minutes, five times a week.

Statements and conclusions of study authors are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect Foundation or CCS policy or position. The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society make no representation or warranty as to their accuracy or reliability.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation (heartandstroke.ca), a volunteer-based health charity, leads in eliminating heart disease and stroke and reducing their impact through the advancement of research and its application, the promotion of healthy living, and advocacy. Canada Newswire.

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