Poznan, Poland  - Waiting for Obama is a prime pastime at this year's UN climate conference.

Until Barack Obama takes the US president's oath of office on January 20, work on a global deal to combat climate change is largely on hold. But his election is cheering negotiators working toward an accord due by next December.

"I am delighted to see that ... Obama is planning ambitious energy and climate policies," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said as the two-week talks opened Monday.

With 190 nations attending and the Bush administration representing the United States one last time, Obama was the missing link at the talks in Poland.

Washington  - President-elect Barack Obama on Monday nominated Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and announced he would keep Defence Secretary Robert Gates in his current job in widely expected moves to set up his national security team.

Clinton, 61, his former rival, will leave her job as the senator from New York if confirmed to become the nation's next top diplomat. The reappointment of Gates, 65, is designed to ensure a smooth transition takes place as the United States fights two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gates became the head of the Pentagon under President George W Bush in December 2006. Obama also named former Marine General James Jones to serve as national security advisor.

Washington - US President-elect Barack Obama on Monday named Eric Holder and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to lead domestic security efforts in the United States.

Holder will be the United States' first African-American attorney general. One of his first jobs will be overseeing the closure of the US' controversial detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a pledge Obama made during the presidential campaign.

Obama said the choice of Holder, who served as deputy attorney general under former president Bill Clinton, was "even more important in a transition that demands vigilance."

New York, December 1 : An Obama supporter has taken off a license plate bearing the name of his favourite president – in a bid to save them from thieves!

Jonathan Lifschutz had obtained his ‘Obama’ plates from the Department of Motor Vehicles without knowing that they would become a thief’s magnet.

The Long Island supported replaced his new plates with old ones after having even caught a man trying to nick it off him.

"Those plates will probably, at some point, become a collector''s item - in someone else''s house," the New York Post quoted the financial analyst as saying.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30  -- U. S. officials say the Department of Homeland Security is still experiencing growing pains that have left some key projects in various states of disarray.

The Boston Globe said Sunday that around 75 percent of the agency staff in Washington has been on the job for less than two years and has become bogged down in running the sprawling $50 billion-a-year operation.

"It is very important," said Cathleen Berrick of the General Accountability Office. "That is how they let contracts and oversee programs. It is such a huge challenge."

WASHINGTON,  Nov. 30 -- Book publishers are set to publish at least 24 books connected to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, literary officials say.

Political literary agent Gail Ross said the increase in Obama books likely comes from society's love of stories involving a gallant hero who saves the day or a menacing villain, Politico reported Saturday.

"Bush books worked when he became a villain," Ross said of U.S. President George W. Bush, adding that Obama appears to currently wear the social mantle of potential hero.

For HarperCollins executive editor Tim Duggan, the interest in books about Obama has more to do with race than hero-villain clashes.