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Washington  - US president-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday that he was establishing an advisory board to help lead the country out of the economic crisis and named a former chairman of the Federal Reserve to head it.

Paul Volcker will head the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which will be tasked with coming up with ideas for creating jobs and stabilizing the financial system, Obama said. The board will offer independent and non-partisan analysis of the economic crisis and formulate ideas for reversing the trend.

Washington, Nov. 26 : Aides to US President-elect Barack Obama have said that they do not expect Vice-President Joe Biden to assume the kind of muscular role that Vice President Dick Cheney has played over the last eight years, although they will expect him to put out a number of fires.

“I’m sure that there will be discrete assignments over time. But I think his fundamental role is as a trusted counselor. I think that when Obama selected him, he selected him to be a counselor and an adviser on a broad range of issues,” the New York Times quoted,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president-elect, as saying.

Chicago, Nov. 26 : A mentor of US President-elect Barack Obama has described as very worrying the latter’s preference for Hillary Clinton as the next Secretary of State.

Abner Mikva, a former federal judge who was Bill Clinton’s White House counsel, told The Times that the choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State worried him because of her husband.

New York, Nov 26 : It looks like U. S. President-elect Barack Obama is addicted to his BlackBerry.

He told ABC News'' Barbara Walters in an interview that he''s trying to talk the Secret Service and others into letting him keep his wireless device.

Obama had to give up the device over fears that hackers could break into his inbox and harvest data that''s potentially damaging to national security.

However, he thinks keeping BlackBerry at hand will allow him to keep a better handle on his job.

"This is a problem," the New York Daily News quoted Obama, as telling Walters.

Melbourne, Nov 26 : Aussie moviemaker Baz Luhrmann is using Barack Obama’s historic election victory to raise awareness about his homeland''s shameful past, during which Aboriginal and mixed race kids were removed from their families and raised to be servants to white industry leaders and politicians.

The Moulin Rouge! director has linked Obama to the stolen generations, claiming the US President-elect would have been taken had he been Australian.