Washington, Mar. 18 : President Barack Obama's Indian American chief information officer Vivek Kundra, who was on leave because of an FBI investigation, has been reinstated.

White House officials confirmed to The New York Times that Kundra was reinstated on Tuesday.

The reinstatement comes a few days after F. B. I. agents had raided his former office at the District of Columbia's technology department. Kundra was not a target of the raid. A former employee of his, Yusuf Acar, has been charged with bribery.

Washington  - US President Barack Obama praised the people of Northern Ireland for rejecting violence and standing up for peace against "those who would seek to destroy it."

Obama spoke at a White House ceremony Tuesday to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day with the traditional visit by the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen.

The meeting comes as authorities in Northern Ireland continue to investigate the murders of two British soldiers and a policeman by an extremist splinter group associated with the now disbanded Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Washington - US President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended his ambitious budget proposals, which have been strongly resisted by conservatives, telling skeptics that his plans were in line with the enormity of the problems faced by the country's economy.

"The challenges we face are too large to ignore," Obama said after a meeting with members of the congressional budget committees.

Washington, Mar. 17 : President Barack Obama has decided that he is too busy to attend the Gridiron's annual banquet later this month.

He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the white-tie-and-tails affair in his first year in office.

The official line from the Gridiron Club - a society of Washington reporters, columnists, and bureau chiefs - is, "We understand."

But some Gridiron veterans make clear they don't understand.

New York, Mar 17 : US President Barack Obama is 3.1 percent Irish, it has emerged.

According to Ancestry. com, Obama's great-great-great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, sailed aboard the Marmion from Liverpool on March 20, 1850, with plans of settling in Ohio.

The roots of Kearney can be traced back to the villages of Moneygall and Shinrone in County Offaly, Ireland, reports The New York Daily News.

Also, Joe Biden's ancestors arrived in the U. S. within six months of Obama's Irish family; both were shoemakers by trade.

Washington, Mar. 17: President Barack Obama''s approval rating is down into the 50''s for the first time since he took office, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press.

Obama has a 59 percent approval rating and a 26 percent disapproval rating in the poll, which quizzed 1,308 adults by phone (including 326 who were called on their cell phone) from March 9 to 12.

This is down from Pew''s poll last month, which showed Obama with 64 percent approval and 17 percent disapproval.