WASHINGTON  – The top U.S. intelligence official says the government has decided to build a new spy satellite and buy more commercial imagery from the private sector.
 
The buy is meant to replace a Pentagon satellite program that was canceled in 2005 because it was over budget and behind schedule.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said Tuesday that the new spy satellites would be similar to those already in orbit, which were built by Lockheed Martin.

The plan will have to win congressional approval. One senator has already complained about the price tag, which he said was over $10 billion. Blair did not reveal the program’s cost.

WASHINGTON  – President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are seeking a stronger relationship between the world body and its single biggest backer.

Obama invited Ban to a White House meeting Tuesday to discuss a range of global security and development issues, the first meeting of the two leaders since the inauguration. Also scheduled to attend is Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who emphasized the meeting’s symbolism as an example of a new U.S. multilateralism.

Obama sees the U.N. “as an important venue and vehicle for the advancement of our national security and foreign policy goals, and as a venue in which we can seek to enhance cooperation on a wide range of international security, development and other issues,” Rice said at U.N. headquarters in New York before heading to Washington.

Among the major concerns is the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, where the Sudanese president kicked out aid groups after an International Criminal Court arrest warrant charged him with war crimes. Other issues on the agenda are the global financial meltdown, an international climate treaty, poverty and human rights.

Ban, who became secretary-general in January 2007, has promoted a good working relationship with the United States.

A month into his new job, Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, met Obama by chance aboard a shuttle flight to New York. It was the same month Obama declared his candidacy for president.

During much of President George W. Bush’s tenure, the United States had a difficult relationship with the U.N., particularly when John Bolton was U.S. ambassador to the world body for 16 months in 2005-2006. Bolton pressed for sanctions against Iran and North Korea and an overhaul of the United Nations, antagonizing many U.N. member states.

But during the last two years of the Bush administration, Bolton’s successor, the Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, became known as a gregarious and affable diplomat who improved relations somewhat.

The United States has agreed to pay nearly a quarter of the U.N.’s $4.86 billion operating budget, but is perennially late with its dues.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had her first meeting with Ban last week in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, on the sidelines of an international donor conference for rebuilding Gaza. The two, along with the European Union and Russia, also work together in a so-called Quartet of international mediators seeking to forge progress toward peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Ban used that occasion to press for additional cash for U.N. peacekeepers who have been stretched thin worldwide and for the United States to set an example in tackling global warming.

Clinton assured Ban he could count on U.S. leadership to reduce carbon dioxide, methane and other industrial gases that trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.

The U.N. chief’s top priority this year is to encourage global leaders to adopt a new international climate treaty at a conference in December in Copenhagen.

Zach Ambrose, Governor-elect Bev Perdue’s chief of staff, is doing some reorganizing.

CHICAGO – Clout-heavy Chicago politicians are lining up to replace U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, prompting some experts to wonder if the local Democratic party will split on whom to anoint as his successor.

The strength of the contenders may make it tough for Democrats to unite behind one candidate for the congressional seat. Also in question is whether Mayor Richard Daley will name a favorite. Emanuel, 48, has accepted the job as chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama and is expected to step down soon, leaving two years on his second term with more than 180 days before the next election. Under Illinois law, that means a special election will be held to replace him.

In a city where Democrats rule, the party stamp of approval usually assures a candidate’s victory. Emanuel was the Democrats’ endorsed candidate when he ran for his seat as representative of the 5th district on Chicago’s far northwest side. So was the person Emanuel replaced, now-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

But it’s possible that the next person won’t be endorsed by the party, said University of Illinois-Chicago political science professor and former city alderman Dick Simpson.

The contenders for Emanuel’s seat include many with strong claims to the district – which may result in a divided vote that gives no one a majority or an endorsement, Simpson said. Daley may not endorse a candidate for fear of alienating others who want the spot, attorney and columnist Russ Stewart said.

Candidates include 38th Ward Alderman Thomas Allen, 47th Ward Alderman Gene Schulter, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley and state Reps. John Fritchey and Nancy Kaszak.

“The endorsement is critical. If you have an open primary with no endorsement and warring fiefdoms, the candidate with the broadest appeal is going to win,” Stewart said. In Chicago, he said, it’s rare for an election to play out without the Democratic Party or Daley tipping the scales.

Emanuel’s office has not returned phone messages seeking comment on when he might resign.

City authorities would like the special primary and general election to correspond with suburban elections already planned for February and April and have sent Blagojevich a written plea to that effect, said Jim Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections.

“That would minimize costs and minimize voter confusion,” he said.

Blagojevich’s office said Thursday they received the request but had no other comment.

WASHINGTON – Democratic officials say Barack Obama’s fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel has agreed to be White House chief of staff.

One of Obama’s first decisions as president-elect was to ask the Illinois congressman to run his White House staff. Emanuel accepted Thursday after struggling over family and political considerations.

Emanuel serves in the House Democratic leadership and will have to resign his seat and put aside hopes of becoming House speaker.

Emanuel is a fiery Democrat who served as a political and policy aide in the Clinton White House. His selection is a shift in tone for Obama, who chose more low-key leadership for his presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama pivoted quickly to begin filling out his new administration on Wednesday, selecting hard-charging Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff while aides stepped up the pace of transition work that had been cloaked in pre-election secrecy.

Several Democrats confirmed that Emanuel had been offered the job. While it was not clear he had accepted, a rejection would amount to an unlikely public snub of the new president-elect within hours of an electoral college landslide.

With hundreds of jobs to fill and only 10 weeks until Inauguration Day, Obama and his transition team confronted a formidable task complicated by his anti-lobbyist campaign rhetoric.

The official campaign Web Site said no political appointees would be permitted to work on “regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.

And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration.”

But almost exactly one year ago, on Nov. 3, 2007, candidate Obama went considerably further than that while campaigning in South Carolina. “I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House,” he said of lobbyists at the time.

Because they often have prior experience in government or politics, lobbyists figure as potential appointees for presidents of both parties.

On the morning after making history, the man elected the first black president had breakfast with his wife and two daughters at their Chicago home, went to a nearby gym and visited his downtown offices.

Aides said he planned no public appearances until later in the week, when he has promised to hold a news conference.

As president-elect, he begins receiving highly classified briefings from top intelligence officials Thursday.

In offering the post of White House chief of staff to Emanuel, Obama turned to a fellow Chicago politician with a far different style from his own, a man known for his bluntness as well as his single-minded determination.

Emanuel, he was a political and policy aide in Bill Clinton’s White House. Leaving that, he turned to investment banking, then won a Chicago-area House seat six years ago. In Congress, he moved quickly into the leadership. As chairman of the Democratic campaign committee in 2006, he played an instrumental role in restoring his party to power after 12 years in the minority.

Emanuel maintained neutrality during the long primary battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, not surprising given his long-standing ties to the former first lady and his Illinois connections with Obama.

The day after the election there already was jockeying for Cabinet appointments.

Several Democrats said Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who won a new six-year term on Tuesday, was angling for secretary of state.

They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss any private conversations.

Kerry’s spokeswoman, Brigid O’Rourke, disputed the reports.

“It’s not true. It’s ridiculous,” she said in an interview.

Announcement of the transition team came in a written statement from the Obama camp.

The group is headed by John Podesta, who served as chief of staff under former President Clinton; Pete Rouse, who has been Obama’s chief of staff in the Senate, and Valerie Jarrett, a friend of the president-elect and campaign adviser.

Several Democrats described a sprawling operation well under way. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday’s election.

They said the group was stocked with longtime associates of Obama, as well as veterans of Clinton’s White House. Quite apart from transition issues, Obama’s status as an incumbent member of Congress presents issues unseen since 1960, when John F. Kennedy moved from the Senate to the White House.

The Senate is scheduled to hold a postelection session in two weeks, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a news conference Wednesday to reinforce her call for quick action on a bill to stimulate the economy.

That places Obama in uncharted territory – a president-elect, presumably first among equals among congressional Democrats. Yet his and their ability to enact legislation depends almost entirely until Inauguration Day on President Bush’s willingness to sign it.

Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was elected to a new six-year term from Delaware on Tuesday and he must resign before he can be sworn in as vice president. Democrats are certain to hold his seat, following Jack Markell’s election as governor.

There has been intense speculation that Biden’s son, Beau Biden, is interested in ascending to the seat. But he is serving a one-year stint in Iraq as a member of the National Guard. In the interim, outgoing Gov. Ruth Ann Minner is seen among many Democrats as a likely appointee to hold the office until an election in 2010.

Obama also must resign his Senate seat before he can be sworn in as the 44th president. Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will pick a replacement.