WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Tuesday rolled out an ambitious five-year plan for moving doctors and hospitals to computerized medical records, promising greater safety for patients and lower costs.

Starting next year, doctors' offices and hospitals can get federal money to help defray the costs of the systems, which can run to millions of dollars for hospitals. Providers who don't comply by 2015 will face cuts in Medicare payments.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said Friday his policies had pulled America out of the most vicious economic dive since the 1930s, setting battle lines for mid-term elections in November.

Obama put the Republicans on notice he will vigorously defend his record, despite the fact many Americans do not yet feel the recovery he is touting, while economic data hints that the rebound may be slowing.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – President Barack Obama urged the U.S. Congress on Friday to pass a $5 billion expansion of tax credits for clean energy manufacturing that he said would generate tens of thousands of new jobs.

With anxiety over high unemployment threatening Obama's Democrats in November congressional elections, he used a campaign swing for key political candidates to defend his economic agenda and promote job-boosting measures.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Thursday bemoaned a "sledgehammer" last decade of economic irresponsibility, but insisted his policies were succeeding in powering a genuine recovery.

Obama launched a two-day western political swing by touring a plant which makes electric vehicles, a symbol of his plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars to develop a new job-rich green energy revolution.

LAS VEGAS – Mixing policy and politics, President Barack Obama called on Congress Friday to expand a clean energy tax credit that could pay off in Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is struggling in his re-election campaign.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, under pressure to spur job growth, said on Saturday two solar energy companies will get nearly $2 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to create as many as 5,000 green jobs.

In his weekly radio and Web address, Obama coupled his announcement with an acknowledgment that efforts to recover from the recession are slow a day after the Labor Department reported that private hiring in June rose by 83,000.

WASHINGTON – Tyco Electronics Ltd. spent $490,000 to lobby the federal government in the first quarter on the economic stimulus plan and other issues, according to a disclosure report.

That's up slightly from the $470,000 that Tyco Electronics spent in the same period a year earlier. It also spent $460,000 in the fourth quarter of 2009.

WASHINGTON – The government is handing out nearly $2 billion for new solar plants that President Barack Obama says will create thousands of jobs and increase the use of renewable energy sources.

Obama announced the initiative in his weekly radio and online address Saturday, saying the money is part of his plan to bring new industries to the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US House of Representatives extended federal unemployment benefits through November 30, with the Senate now set to take up the controversial measure.

The House passed the extension by a vote of 270-153, as the unemployment rate hovered at 9.7 percent in May and new jobless benefits claims jumped higher than expected to 472,000 last week, an increase of 13,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised total.

WASHINGTON – Despite pessimism that the war in Afghanistan is turning out to be a quagmire, Democrats controlling the House muscled through a plan Thursday to finance President Barack Obama's troop surge, but only after sweetening the measure with last-ditch moves to salvage their faltering jobs agenda.

Long delayed, the approximately $80 billion bill was passed amid building pressure on Democrats to act before their weeklong Fourth of July break begins. But the Senate approved a significantly slimmer measure in May and it'll take additional weeks to reconcile the differences between the two battling chambers.