President Obama will lay out a vision for his policy toward the Middle East at 11:40 am ET.

President Barack Obama said in a television interview on Wednesday he decided not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s body because it could incite violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.

“There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden,” President Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney. “You will not see bin Laden walking on this Earth again.”

The Obama administration had been wrestling with whether to release photos of a dead bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani compound on Monday, and the president said he and his advisers agreed the images should not be made public.

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President Obama will explain his vision for tackling the long-term U.S. deficit and debt in a speech in Washington at 1:35 p.m.

Facing a midnight deadline, the White House and Congress are working furiously to break a budget deadlock and prevent a federal government shutdown that would idle hundreds of thousands of workers.

Stepped-up security screening at airports in the wake of foiled terrorism plots has provoked an outcry from airline pilots and travelers, including parents of children who say they are too intrusive.

Industry officials, travelers and pilots have complained bitterly to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about new full-body scanners and more rigorous patdown checks begun recent weeks.

Security officials have defended the measures as necessary after foiled plots by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has tried to hide bombs in clothing and parcels that have made it aboard a U.S. passenger airliner and two cargo planes.

With the busiest holiday travel season nearing, fliers face long security lines and new rigorous patdown checks aimed at discovering hidden explosives. As a result, some travelers are questioning whether to fly at all.

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While Republicans and Democrats pick up the pieces from the congressional elections, the 2012 White House race is already off to a vigorous start with President Barack Obama facing potential challenges from more than a dozen would-be Republican opponents.

Obama faces a bleak political landscape after voters punished Democrats for the sluggish economic recovery and handed control of the House of Representatives to Republicans.

Obama now faces two big challenges — to get newly empowered Republicans to work with him on measures to revive economic growth, and to find ways to connect with middle-class Americans, many of whom view him as aloof and cerebral.

His predicament is difficult but not impossible.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both had approval ratings close to — and even lower than — the 45 percent level where Obama’s popularity now stands and both suffered big midterm setbacks in congressional elections.

But both presidents went on to win reelection.

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After a long and bitter campaign, Americans voted in midterm elections that could sweep Democrats from power in Congress and slam the brakes on President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.

Our midterm coverage has all the angles covered, with the latest breaking news and developments, as well as thoughtful insight and analysis.

In between reporting the results and implications, our White House team will be tweeting the latest insights from the nation’s capital and posting behind-the-headlines stories to Front Row Washington.

A live blog will deliver news updates from Reuters reporters on the ground, commentary from columnists James Pethokoukis, Bernd Debusmann, Joshua Spivak and Gregg Easterbrook, and analysis by Cliff Young of polling firm Ipsos. Look for frequent updates to that from around 7 pm ET.

And for a more concentrated view of specific state races, check out our interactive Twitter tracker. This real-time tool will aggregate tweets from candidates, commentators and local media from 15 key states.

Our rich multimedia coverage will feature video and pictures from the campaign trail to the voting booth, and our interactive factboxes highlight new faces and look ahead to possible outcomes.

We hope you find out coverage useful, insightful and (where appropriate) fun. And as always, we welcome  constructive comments.

The building furor over whether the largest U.S. mortgage lenders used so-called robo-signers and incomplete paperwork to force delinquent borrowers from their homes has mushroomed into a probe by the attorneys general in all 50 states.

Those on Wall Street, however, are largely unsympathetic, insisting that possible errors in the foreclosure process are beside the point and that the process begins only when a borrower starts missing mortgage payments.

The potential fallout has raised questions about the depressed U.S. housing market, which was being helped by foreclosure sales. It has also put pressure on stocks as investors worry about the impact on banks’ financial health.

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More than 70 days into the BP disaster and oil is still gushing from the broken well, leaving some to believe a nuclear explosion is the only solution left.

A nuclear fix to stop the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion — nuclear or otherwise.

But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

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A boat passes through heavily oiled marsh near Pass a Loutre, Louisiana May 20, 2010. REUTERS/Lee Celano

As one of the country’s worst environmental catastrophes unfolds on his watch, President Barack Obama is under increasing pressure from lawmakers and residents of the fouled Gulf coast to take over the oil disaster response.

The word at the White House is that Obama is frustrated at the delays BP has encountered in stopping the leak. “Plug the damn hole,” he has told senior government officials.

The most immediate concern is stopping the leak. The problem for the White House is that it has no real alternative except to rely on BP’s technology and expertise to do it.

That means Obama is forced into an uneasy alliance with BP — outraged that the leak took place but hopeful that the energy giant can stop it.

Has the Obama administrations’ response to the Gulf oil spill been enough? Take our poll and share your thoughts below.

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PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama talks after touring the Coast Guard Venice Center in the Gulf of Mexico region to view environmental damage caused by the sinking of BP’s oil and gas Deepwater Horizontal drilling rig while in Venice, Louisiana, May 2, 2010. REUTERS/Larry Downing