Obama holds online meeting with ordinary citizens

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday held
an interactive online meeting with ordinary citizens across the country, the
first such kind of meeting in the history of the White House.

U.S. President Barack Obama attends white house open for questions event at white house in Washinton, on March 16, 2009. (Xinhua/Zhang Yan)

Standing in front of a TV screen and joined by an audience in the East Room
of the White House, the president replied to six online questions on education,
the mortgage crisis, job outsourcing, national service, assistance for veterans
and health care.

Four of the six virtual questions were displayed on the screen in a written
format; the other two were video submissions.

The questions were selected from more than 104,000 questions submitted by the
public to the White House's web site, WhiteHouse.gov, which streamed live video
of the meeting.

U.S. President Barack Obama (C) attends white house open for questions event at white house in Washinton, on March 16, 2009. (Xinhua/Zhang Yan)

During the session, the president repeatedly steered the discussion toward
larger economic themes, most notably the recent spike in job losses.

He warned that even if the economy has already bottomed out, unemployment
probably would continue to get worse. Obama also discussed education reform.

The president, who revolutionized the use of technology as a political tool
during his presidential campaign last year, is the first U.S. president to
address questions from the public live on the Internet.