The committee said it attached particular emphasis on the President’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

The stunning choice made Obama only the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize, shocking many Nobel watchers who believed it was too early to award the president. Barack Obama took office only weeks before the committee’s Feb. 1 deadline for nominations. Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said this morning. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play,” the committee said.

“I think it’s based on racism,” Carter said at a town hall at his presidential center in Atlanta Tuesday. “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”

It’s a claim those close to Wilson vehemently deny.

“There is not a racist bone in my dad’s body,” said Alan Wilson, an Iraq veteran who is running for state attorney general in South Carolina. “He doesn’t even laugh at distasteful jokes. I won’t comment on former President Carter, because I don’t know President Carter. But I know my dad, and it’s just not in him.”

“It’s unfortunate people make that jump. People can disagree — and appropriately disagree — on issues of substance, but when they make the jump to race it’s absolutely ludicrous. My brothers and I were raised by our parents to respect everyone regardless of background or race.”

On Monday night, ABC’s Terry Moran Tweeted: “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential.”

Moran deleted the post soon after, but not before catching the attention of his more than 1 million followers.

Denzel Washington has given up hope that he will ever play the nation’s first Black president on the big screen – because he fears he is “too old” for the role.

The 54-year-old Oscar winner would like to play Barack Obama, 47, in a film but fears it will be many years before the president’s life is made into a movie.

He says, “When Obama’s story is ready to be told I’ll be too old to do it. And if it were made now, he has too much to do to have me asking for tips on how to play him.”

In an interview with the May 25 issue of Newsweek Magazine, President Barack Obama opened up about how his family is dealing with life in The White House — and how that might change once his tween daughters become teenagers.

“You know, the nice thing is that, partly because of temperament, partly because of Michelle’s unbelievable parenting skills, I’ve just got some happy, normal kids,” the Commander-In-Chief says of daughters Sasha, 10, and Malia, 7. “And all that stuff that’s going on around them, they just kind of miss. We have not seen any effects, any fishbowl effects, yet on them.”

“Now, I worry about them when they’re teenagers where, you know, you’re already embarrassed about your parents and even more embarrassed on TV all the time,” he explains. “And dating I think will be an issue because I have men with guns surrounding them at all times [laughter], which I’m perfectly happy with, but they may feel differently about it.”

Over a dozen people were arrested.

Republican-affiliated network Fox has become the first broadcast network to turn down a request for air by President Barack Obama. On Wednesday Instead of airing the president’s prime-time news conference on Wednesday, FOX will broadcast its drama Lie to Me.

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC are all carrying the 8PM EDT event — albeit grudgingly –which falls on Obama’s 100th day in office.

The President of the United States and his bare chest are gracing the May 2009 cover of Washingtonian Magazine.

It is a move some critics are calling disrespectful, asking if the magazine would have put shirtless photos of a White president on its cover.

What do you think?

The cover photo was shot by members of the paparazzi while the then-President-elect was on vacation in his native Hawaii in late December. Washingtonian changed Obama’s bathing suit from black to red and edited out the background featured in the original photo.

“You have a buff president and the paparazzi like taking shirtless photos of him,” Garret Graff, Washingtonian’s Editor-At-Large told ABC News on Tuesday. The Prez is “really hot,” she added.

What are your thoughts?

Sony Pictures is developing a movie about Barack Obama’s historic election as the first African-American president of the U.S.