Mariah Carey shows off her incredible figure in a patriotic string bikini to celebrate 4th July

Independence day:

It’s the Fourth of July and what better excuse does a gorgeous celebrity need to strip down to a very patriotic bikini?

Singer and overall pop goddess Mariah Carey decided to do just that and slipped into a stars and stripes bikini to help kick off the Independence Day celebrations.

The City of Irving will hold its annual two-part celebration of America's independence on Monday, July 4, 2016. Thousands of attendees enjoy the wide variety of activities throughout the day each year, including an award-winning parade, community reception, and evening festival with fireworks display.

Of course, she wasn’t just posing up for our viewing pleasure but also promoting her Macy’s performance later today.
As she shared a picture of herself lying on a boat looking sensational, the 43-year-old told her 11.6million followers: “Gotta be Pon de water for the Fourth of July! Can't wait for the NBC special, it's going to be festivity!”
And if Mariah is going to be in a bikini, the ratings are sure to go through the roof.

She recently announced that her new album The Art of Letting Go is being delayed, so to tie you over with your Mariah Carey cravings here are two new remixes of her first single from the new album, called (modestly as ever) Beautiful.
 

Or #Beautiful, which is its official title.
The album, which was meant to be dropping in July, is postponed indefinitely.
The American Idol judge tweeted:"While making this album, I got so immersed in the creative process that I just don't feel I would be doing it justice to release it on 7/23."

"I'd rather not exclude meaningful songs. I want to give you this album as it's meant to be heard. When I'm ready, you'll be the first 2 know!"
OK, as long as we're the very first to know Mariah.

Miguel, who duets with Mariah on '#Beautiful' had this to say about the Twitter friendly title.

"The hashtag in the title of this song is particularly fitting because the word that comes before 'beautiful' when I sing the chorus is an expletive that I can't say on air," he said, referring to the F-word he sings on song's hook.
"But the hashtag is particularly fitting for that expletive, if you just kind of pay a little bit of attention."

More Secure Credit Cards With Chips Coming To The U.S.

By the end of 2015, 70 percent of U.S. credit cards and 41 percent of U.S. debit cards will have security chips — called EMV for Europay, MasterCard MA +0.71%, Visa V +0.78% — according to the Aité Group.

While Europe, Canada and Mexico have had chipped cards for years — usually with a chip and a PIN (personal identification number), the U.S. card issuers have studiously avoided the more secure, but more expensive, cards. To some extent American issuers didn’t need the card-based security. Unlike Europe, the American card industry had grown up with cheap telecommunications, so merchants could check cards in real-time as they accepted a card in payment. American technology vendors also developed very sophisticated, if sometimes alarmist, tools to detect fraudulent card use. Really, should a New Jersey resident’s $30 gas purchase in Massachusetts trigger an alert just because she rarely ventured so far from home?

Anyway, as other countries went to chip and PIN cards and the U.S. continued to rely on a less secure magnetic stripe, the predictable occurred. Just as having two loud German shepherds makes it likely thieves will move to the house next door, America’s continued reliance on mag stripes has made it an attractive target TGT +1.26% for card fraud.

“The fraud rate has doubled from 5 basis points to 10 basis points now,” said Julie Conroy research director in retail banking at Aité Group. “It speaks to the fact that criminals are targeting the U.S. because we are the weakest link in the chain.”

Even now most American card issuers aren’t going with chip and PIN, preferring chip and signature.(The dearth of chip and PIN cards from American issuers has caused problems for Americans traveling in Europe — see story on left).  Conroy said that the American card issuers have mostly gone for chip and signature which is less expensive and less complicated to issuers than chip and PIN, where the PIN has to be mailed separately and lost PIN card replacement becomes more complicated.

“Last year about half [of issuers] were leaning to chip and signature, 25 percent chip and PIN and another quarter undecided,” Conroy explained. “Now the vast majority is chip and signature, one is going chip and PIN and four are undecided.”

Lost/stolen cards, which is where PIN is most valuable, make up only 13 percent of U.S. fraud, she added, while cyber-criminals have shown with incidents like Target, Neiman Marcus and other card data thefts that they can do vast  damage without possessing the actual card.

“Issuers are addressing the biggest point of pain with chip,” Conroy added. “I had so many issuers tell me that if you look at the business case, and the attrition risk if our user experience is more cumbersome than that of our competitors. They are going with the numbers [chip and signature] and I think that makes sense.”

At the same same, time card networks have been pushing hard to get their cards accepted at unmanned kiosks, such as train stations in Europe, where PINs were required in the past That will help avoid inconvenience to American travelers who don’t have PIN cards. (I still find it hard to understand why American card providers didn’t offer chip and PIN to their cardholders who traveled to Europe frequently. And when they did provide chip and PIN cards, they didn’t show them on their Web sites or inform call center reps that such exotic devices existed.)

Two rather widely separated catalysts have accelerated the adoption of EMV in the U.S., according to Conroy. The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull, the Icelandic volcano, stranded many Americans in Europe for weeks, forcing them to rely on cards that weren’t always widely accepted in businesses like restaurants and train stations at night where unmanned terminals required chip and PIN. Then came the Target card breach which exposed 40 million card holders.

Still, said Conroy, at Charles deGaulle airport in Paris Americans can expect to find long lines at the two agents who take signature cards, while PIN cards can be used in kiosks.

“Visa [which last year told me rather vehemently that chip and signature was quite enough for the American market] has pushed PIN in other geographies. The investment is already there. If you look at the U.S. market, we have a unique set of consumers. As one issuer put it —’We are not convinced Americans can learn to do two new things at once.’ ” Sadly she did not name the source of that comment.

“As you look at the competitive pressure in the U.S., it is so much more significant than in other countries. We have 14,000 banks and credit unions competing for consumers’ business. Nobody wants consumers, who have 3.4 other credit cards in their wallet, to have a bad experience with one card and then send it to the back of their wallet. A number of issuers said they wish it had been done five years ago because they are getting killed by the fraud; the counterfeit card fraud is increasing 20-30 percent year on year. We are the last G-20 country to go to EMV and the fraud rings behind it are organized crime rings with P&L demands.”

The transition will be challenging, she added.

“We are going to have all these different permutation of transactions at point of sales (POS). Some will be EMV-enabled with EMV terminals, some terminals will be ready and some cards will have fraud assessment challenges. It will be a big task for issuers and you can be sure fraudsters are aware of it and will prepare attacks.”

Some companies are using traditional analytics to confront fraud, while others are looking at big data capabilities to improve insight into customer behavior, she added.

“They want to understand this is the behavior of my customer to avoid declines. Some issuers have the capabilities to leverage the same big data stack for marketing, although many of the capabilities of the issuers are still pretty siloed.”

The Top 10 Cities For Yoga In The U.S.

You don’t have to look much further than the end of the block to see a yoga studio in many cities these days. Celebrity practitioners like Lady Gaga, Dr. Oz, Robert Downey Jr. and Russell Simmons have lent buzz to the ancient practice, and doctors, researchers and the rest of us increasingly believe in its benefits for body and mind.

About 20 million Americans over the age of 18 practiced yoga last year, or 8.7% of the adult population, up from 15.8 million in 2008, according to a 2012 study by Sports Marketing Surveys on behalf of Yoga Journal.  Of those polled who didn’t currently practice, 44% said they’d like to, making them “aspirational yogis.”

The business of yoga is growing fast, too. Americans are spending $10.7 billion a year on yoga classes and gear (pants, mats, bags, blocks), up 88% from 2008, the study found.

Almost 4 in 10 of those polled said they’d only been practicing a year or less, which underlines the quick rise in the popularity of yoga. Another 30% have practiced for one to three years, and the other third has practiced for more than 3 years.

Not surprisingly, women outnumber men by about 4:1 among yoga devotees.

The measurable benefits of yoga and meditation are pretty hard to argue with, as research studies continue to roll in from major universities. Yoga, including meditation, appears to have profound effects on the nervous system, likely by affecting the body’s stress response via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic (flight-or-flight) nervous system. Meditation has been shown to increase cortical gray matter density in people who learn to practice, and to reduce activity in certain areas of the brain, most notably those related to stress, to mind-wandering, and to self-centric inward chatter (the “monkey mind”). And yoga, even separate from meditation, has recently been shown to improve symptoms of psychiatric disorders like depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and even schizophrenia.

To determine the top U.S. cities for yoga, we turned to data from the marketing firm GfK MRI, which conducted surveys in 205 markets last year, asking participants whether they practiced yoga, and if so, how frequently and for how long. The most yoga-mad metro area in the nation: San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif., where residents are 59% more likely to practice yoga than the general U.S. population. The Bay Area has long been at the forefront of the American yoga scene — San Francisco was, after all, the first city to set up a yoga room at its airport.

Seattle, home of all things alternative and progressive, ranks second, with its residents 46% more likely to do yoga than the general population. One surprise among the top cities for yoga is Boise, Idaho, which ties for ninth place with San Diego. Boise residents are 21% more likely to practice yoga than the general population. But with burgeoning technology employment (The city comes in at No. 15 on Forbes’ 20 Fastest-Growing Cities list and No. 40 on our list of the Best Places for Business and Careers) and a vibrant arts scene, perhaps it’s not so surprising after all that the city has so many yogis.

Full List: Top 10 Yoga-Friendly Cities In The U.S.

While some instructors have lamented the fact that yoga has become more a sport than practice in the U.S., others say yoga – in any form – still benefits the practitioner, and helps open one to its original aims: heightened awareness, focus, oneness with the outside world. Whichever way you slice it, yoga is fast growing and not likely to slow down, which is probably a good thing for our collective consciousness.

Government Data Show U.S. in Decade-Long Cooling

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade. The NOAA temperature data are driving a stake through the heart of alarmists claiming accelerating global warming.

Responding to widespread criticism that its temperature station readings were corrupted by poor citing issues and suspect adjustments, NOAA established a network of 114 pristinely sited temperature stations spread out fairly uniformly throughout the United States. Because the network, known as the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), is so uniformly and pristinely situated, the temperature data require no adjustments to provide an accurate nationwide temperature record. USCRN began compiling temperature data in January 2005. Now, nearly a decade later, NOAA has finally made the USCRN temperature readings available.

According to the USCRN temperature readings, U.S. temperatures are not rising at all – at least not since the network became operational 10 years ago. Instead, the United States has cooled by approximately 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is more than half of the claimed global warming of the twentieth century.

Of course, 10 years is hardly enough to establish a long-term trend. Nevertheless, the 10-year cooling period does present some interesting facts.

First, global warming is not so dramatic and uniform and alarmists claim. For example, prominent alarmist James Hansen claimed in 2010, “Global warming on decadal time scales is continuing without letup … effectively illustrat[ing] the monotonic and substantial warming that is occurring on decadal time scales.” The word monotonic means, according to Merriam-Webster Online, “having the property either of never increasing or of never decreasing as the values of the independent variable or the subscripts of the terms increase.” Well, either temperatures are decreasing by 0.4 degrees Celsius every decade or they are not monotonic.

Second, for those who may point out U.S. temperatures do not equate to global temperatures, the USCRN data are entirely consistent with – and indeed lend additional evidentiary support for – the global warming stagnation of the past 17-plus years. While objective temperature data show there has been no global warming since sometime last century, the USCRN data confirm this ongoing stagnation in the United States, also.

Third, the USCRN data debunk claims that rising U.S. temperatures caused wildfires, droughts, or other extreme weather events during the past year. The objective data show droughts, wildfires, and other extreme weather events have become less frequent and severe in recent decades as our planet modestly warms. But even ignoring such objective data, it is difficult to claim global warming is causing recent U.S. droughts and wildfires when U.S. temperatures are a full 0.4 degrees Celsius colder than they were in 2005.

Even more importantly than the facts above, the USCRN provides the promise of reliable nationwide temperature data for years to come. No longer will global warming alarmists be able to hide behind thinly veiled excuses to doctor the U.S. temperature record. Now, thanks to the USCRN, the data are what the data are.

Expect global warming alarmists, now and for the foreseeable future, to howl in desperation claiming the USCRN temperature data are irrelevant.

Of course, to global warming alarmists, all real-world data are irrelevant.

The White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. It has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800.

The house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia Creek sandstone in the Neoclassical style. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.
In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Construction continued with the addition of the South Portico in 1824 and the North in 1829.

Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office which was eventually moved as the section was expanded. The third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings.

East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the house's load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed inside the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt.

Today, the White House Complex includes the Executive Residence, West Wing, East Wing, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building—the former State Department, which now houses offices for the President's staff and the Vice President—and Blair House, a guest residence.

The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, as well as a two-story basement. The term White House is often used as a metonym for the Executive Office of the President of the United States and for the president's administration and advisers in general, as in "The White House has decided that....". The property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the President's Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of "America's Favorite Architecture".

George Walker Bush

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. Bush was elected president in 2000 after a close and controversial election, becoming the fourth president to be elected while receiving fewer popular votes nationwide than his opponent. Bush is the second president to have been the son of a former president, the first being John Quincy Adams (with the other familial presidential relations being grandfather-grandson of the Harrisons, as well as the Roosevelts being 5th cousins). He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.

Eight months into Bush's first term as president, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred. In response, Bush announced the War on Terror, an international military campaign which included the war in Afghanistan launched in 2001 and the war in Iraq launched in 2003. In addition to national security issues, Bush also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, social security reform, and amending the Constitution to disallow same-sex marriage. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors, and funding for the AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR. Bush announced the U.S. would not implement the Kyoto Protocol on global warming that had been negotiated by the Clinton Administration in 1997, and agreed to by 178 other countries, but never ratified by the U.S. Senate. His tenure saw national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and enhanced interrogation techniques.

Bush successfully ran for re-election against Democratic Senator John Kerry in 2004, in another relatively close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the political spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, and numerous other challenges. As a result, the Democratic Party won control of Congress in the 2006 elections. In December 2007, the United States entered its longest post–World War II recession, often referred to as the "Great Recession", prompting the Bush Administration to enact multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Nationally, Bush was both one of the most popular and unpopular presidents in history, having received the highest recorded presidential approval ratings in the wake of 9/11, as well as one of the lowest approval ratings during the 2008 financial crisis. Internationally, he was a highly controversial figure, with public protests occurring even during visits to close allies, such as the United Kingdom.
Bush left office in 2009, and was succeeded as president by Barack Obama, who ran on a platform of change from Bush's policies. Since leaving office, Bush has returned to Texas and purchased a home in a suburban area of Dallas. He is currently a public speaker, has written a memoir titled Decision Points,and his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in recent surveys of presidential scholars,although as with most former presidents, Bush has been viewed more favorably by the public since leaving office.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a governmental agency belonging to the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency (counterintelligence). Also, it is the government agency responsible for investigating crimes on Native American reservations in the United States under the Major Crimes Act. The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime.
The bureau was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI). Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. The FBI headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, located in Washington, D.C. The bureau has fifty-six field offices located in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in lesser cities and areas across the nation. More than 50 international offices called "legal attachés" exist in U.S. embassies and consulates general worldwide.

CNN

The Cable News Network (CNN) is an American basic cable and satellite television channel that is owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner. The 24-hour cable news channel was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States.

While the news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN primarily broadcasts from its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta, the Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U.S. to distinguish the American channel from its international counterpart, CNN International. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100 million U.S. households. Broadcast coverage extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, and the U.S. channel is also carried on cable and satellite in Canada. Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories.

As of August 2013, approximately 98,496,000 American households (86% of cable, satellite and telco customers) receive CNN.

Bill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen.

He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009—excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the world's second wealthiest person. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Gates became the world's richest person again in May 2013, a position that he last held on the list in 2007. As of June 2014, he is still the richest.

During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored and co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by judicial courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh /bɑːŋlɑːdɛʃ/; Listeni/ˌbæŋɡləˈdæʃ/ (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ, pronounced: [ˈbaŋlad̪eʃ] ( listen), lit. "The nation of Bengal"), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh (Bengali: গণপ্রজাতন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশ Gônôprôjatôntri Bangladesh), is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India to its west, north and east; Burma to its southeast and separated from Nepal and Bhutan by the Chicken’s Neck corridor. To its south, it faces the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh is the world's eighth-most populous country, with over 160 million people, and among the most densely populated countries. It forms part of the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal, along with the neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura.

The present-day borders of Bangladesh took shape during the Partition of Bengal and British India in 1947, when the region became East Pakistan, part of the newly formed state of Pakistan. It separated from West Pakistan by 1 400 km of Indian territory. Due to political exclusion, ethnic and linguistic discrimination and economic neglect by the politically dominant western wing, nationalism, popular agitation and civil disobedience led to the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. After independence, the new state endured poverty, famine, political turmoil and military coups. The restoration of democracy in 1991 has been followed by relative calm and economic progress. In 2014, the Bangladeshi general election was boycotted by major opposition parties, resulting in a parliament and government dominated by the Awami League and its smaller coalition partners.

Bangladesh is a unitary parliamentary republic with an elected parliament called the Jatiyo Sangshad. Bengalis form the country's largest ethnic group, along with indigenous peoples in northern and southeastern districts. Geographically, the country is dominated by the fertile Bengal delta, the world's largest delta. The four largest and constitutionally recognized religions in the country are Islam (89%), Hinduism (8%), Buddhism (1%) and Christianity (0.5%).

Bangladesh is identified as a Next Eleven economy. It has achieved significant strides in human and social development since independence, including in progress in gender equity, universal primary education, food production, health and population control.[6][7][8] However, Bangladesh continues to face numerous political, economic, social and environmental challenges, including political instability, corruption, poverty, overpopulation and climate change.

Bangladesh is a founding member of SAARC, the Developing 8 Countries and BIMSTEC. It contributes one of the largest peacekeeping forces to the United Nations. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000.
In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his election, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
During his first two years in office, Obama signed into law economic stimulus legislation in response to the Great Recession in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010. Other major domestic initiatives in his first term included the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"; the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign policy, Obama ended U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War, increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. military involvement in Libya, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In November 2010, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives as the Democratic Party lost a total of 63 seats; and, after a lengthy debate over federal spending and whether or not to raise the nation's debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.
Obama was re-elected president in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term, Obama has promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and has called for full equality for LGBT Americans, while his administration has filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and California's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. In foreign policy, Obama has continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan.