国际英语新闻：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.

    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.

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

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.

    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.