To kick off National Service Week, president Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill Tuesday that triples the size of the AmeriCorps service program over the next eight years and expands ways for students to participate in community service while earning money for college.

Joining Senator Ted Kennedy, former President Bill Clinton, and bipartisan Congressional leader for the bill signing, the president commended the entire Kennedy family as an icon of service and self-sacrifice in America. He thanked Republican Senator Orrin Hatch for his role in creating the bill and acknowledged those in Chicago who taught him the virtues of service as a community organizer.

The bipartisan bill, which passed in the House 275-149 and swept through the Senate 79-19, ignites America’s local, regional and national service programs and nonprofit organizations to expand to further meet the nation’s most pressing challenges. 

President Obama made clear in his first cabinet meeting today, that cutting out waste was essential to the government’s mission of recovery and long-term stability. Speaking to the press afterwards, he gave examples of the government waste that had been already targeted:

“Veterans Affairs has begun using videoconferencing for meetings so they can cancel or delay 26 conferences, saving  $17.8 million. The USDA, under Secretary Vilsack, is working to combine 1,500 employees from seven office locations into a single facility in 2011, which we estimate will save $62 million over a 15-year lease term.  Janet Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security estimates that they can save up to $52 million over five years just by purchasing office supplies in bulk.”

The British government announced Thursday that it will subsidize first-time electric car buyers up to $9,000 beginning in 2011.

The program, which is part of the government’s $452 million plan to promote low carbon transport over the next five years, will be available to first-time buyers of electric cars and plug-in gas-electric hybrids — only car models that debut on the market beginning in 2011 will be eligible.

The announcement gives carmakers time to gear up for greater demand. The government also will pay for new recharging stations around town with $36 million of the fund.

(Photo of the Moose, an electric car made by Green Vehicles, that has a range of 60 miles per charge.) 

(Read the full report at CBC.com) 

The Obama administration opened the way to regulating U.S. greenhouse gas emissions on Friday by declaring climate-warming pollution a danger to human health and welfare, in a sharp policy shift from the Bush administration. (AP)

“This pollution problem has a solution — one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

(Read the story in the Miami Herald)