U.S. President Barack Obama honored the people closest to him, including First Lady Michelle Obama, during his farewell address in Chicago on Tuesday (January 10) night.

“You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody. And a new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model,” Obama told Michelle, whom he called the “girl of the south side.”

He told his daughters, Malia and Sasha, “of all that I’ve done in my life I am most proud to be your dad.”

Calling Joe Biden a “scrappy kid from Scranton”, Obama told him that with his vice presidential pick he “gained a brother.”

The Democratic president is feeling some nostalgia as he prepares to leave the White House on Jan. 20 after eight years in office. His top policy achievements were jolted by the Nov. 8 election of Trump, who has threatened to undo Obama’s actions on issues ranging from advancing healthcare reform to curbing climate change.

Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday (November 24) wished Americans a happy Thanksgiving in his weekly address.

Obama urged his countrymen and women to stay united in the wake of the divisive presidential election.

“As a country, we’ve just emerged from a noisy, passionate, and sometimes divisive campaign season. After all, elections are often where we emphasize what sets us apart. We face off in a contest of “us” versus “them.” We focus on the candidate we support instead of some of the ideals we share. But a few short weeks later, Thanksgiving reminds us that no matter our differences, we are still one people, part of something bigger than ourselves,” Obama said.

The Pentagon has sent nine Yemeni men to Saudi Arabia from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, including an inmate who had been on a long-term hunger strike, U.S. officials said on Saturday, the latest step in President Barack Obama’s final push to close the facility.

The group was the largest shipped out of the U.S. naval base in Cuba since Obama rolled out his plan in February to shut the controversial detention centre there before he leaves office in January 2017.

With the latest departures, there are now 80 prisoners at Guantanamo, most held without charge or trial for more than a decade, drawing international condemnation.

The most prominent of the latest transfers was Tariq Ba Odah, a 37-year-old Yemeni whom the military had been force-feeding daily since he went on a hunger strike in 2007 and had been reported to have lost half his body weight.

His case was source of frequent legal wrangling between the U.S. Department of Justice and his lawyers, who had unsuccessfully sought his release on humanitarian and medical grounds.

Obama wants to make good on his long-time pledge to empty the Guantanamo prison before the end of his presidency. But he faces stiff opposition from many Republican lawmakers, as well as some fellow Democrats.

The transfers, which followed lengthy diplomatic efforts between Washington and Riyadh, took place as Obama prepared to attend a summit of Gulf Arab allies in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

The other prisoners involved in the transfer were identified as: Umar Abdullah Al-Hikimi, Abdul Rahman Mohammed Saleh Nasir, Ali Yahya Mahdi Al-Raimi, Muhammed Abdullah Muhammed Al-Hamiri, Ahmed Yaslam Said Kuman, Abd al Rahman Al-Qyati, Mansour Muhammed Ali Al-Qatta, and Mashur Abdullah Muqbil Ahmed Al-Sabri.

They were among a group of low-level inmates, now numbering 26, who have been cleared for transfer by a U.S. government inter-agency task force. U.S. officials have said they expect to move out all members of that group by this summer, sending them to their home countries or other nations.

Obama’s plan for shuttering the facility calls for bringing the several dozen remaining prisoners to maximum-security prison in the United States. U.S. law bars such transfers to the mainland – and Congress has shown no willingness to revoke it – but Obama has not ruled out using executive action to move the detainees.

Faith Matters warmly welcomes the release of Shaker Aamer after 14 long years. Many of them were spent in the legal black hole that is Guantanamo and it is clear that the long periods of solitary confinement have also had an impact on his mental and physical health.

Yet, it should never have come to this given that Aamer was cleared for release in 2007. It has taken a further 7 years for his actual release and now that he is back in the UK, no doubt questions will again be raised as to the possible complicity of UK intelligence services in the torture of Aamer. Only time will tell whether these allegations are true or not.

Guantanamo Bay should have been shut down a long time ago and President Obama’s political assertions that he would close the site down, have come to nothing. The site still continues to operate albeit in a scaled down manner when compared to the Bush period in office. However, what cannot be denied is that many see Guantanamo as a relic of the past, a period of time when the ‘War on Terror’ was in full swing.

According to Dick Cheney, the former Vice President in the Bush administration, ‘the worst of the worst‘ were being held in Guantanamo. That view is not accepted by some today and the example of Aamer counters this view given that he was not charged and that he has sat in legal limbo for over a decade. The incarceration of individuals in Guantanamo without any charges being laid against them has been unacceptable and due process should have been carried out many years ago. Instead, many individuals like Aamer were forgotten and left incarcerated in the hole of Guantanamo.

We hope over time, we can close the dark chapter that is Guantanamo . The last decade has been a difficult one for many communities and we hope that the future provides hope and peace and stability for us all.