OBAMA TO NAME NEW JOBS COUNCIL

San Francisco, February 18 (AFP)- US President Barack Obama will name Intel chief executive Paul Otellini to his jobs council on Friday, in a move to harness the power of innovation to ignite economic and employment growth.

Obama will travel from San Francisco, where he dined with a hall of fame of Internet pioneers on Thursday, to Oregon to make the announcement, as he tours an Intel facility billed as the world's most advanced semi-conductor plant.

Otellini will be named to the president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a White House official said.

The official said more members of the board would be named in the next few weeks.

The council is an advisory board, headed by General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, that is dedicated to finding new ways to boost economic growth, hiring and the education and training of US workers.

Obama's prime economic message is that the United States must innovate and create new 21st century industries to compete with the challenge from rising economic giants like India and China.

On Thursday, Obama met the cream of Silicon Valley business titans, including ailing Apple boss Steve Jobs, to seek input on how to speed up job growth and economic recovery.

The group also included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo president and CEO Carol Bartz, Twitter CEO Dick Costello and Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt.

The group discussed "ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth," the White House said.

Spokesman Jay Carney said Obama "believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate”.

The president discussed his proposals "to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs”.

The meeting took place amid renewed speculation about the health of Jobs, who last month embarked on his third medical leave from Apple since 2004.

Jobs underwent an operation for pancreatic cancer in 2004 and received a liver transplant in early 2009.

Apple's fortunes have been uniquely linked to Jobs, who returned to the then-flagging company in 1997 after a 12-year absence and introduced innovative and wildly successful products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Obama also met the heads of Google, Facebook and Twitter for the first time since the search and social networks were judged to have played a key role in the Egyptian revolt which toppled veteran president Hosni Mubarak.

On Tuesday Schmidt said Google was "very, very proud" of cyberactivist Wael Ghonim, a young executive at the company who emerged as a leading voice of the Egyptian uprising.

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