Barack Obama has chosen former US Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle as his top official to overhaul the US healthcare system, two Democratic sources have said.
As Health and Human Services secretary, Senator Daschle will play a central role in the president-elect's plans to extend healthcare coverage to the 47m Americans - nearly one-sixth of the population - who lack medical insurance.
Mr Daschle, of South Dakota, was an early supporter of Mr Obama's, encouraging the first-term senator from Illinois to make his presidential run.
He is currently head of Mr Obama's health-care policy group as the president-elect prepares to take office.
Meanwhile David Axelrod, a senior aide and one of his most trusted confidants, has been tipped to become a senior White House adviser.
Mr Axelrod, who was Senator Obama's strategist during the campaign and has been a political consultant for a long list of prominent Democratic politicians, was seen as a crucial player behind Mr Obama's comfortable win over Republican John McCain in the presidential race.
Mr Obama's staff also announced that Greg Craig, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and also a former State Department official, will become White House counsel when Obama takes office.
Message from Al-Qaeda
Earlier, al-Qaeda number two Ayman Zawahiri ridiculed Mr Obama as a 'house negro' and warned him against sending more troops to Afghanistan.
In an Internet audio message released today Ayman Zawahiri insulted Mr Obama and other black Americans who have held high office in the US administration.
He used the term of insult used by the late black Muslim militant leader Malcolm X for slaves serving their white masters.
'It is true about you and people like you ... what Malcolm X said about the house negroes,' he said, naming former secretary of state Colin Powell and the current secretary, Condoleezza Rice.
An English transcript of the speech in Arabic purportedly by the al-Qaeda number two was provided by Aa-Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab.
The tape features an old speech by Malcolm X in which he used the two terms, referring to house slaves who were considered more docile and on better terms with their masters than the slaves out in the field.
Mr Obama's transition team declined to comment on the tape, in which Ayman Zawahiri accuses the president-elect of siding with Israel.
But the US State Department said the insult exposed the anti-democratic values of Al-Qaeda.
In the message made available by SITE Intelligence Group in the US, Ayman Zawahiri warned Obama of a 'heavy legacy of failure' awaiting him in office.
'Beware that the (stray) dogs of Afghanistan have savoured the taste of your soldiers' flesh, so do send them in thousands,' said the closest aide to Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
In a major interview aired on Sunday, Mr Obama vowed no retreat from his campaign promise to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and switch the military focus to Afghanistan.
