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Obama invests in clean fuels, Facebook copies Twitter's hashtags, and more in our roundup of the business stories that are making news and driving opinion

President Obama is working to "get our economy off oil."
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

1. OBAMA PUSHES CLEAN FUEL INVESTMENT

President Obama on Friday is proposing using $2 billion raised through federal oil and gas leases to pay for research on cleaner fuels for the nation's fleet of cars and trucks. The idea, which Obama talked up in his State of the Union address, is expected to face resistance from Congressional Republicans, who consider it a tax on energy producers. A White House official said the money wouldn't be a new tax, and it would help the president keep a promise to make America "a magnet for the jobs of future" by ensuring that the country "is and remains at the cutting edge of breakthrough technologies that will get our economy off oil." [New York Times]

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.