Washington in 5 minutes

ENERGY

GE chief tops White House visits

Energy issues and people with a stake in them figure prominently in the latest batch of visitor records released by the White House.

Those landing meetings with aides to President Obama include General Electric Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt, who has roughly a half-dozen scheduled meetings in the records.

The records - released Wednesday - show that Mr. Immelt was among those scheduled to meet in August with Phil Schiliro, the president’s chief legislative liaison to Congress. Other scheduled visitors included climate-change specialist Jonathan Lash and Paul Hanrahan, the chief executive of major energy company AES.

The records are the latest in a series of visitor logs released voluntarily by the White House.

WHITE HOUSE

Obama calls for fewer secrets

President Obama has ordered the federal government to rethink how it protects the nation’s secrets, in a move that was expected to declassify more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents and curb the number of government records hidden from the public.

Among the changes is a requirement that every record is released eventually. Mr. Obama also directed federal agencies to review their policies on protecting information and called for the creation of a new National Declassification Center at the National Archives to assist them.

Advocates for a more open government are cheering the move, but say increased transparency will depend upon agency compliance.

In a memo to agency heads, Mr. Obama said he expects the order will improve openness and vowed to monitor the outcome.

POSTAL SERVICE

Stamps to honor Mother Teresa, Autry

Nobel Prize winner Mother Teresa and Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Mauldin will be honored on U.S. postage stamps next year.

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