George Bush News

As people headed inside St. Paul AME Church in East Macon to hear controversial the Rev.

President George W. Bush recognized Hanukkah on Monday while paying tribute to Israel's 60th anniversary this year.

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan to serve as education secretary, people with knowledge of the decision said Monday.Obama planned to announce his choice Tuesday morning.

President Bush's Middle East Trip includes visits with troops in Afghanistan and dodging footwear in Iraq.

When President-elect Barack Obama heads home for a break from the White House, he won't go to a sprawling ranch or private seaside compound.

U.S. officials are holding talks with Russia on the divisive subject of missile defense and on other arms and security issues.

The talks in Moscow could be the last round of negotiations during the administration of President George W. Bush on U.S. plans for a European missile shield.

The U.S. says the installations in Poland and the Czech Republic would counter a potential threat from Iran. Russia claims the real aim is to weaken its nuclear deterrent.

Russia is already pressuring the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to scrap the plans and has threatened to deploy missiles near the Polish border.

The Bush administration tossed out no lifeline for the teetering auto industry Sunday and a Republican who blocked $14 billion in loans said it appeared the White House hadn't decided what to do.

Joined by people seeking shelter from the bitter cold, parishioners at the Jaffrey Bible Church on Sunday thanked God for a warm place to sleep and for the utility crews struggling to repair power lines snapped by New England's devastating ice storm.

'Your fellow Jaffrey residents have stepped up and made this a more bearable situation,' Walt Pryor, recreation department director for the town of 5,700, told the congregation Sunday morning.

Church administrator Rick Needham noted the 'terrible devastation in our lives and homes,' recognizing two families whose homes were damaged by falling trees. About 150 people attended Sunday's service in Jaffrey, about 15 miles from the Massachusetts state line.

A detailed official history of the U.S. effort to reconstruct Iraq after Saddam Hussein's overthrow in 2003 blamed its failings on 'blinkered and disjointed' prewar planning, a deadly insurgency and wasteful and ill-managed contracting.

The 500-plus page document also asserts that the Bush administration, in early stages of the war, exaggerated the number of Iraqi forces trained to help American troops provide adequate security.

The study, 'Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,' was produced by a special U.S. auditing group that has dug deeply into the multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort since 2004. It is a detailed summation of the findings from many previous audits and reviews by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart Bowen.

A Christian band that was expecting to perform for President Bush tonight doesn't mind that he went to Iraq instead.

President George W. Bush on Sunday made a farewell visit to Iraq, a place that defines his presidency for better or worse, just 37 days before he hands the war off to a successor who has pledged to end it.

After a red-carpet welcome ceremony, Bush began a rapid-fire series of meetings with top Iraqi leaders. The president wanted to highlight a drop in violence in a nation still riven by ethnic strife and to celebrate a recent U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which calls for U.S. troops to withdraw by the end of 2011.

Having missed the chance to name a Hispanic to one of the top four Cabinet positions, President-elect Barack Obama is now under pressure from some groups to put the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court.

The United States handed the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution on Saturday that hails progress made in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but calls for an "intensification" of efforts to secure a deal.

President-elect Barack Obama, relatively young and inexperienced, is facing a rapidly growing list of monumental challenges as he prepares to take the reins of a nation in turmoil.

Homelessness and demand for emergency food are rising in the United States as the economy founders, a report said on Friday, and homeless advocates cautioned many cities were not equipped for the increase.

Thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Iraqi cities at local security stations after the summer deadline to have combat troops out of the urban areas, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said Saturday.

Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters that the troops would serve as training and mentoring teams, and thus would not be included in the mandate to pull combat troops from the cities. That mandate is included in the recently approved U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

'We believe that's part of our transition teams,' said Odierno, who was set to meet with Defense Secretary Robert Gates here at this sprawling base in central Iraq. He said the U.S. will leave troops at the security stations to support the Iraqis, adding 'we believe we should still be inside those after the summer.'

While the news media riveted attention on his scandal-plagued successor, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan apologized Friday for crimes in office that landed him in federal prison, saying he had given 'less than my best' as a public official.

'I want to make things right in my heart with God, with my family and with those I have hurt,' Ryan said in a statement released by his attorneys. 'As a former public official, a husband, a father and a grandfather, I apologize.'

The statement is to be sent to President George Bush as an addition to the petition for clemency filed weeks ago. Presidents customarily commute some sentences and issue some pardons as they leave office.

U.S. stock indexes pulled ahead Friday after President George Bush indicated he would seek an alternative way to bailout U.S. automakers.

The inauguration committee of President-elect Barack Obama, who ran on a platform to change the way business is done in Washington, is selling four-day packages of four tickets to his historic swearing-in ceremony and parade plus some extras in exchange for $50,000.

The deal does represent a change. President Bush charged $250,000, selling his supporters a much bigger menu of inaugural goodies that featured candlelight dinners.

On Friday, members of the Obama National Finance Committee were spreading the word about their package to friends and associates around the country.

President Robert Mugabe has said Zimbabwe has contained cholera - as the UN and a UK charity warned the deadly outbreak was getting worse.