US Senate leaders yesterday announced a bipartisan compromise on an overhaul of US immigration laws, giving some illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and creating a temporary worker program.

US President George Bush calls Joshua Bolten, his new chief of staff, a “creative policy thinker”.

Dubai Ports World today finalised its £4bn purchase of P&O while bowing to US political pressure by agreeing to end its quest to take over operations at US ports.

The Bush administration will conduct a highly unusual second review of potential security risks in a business deal it previously approved for a United Arab Emirates-based company to take over significant operations at six leading US ports.

The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future US investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, it emerged today.

US SENATE Republican Leader Bill Frist yesterday called for the Bush administration to stop a deal permitting a United Arab Emirates company to take over six American seaports, upping the ante on a fight that several congressmen, governors and mayors are waging with the White House.

US PRESIDENT George Bush and dozens of other leading politicians are racing to distance themselves from a disgraced political lobbyist.

The US Senate today narrowly blocked a Republican plan to tap into the nation’s largest untapped reservoir of oil beneath the frozen tundra of an Alaska wildlife refuge.

THE American Senate yesterday rejected attempts to re-authorise several provisions of the USA Patriot Act as infringing too much on Americans’ privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration.

President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should apologise for the possible involvement of their aides in the alleged illegal disclosure of a CIA undercover agent’s identity, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said today.

HARRIET MIERS, US President George Bush’s controversial choice for the Supreme Court, yesterday withdrew her nomination.

Some Iraqis sympathised with US forces today after hearing the American death toll in the Iraq war had reached 2,000.

Hundreds of protests and vigils will be held across the United States today to mark the 2,000th US military death in Iraq.

ONE storm could end up costing almost as much as two wars.

AS Congress hurried toward approval of a $51.8 billion (€41.77bn) emergency hurricane aid package, US President George Bush yesterday mapped a plan to get a wide range of government benefits - from medical care to job training - to storm victims who have been scattered around the US.

As US congress hurried toward approval of a €41.8bn emergency hurricane aid package, US President Bush George today mapped a plan to get a wide range of government benefits – from medical care to job training – to storm victims who have scattered around the US.

US President George Bush is asking Congress for as much as $50bn (€40.2bn) in immediate aid for the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, and the White House indicated today more money would be needed eventually.

President George Bush and Congress today pledged separate investigations into the widely criticised federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush is gearing up for a battle to get his conservative nominee into the Supreme Court.

US President George Bush faces a politically thorny situation – and stark choices – now that Senate Democrats twice have blocked John Bolton’s confirmation as UN ambassador.

In defiance of a presidential veto threat, US senators who support embryonic stem cell research are pushing for a quick vote on a bill passed by the House that would lift restrictions on such studies.

Ignoring a veto threat, the US House of Representatives moved today towards approving a Bill loosening President George Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research, with supporters claiming prospects were enhanced by promises that such research would offer new treatments for a host of debilitating ailments.

ACTRESS Sharon Stone raised $1 million in five minutes yesterday for Tanzanian mosquito nets, turning a debate about African poverty at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland into an impromptu fund-raising event.

Sharon Stone raised a million dollars (€766,000) in five minutes today for Tanzanian mosquito nets, turning a debate about African poverty at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland into an impromptu fund-raising event.

Senator Edward Kennedy and other Democrats assailed President George Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq today and declared they would oppose Condoleezza Rice’s nomination as Secretary of State as a principal architect of a failed policy.

The Bush administration broadened its response to the earthquake and tsunami disaster in South Asia and Africa with plans for Secretary of State Colin Powell to visit the region and assess what more the United States needs to do.

REPUBLICANS expanded their hold on US Congress in Tuesday's elections and Democrat Tom Daschle became the first senate leader in half a century to be voted out of office.

Republicans tightened their grip on the US Senate today, capturing a string of Democratic seats while extending their decade-long hold on Congress.

Vice-presidential hopeful John Edwards has sparked a row by claiming that under a John Kerry administration “people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again”.

The Bush administration has asked Congress for a €23.6bn downpayment for next year’s US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the White House’s earlier plans not to seek the money until after the November elections.

The US Senate voted has voted to make it a separate offence to harm a foetus during a violent crime, in a victory for those seeking to expand the legal rights of the unborn.

Ricin was sent to the White House in November, it was disclosed today – two days after the deadly poison was found in a Senate post room.

Preliminary tests of a white powder discovered in a US Senate office building in Washington were positive for the potentially deadly poison ricin, police said.

US President George W Bush said he looked forward to signing into law newly passed legislation to end the “abhorrent practice” known by critics as partial birth abortion, thereby giving anti-abortionists a victory that has eluded them for a decade.

US CONGRESSIONAL Democrats’ support for President Bush’s $87 billion request comes with a price: they want him to spell out details of his overall Iraq strategy.

THE longest-running US senator, Strom Thurmond has died at the age of 100. He was in the Senate for 48 of his 100 years.

THE US has announced a $15 billion plan to tackle the global crisis of AIDS and has called on the rest of the world to follow its lead.

Bowing to pressure from his fellow senators and the White House, Republican Trent Lott resigned his position as US Senate majority leader today.

Bono played Father Christmas at New York’s JFK airport as he helped ship 83,000 presents to children suffering from Aids in Uganda and Sudan.