President Barack Obama was cutting short his holiday and returning to Washington today as a senior Democrat warned that the US appeared to be heading over the year-end “fiscal cliff” of higher taxes and deep spending cuts that could spin the still-fragile economy back into a recession.

Robert Gates, picked by President George Bush to take over from US secretary of state Donald Rumsfeld, received initial endorsements from Republican and Democratic Senate leaders after a meeting on Capitol Hill.

The White House today quarrelled with Democrats over whether US President George Bush was trying to win political points by using a September 11 anniversary speech to defend the war in Iraq and his war on terror.

US PRESIDENT George W Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court yesterday, turning to a lawyer who has never been a judge to replace Sandra Day O’Connor and help reshape the nation’s judiciary.