The Prime Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, spoke with the United States President by telephone. Mr Bush urged his European counterparts to coordinate efforts to solve financial crisis spreading around the globe. All are expected to agree to attend a meeting if the details can be thrashed out.

Downing Street said it was "a good idea" and welcomed the President's close attention to events in Europe. The idea was floated by Mr Sarkozy, who holds the presidency of the European Union. Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said: "The president obviously talked to President Sarkozy about his idea to have a meeting. The president's open to that." The venue for the meeting would still have to be decided, although Washington is the likely destination.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt. The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.

Bush's rating has worsened amid "collapsing optimism about the economy," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst.

Bush also holds the record for the other extreme: the highest approval rating of any president in Gallup's history. In September 2001, in the days after the 9/11 attacks, Bush's approval spiked to 90%. In another record, the percentage of Americans who say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake reached a new high, 63%, in the latest poll. Assessments of Bush's presidency are harsh. By 69%-27%, those polled say Bush's tenure in general has been a failure, not a success.

The White House demanded in 2004 that the Justice Department approve a secret national security program without allowing the ailing attorney general, "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed," to discuss the matter with top advisers, according to the FBI director's personal notes. The partially censored notes from FBI chief Robert S. Mueller, dated March 12, 2004, describe a distraught and feeble Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room just moments after being visited by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card, the president's chief of staff at the time.

Mueller's account backs up earlier descriptions of the dispute over whether to continue the program despite Justice Department concerns about its legality. Last month, Mueller told a House committee that the clash was about the government's warrantless wiretapping; Gonzales and the White House denied that and said it was about other intelligence activities. "Saw AG," Mueller wrote in his timed log of the events on the evening of March 10, 2004. "Janet Ashcroft in the room. AG is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed." Ashcroft was in the hospital with pancreatitis.

Before seeing Ashcroft, Mueller met with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey at the hospital about 7:40 p.m., the notes indicate. Comey said Ashcroft told Card and Gonzales that he would not approve the classified terrorist surveillance program, which was set to expire the next day. "The AG then reviewed for them the legal concerns relating to the program," Mueller's notes show. "The AG also told them that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH."

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The notes were released by the House Judiciary Committee, which had asked Mueller to hand them over when he testified in late July. The committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, said the notes prove the White House tried to strong-arm the ailing Ashcroft. "Particularly disconcerting is the new revelation that the White House sought Mr. Ashcroft's authorization for the surveillance program, yet refused to let him seek the advice he needed on the program," Conyers, D-Mich., said in a statement.

Bush dismissed those concerns. He said he will make his case directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit. "My message will be Vladimir - I call him Vladimir - that you shouldn't fear a missile defense system," Bush said. "As a matter of fact, why don't you cooperate with us on a missile defense system. Why don't you participate with the United States."

The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, said it was significant that Bush promised to make "maximum efforts" to explain his position to Putin. "We have pointed it out to our guest that it is very important that we win maximum support for this project of the Czech Republic who are very sensitive to those issues," Klaus said. "I suppose this is what President Bush clearly realizes." Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek endorsed the plan as well.

China joined Russia on Tuesday in criticizing the U.S. plan, saying the anti-missile system could set off an arms race. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the proposal "is not conducive to mutual trust of major nations and regional security." Most Czechs aren't happy about the proposal for a U.S. anti-missile radar base to be built at the Brdy military zone southwest of their capital. Recent polls here show more than 60 percent of the public in opposition.

Bush appeared with his hosts in a high-ceilinged hall of Prague Castle. Although the event was billed as a press conference, the three leaders took no questions. Despite Bush's declaration that the Cold War is over, the international debate over the missile defense system likely will drown out everything else during his stay in Prague. The White House has billed a speech Bush will deliver on democracy at Czernin Palace as the highlight of his visit here. His Czech counterparts expressed some complaints, such as a two-tiered visa system for European nations that leaves their citizens out in the cold.

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Over the weekend, Putin stepped up already incendiary remarks about the U.S. and its intentions with the shield, warning that Moscow could take "retaliatory steps" including aiming nuclear weapons at U.S. military bases in Europe. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, called this sort of talk "not helpful." Still, he, the president and other U.S. officials have sought to cool down the situation - to no avail. They insist the network is meant to protect NATO allies against a missile launch from Iran, not Russia.

President George W. Bush's public approval rating fell to the lowest of his presidency and may be dragging down scores for Republican presidential hopefuls, according to a Newsweek poll. Bush's approval rating fell to 28 percent this week, the lowest since a similar score by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the year of the Iran hostage crisis. The poll also found that 71 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.

Almost two-thirds of those polled, 62 percent, said that Bush's actions in Iraq showed he was "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes," the survey said. The poll also showed that all three leading Democratic contenders beat their Republican counterparts in head-to-head competition among registered voters.

The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show. Overwhelmed by huge growth in the number of food processors and imports, however, the agency took only limited steps to address the problems and relied on producers to police themselves, according to agency documents. Congressional critics and consumer advocates said both episodes show that the agency is incapable of adequately protecting the safety of the food supply.

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Last week, the FDA notified California state health officials that hogs on a farm in the state had likely eaten feed laced with melamine, an industrial chemical blamed for the deaths of dozens of pets in recent weeks. Officials are trying to determine whether the chemical's presence in the hogs represents a threat to humans. Pork from animals raised on the farm has been recalled. The FDA has said its inspectors probably would not have found the contaminated food before problems arose. The tainted additive caused a recall of more than 100 different brands of pet food.

The outbreaks point to a need to change the way the agency does business, said Robert E. Brackett, director of the FDA's food-safety arm, which is responsible for safeguarding 80 percent of the nation's food supply. "We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities that we're responsible for in any given year," Brackett said. Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them," Brackett said. "We have to get out of the 1950s paradigm."

Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget.

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week. Ford wanted to give the Commander-in-Chief an actual demonstration of the innovative vehicle, so the automaker arranged for an electrical outlet to be installed on the South Lawn and ran a charging cord to the hybrid. However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen This is all off the record, right?"

Defying a veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly signaled support Tuesday for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by next March. Republican attempts to scuttle the non-binding timeline failed on a vote of 50-48, largely along party lines. The roll call marked the Senate's most forceful challenge to date of the administration's handling of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 U.S. troops.

Three months after Democrats took power in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the moment was at hand to "send a message to President Bush that the time has come to find a new way forward in this intractable war."

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Similar legislation drew only 48 votes in the Senate earlier this month, but Democratic leaders made a change that persuaded Nebraska's Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson to swing behind the measure. Additionally, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a vocal critic of the war, sided with the Democrats, assuring them of the majority they needed to turn back a challenge led by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

The debate came on legislation that provides $122 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as domestic priorities such relief to hurricane victims and payments to farmers. Separately, supporters of an increase in the minimum wage readied an effort to attach the measure to the spending bill, along with companion tax cuts that Republicans have demanded. The House and Senate have passed different versions of the bill but have yet to reach a compromise.

The House has already passed legislation requiring troops to be withdrawn by Sept. 1, 2008. The Senate vote assured that the Democratic-controlled Congress would send Bush legislation later this spring that calls for a change in war policy. A veto is a certainty, presuming the president follows through.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

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But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

Attorneys general in recent decades have ranged from skilled political operatives close to the president (most notably Bobby Kennedy under John F. Kennedy) to nonpolitical lawyers detached from the president (such as Ed Levi under Gerald Ford). Gonzales is surely close to Bush, but nobody would accuse him of being skilled at politics. He puzzled and alarmed conservatives with a January speech in which he claimed that he would take over from the White House the selection of future federal judicial nominees.

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The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee said the budget for veterans' health care has not grown enough to cope with the number of service members being wounded in combat, or to handle their disability claims. Senator Daniel Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii, said the budget pinch meant that veterans’ affairs offices were short-staffed, leading to delays in processing new claims.

As a result, he said, federal agencies were "two months short of the goal" of processing claims within 120 days. Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said that there were too few doctors, nurses and other health workers in the system to handle the influx of war wounded, "and we are burning them out." He, too, called for more funds for treating and assisting veterans.

Mr. Dole, a former Republican senator and presidential candidate, was himself grievously wounded in World War II. Ms. Shalala is a former secretary of Health and Humans Services. The commission is being set up to investigate how wounded soldiers are treated and helped with the transition back to civil society. "If we come up with good suggestions, we could change the system over the next 30 years," Mr. Dole said.

He said that while American military and veterans' hospitals now generally provide high quality inpatient treatment, they do not do as well with outpatient and transitional care. "It's when we move them out that's the problem," he said.

The commission was formed in the wake of revelations about unsanitary living conditions, treatment lapses and bureaucratic failings at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, one of the nation's premier military hospitals. Soldiers who were treated there have told of being discharged only a few days after suffering serious wounds, and of having to fight their way through a confusing and unresponsive bureaucracy to get the outpatient treatment they needed.

Does President Bush have it in for the press corps? Touring a Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., the Commander in Chief got behind the wheel of a giant tractor and played chicken with a few wayward reporters. Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses--at least more stylish than most safety glasses--Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on the economy. "I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up." As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another. White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor.

Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop. He gave reporters a thumbs-up. "If you've never driven a D-10, it's the coolest experience," Bush said afterward. Yeah, almost as much fun as seeing your life flash before your eyes.