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President Barack Obama abruptly canceled a planned campaign trip Wednesday and planned to convene his Cabinet at the White House instead, as U.S. officials grappled with the widening Ebola crisis. The White House said Obama’s trip to New Jersey and Connecticut would be postponed to a later date. Obama was to speak to reporters on Wednesday afternoon after meeting with top officials who are coordinating the government’s response to Ebola. Obama’s decision to nix the trip—just a few hours before Air Force One was scheduled to depart—reflected the urgency facing the administration amid the American public’s escalating concerns about potential...

White House says Afghanistan trip not political politicalmugshot Posted by CNN Political Unit Washington (CNN) – The White House strongly denied Tuesday that President Barack Obama's surprise trip to Afghanistan was executed for political motives, saying the visit was more than a year in the making. On a conference call with reporters, a senior administration official speaking from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan was asked if the trip – made on the one-year anniversary of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden – was opening the president to charges of "craven politics." "I think what could not be clearer is...

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AP) -- On a swift, secretive trip to the war zone, President Barack Obama declared Tuesday night that after years of sacrifice the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan is winding down just as the war in Iraq has ended. "There's a light on the horizon," he told U.S. troops on the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death. After signing an agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai setting post-war promises and expectations, Obama addressed Americans back home in the midst of his endeavor to win re-election as U.S. president and commander in chief.

President Obama zipped through Afghanistan Tuesday on a previously unannounced visit, signing a key partnership document with Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he prepared to deliver an address to the nation on the anniversary of Usama bin Laden's death.  In excerpts released in advance of the address, the president made sweeping statements about the course and eventual conclusion of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.  "We have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he plans...

KABUL, May 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday for an unannounced visit, Afghan officials said. During his trip here, the U.S. president is expected to sign a strategic agreement with Afghanistan, unnamed Afghan government officials were quoted as saying by local TV channels.