Washington  - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday began a week-long vacation with family in Hawaii, pulling back from the campaign trail after a new poll this week showed that nearly half of Americans felt they had been hearing "too much" about Obama lately.

Obama said the unrelenting pace of a historic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton had given him little time to rest, unlike his Republican rival John McCain who wrapped up his party's nomination three months earlier, in March.

Washington, Aug 8 : In what could be described as a surprising move, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that her country would be “safer” under Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Rice is the top official in the current regime of George W Bush, a Republican.

She also ruled herself being appointed as the country’s Vice-President either Obama or Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Washington, Aug. 8 : Senator Barack Obama''s national Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, has resigned over his connections to a man who the Justice Department named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers.

A Chicago lawyer, Asbahi, was appointed to help Obama reach out to Muslims. He stepped down on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday night.

Washington, Aug. 7 : Barack Obama leads John McCain 45 percent to 39 percent in the latest CBS News poll.

Despite Obama''s highly-publicized foreign trip and McCain''s recent high-profile advertisements, the findings are unchanged since a CBS News/New York Times poll released last month. The percentage of undecided voters - 13 percent - also remains steady.

Washington, Aug. 7 : Senator Barack Obama has released a television advertisement that questions Republican rival John McCain''s claims to being a "maverick".

"The price [McCain] paid for his party''s nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position," Obama told a crowd of more than 1,000 at a high school gym in Elkhart.

"That doesn''t meet my definition of a maverick. You can''t be a maverick when politically it''s important for you but not a maverick when it doesn''t work for you," the Washington Post quoted him, as saying.

Washington, Aug 7 : Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s brutal yet entertaining attack ads and Web videos mocking the press and Democratic presidential opponent Barack Obama has become a huge hit on YouTube.

McCain has beat Obama''s channel for seven straight days and 11 of the past 14 days, in a signal he intends to compete for the votes on the video sharing site vote.

“I want to know who he hired. They went from recycling their TV ads to like putting out these witty shorts,” The Washington Times quoted David Burch, marketing manager for TubeMogul, as saying.