Washington  - Republican senator John McCain announced Wednesday that he will suspend his campaign and return to Washington to work on emergency legislation designed to stem off the country's financial crisis.

In a brief statement to reporters, McCain said he has asked his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, to join him in the effort, and that he wanted to delay Friday's first presidential election debate between the two candidates.

Washington - The economic turmoil in the United States has pushed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama ahead of Republican rival John McCain, a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday showed.

Obama got the nod from 52 per cent of likely voters in the poll to 43 per cent for McCain. It was the first time since the primary season ended that Obama has taken a clear lead over McCain, the newspaper said. As recently as two weeks ago the race was a virtual tie, with McCain leading by a narrow margin.

New York, Sept. 24 : There is at least one area where John McCain and Barack Obama agree – they would not fancy lying to the public.

In separate interviews with CBS, both said that they would seek to be above board and transparent in their interactions with the American public, should either of them become president.

Washington, Sept. 24 : Republicans are taking the elephant''s share of the blame when it comes to the current crisis rocking the nation''s financial institutions and Wall St., according to a new national poll.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp, a survey of registered voters released on Monday, only 47 percent blamed Republicans for the current financial crisis the stock market.

By contract, only 24 percent blamed the Democrats, with 20 percent saying both parties were to blame and 8 percent not blaming either party.

Columbia (Missouri US), Sept. 24 : An internationally recognized scholar of presidential debates believes that the McCain-Obama presidential debates coming up this week and next month, will be as significant as the debates that took place between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in the run-up to the 1960 presidential elections.

With many polls showing Obama and McCain in a dead heat, many are predicting that the first presidential debate on September 26 could be a turning point in the election.

London, September 24: A former Brazilian lover of U. S. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has described him as a romantic person and a "good kisser".

Maria Gracinda Teixeira, 77, noticed such qualities of McCain during her week-long affair with him, when he docked in Rio de Janeiro as a young sailor in 1957.

She even said that she was happy that McCain had written about her in a 1999 autobiography ‘Faith of My Fathers’, though the Arizona Senator did not reveal the name of the woman he was passionate about in the book.

"We met because I used to have lunch near the docks. He is so cute. But I never imagined he would write about me, that was a surprise," the Telegraph quoted her as saying.