Washington, Aug. 13 : The conflict between Russia and Georgia has refocused attention on the increasingly hard line that Senator John McCain has taken against Russia in recent years, reports the New York Times.

According to the paper, McCain has called for expelling what he has called a “revanchist Russia” from meetings of the Group of Eight, the organization of leading industrialized nations.

He had also urged President Bush to boycott the group’s meeting in St. Petersburg in 2006, but in vain.

Washington, Aug. 13 : A click on the Atlantic Monthly''s web site could help Republican presidential nominee John McCain find a raft of memos outlining possible ways to defeat his presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

The memos, prepared by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton''s chief strategist, are drawing attention in large measure for what they reveal about the dysfunctionality of the New York senator''s operation.

Washington, Aug. 12 : Senator Barack Obama has hit back at his Republican rival Senator John McCain with a new negative TV ad that paints the latter as a star too cozy with Washington lobbyists and an unpopular president.

According to the Washington Times, the Obama ad, called "Embrace," shows McCain hugging President Bush and walking down the street with what the narrator labels "the lobbyists running his low road campaign."

New York, Aug. 12 : A Harlem-based political consultant, Kevin Wardally, has expressed the view that racism will not be a factor in the November presidential contest between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, though there have been reports of fevered insinuations about racism and race-card-playing.

"It is just overblown and over-thought," claimed Wardally, 35, an African-American whose political journey has run from City Council precincts to Hillary Clinton''s campaign for president.

New York, Aug 9 : Republican presidential candidate John McCain stole a page from Hillary Clinton’s playbook, recycling her greatest primary hits against Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

In a new ad titled “Praising McCain,” his team ran clips of Democrats lauding the Arizona senator’s maverick independence - topped by this classic Clinton punch from March 3: “I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

Washington  - Republican White House hopeful John McCain made his sharpest divide yet from US President George W Bush, declaring in a new television advertisement Tuesday that the state of the nation has worsened over the last four years.

"Washington's broken. John McCain knows it," a narrator says in the new ad. "We're worse off than we were four years ago."