Washington, May 19 (ANI): George W. Bush is returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after more than two years.

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Washington, May 19 (Xinhua-ANI): Former U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to return to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait honored by sitting President Barack Obama later this month, both Bush's office and the White House confirmed Friday.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A military judge is considering whether to split off one or more of the defendants and hold separate trials for five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, a lawyer for one of the men said Friday.

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, proposed the change in a written order in part because of the difficulty trying to schedule hearings for five defendants and multiple lawyers at the U.S. base in Cuba, said James Connell, a civilian attorney for defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali.

Pohl also questioned whether one trial for all five defendants would create a conflict with evidence that could help one defendant while hurting another, Connell said.

The judge's order is sealed. As part of the order, the prosecution was ordered to show cause why the cases should not be severed.

The Pentagon will not release the order until it has passed through a security review, said Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the Guantanamo military commissions.

"There are some very specific ethical constraints that prohibit the prosecution from litigating cases in the press," Breasseale said.

Previously, Connell had said he wanted his client's case severed from that of the others, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, and the prosecution wanted them all tried together. Both sides are barred by the rules from disclosing their wishes at this point and will be filing legal motions by the end of the month.

The five men were arraigned together on May 5 on charges that include murder and terrorism. They could be sentenced to death if convicted. The next pretrial hearing in the case is scheduled for June but lawyers for several defendants have requested a postponement.

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BEIJING — A blind Chinese activist whose escape from a rural village set off a diplomatic tussle between Beijing and Washington said Saturday that he was at an airport waiting to leave for the United States.

Chen Guangcheng told The Associated Press that he had left the hospital where he'd been staying and was at Beijing's international airport. He said he expected to leave on a flight late Saturday afternoon for Newark, New Jersey, outside New York City.

"Thousands of thoughts are surging to my mind," Chen said by phone from the airport, sounding hurried but calm.

The departure of Chen and his family to the United States would mark the conclusion of nearly a month of uncertainty for the self-taught legal activist who made a daring escape from abusive house arrest in his village last month.

He sought the protection of U.S. diplomats at the American Embassy in Beijing, triggering a diplomatic standoff days ahead of unrelated high-level talks on global hotspots and economic imbalances led by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. After days of tense negotiations, Beijing and Washington announced an agreement in which he and his family would be allowed to travel to the United States for him to study.

Chen said his wife and two children were with him at the airport, and that the family had been given their passports. Also with him were hospital and border control staff.

Chen said he hoped that the Chinese government would fulfill promises it made to him, including that the authorities would investigate abuses against him and his family in Shandong province.

Chen thanked his supporters and others in the activist community, saying, "I am requesting a leave of absence, and I hope that they will understand."

Yet he seemed ambivalent about his imminent departure, saying he was "not happy" about leaving and that he had a lot on his mind, including worries about retaliation against his extended family back home.

Chen left the embassy on May 2 and was hospitalized for treatment for injuries sustained during his escape. He had since been awaiting permission to travel to the U.S. to study, where he has an invitation to study law at New York University.

The State Department has said that U.S. visas for Chen, his wife and children are ready for them to travel to America. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it had no comment on Chen's planned departure.

The 40-year-old Chen is emblematic of a new breed of activists that the Communist Party finds threatening. Often from rural and working-class families, these "rights defenders," as they are called, are unlike the students and intellectuals from the elite academies and major cities who led the Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

A self-taught legal activist, Chen gained recognition for crusading for the disabled and fighting against forced abortions in his rural community. But he angered local officials and was convicted in 2006 on what his supporters say were fabricated charges. After serving four years in prison, he then faced an abusive and illegal house arrest.

Nanjing activist blogger He Peirong, who was instrumental in helping Chen escape from house arrest, said she was very happy to hear that Chen and his family were on their way to the United States.

"I hope that this will be a good beginning," said He, who was detained for several days by police for helping Chen. "I hope that they will all be well and safe."

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Associated Press writer Charles Hutzler contributed to this report.

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BOSTON -- Barack Obama's opponent four years ago was a Republican who repressed his moderate and liberal instincts, who insisted he was a conservative, who seemed to be suffering from a political identity crisis, who had a sterling resume but a halting campaign style.His opponent this time can be described ... exactly the same way.So we're familiar with what the Republicans will be peddling this time, though the name at the top of the GOP ticket won't be John McCain but Mitt Romney. The Democrats, of course, will be trying to sell Barack Obama again. ...

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WASHINGTON -– Austerity is out. Growth is in. And Mitt Romney's campaign has taken notice.

Politicians in Europe and in President Barack Obama's administration can't get enough of the G word these days. "Growth must be a priority, at the same time as we put in place some fiscal compact to improve our finances," said the new French President Francois Hollande, during a visit with Obama in the Oval Office on Friday.

Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month, riding a backlash in France against programs that have sought to reduce sovereign debt by cutting government spending. Voters in Greece have rebelled even more fiercely against cuts to government jobs and benefits, placing their country on the verge of an exit from the European Union and a potential collapse.

Obama's national security adviser, Tom Donilon, told reporters this week that the administration "welcomed the evolution of the discussion in Europe towards growth and jobs -- but you see that now being discussed much more broadly in Europe."

White House press secretary Jay Carney said that Obama "has long made clear … that he believes that an approach that takes into account the need for further growth and job creation, a balanced approach that includes not just austerity but growth and job creation, is the right approach."

Romney campaign officials used rhetoric that was strikingly similar in conversations this week about Europe.

"There's a need to make sure you have both austerity and growth," said Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia University Business School and a senior adviser to Romney on economic issues.

But the verbiage papers over a few key differences between the Romney campaign and the Obama administration. For one, their definitions of austerity differ, and they will likely fight in the coming months over what, exactly, should be considered austere.

The Romney campaign will say their proposals to dramatically overhaul Medicare -– much like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) has proposed -– and to pare back federal non-defense spending are fiscally responsible.

"I hesitate to call it austerity, I think austerity is pretty severe," a top adviser to Romney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview. "I think when you talk about fiscal responsibility, that is part and parcel of a pro-growth approach to the economy,"

The president will argue that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, wants to cut back severely in the same way that has caused heartburn in Greece, Italy, France and elsewhere.

The second major difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney's advisers are focused largely on the long-term economic picture, which they said they believe will do the most to alleviate short-term pain.

"The work that people like Alberto Alesina at Harvard and others have done shows that if you have fiscal consolidations on the spending side that are more of this glide path variety, you can actually increase growth, because you tell investors that future taxes will be lower and that there won't be this uncertainty in the size of government," Hubbard said.

The "glide path" that Hubbard refers to is mostly a reference to entitlement spending in programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and to a lesser extent Social Security. It also refers to rates of government spending and taxation. These are the biggest points of disagreement between Obama and Romney.

A focus on the long view means Romney's campaign considers calls for more government-fueled stimulus measures off-base.

"They seem to be congenitally against anything that could be called stimulus and could help boost jobs and growth in the short run," said Jared Bernstein, who was Vice President Biden's top economic adviser for the first three years of the administration. "I've argued with these people. They view it as counterproductive, a sort of sugar high at best and destructive at worst."

The other part of the Romney campaign's long-term view is that European leaders have erred in trying to impose immediate, draconian cuts.

"You don't have to do it all today. And I think in Europe there's been so much discussion on today without saying, well maybe what we need are structural long-term reforms. And then give these economies breathing room," Hubbard said.

The unnamed Romney adviser put it more bluntly.

"I think where the European leaders have made a mistake is in focusing on the austerity," he said. "I just don't think that these guys have really framed the discussion in the right way."

Of course, having a debate about the long-term picture is more possible in the U.S. than it is in Europe. The U.S. economy is still struggling to achieve the kind of growth that would put it on the path toward recovering its economic health. But it is not currently in crisis as Europe is.

And so the conversation in the U.S. has some time yet -– though some believe it's not a lot of time -– to focus on how the government will restructure major programs like Medicare to keep them solvent over the long term, and to reassure the bond market in order to keep borrowing costs under control.

The Supreme Court will have its say next month when it rules on Obama's health care overhaul. And then voters will decide in the fall between Romney's proposal to move toward a more market-based health care model that puts more of a burden on consumers in hopes that they will demand price transparency in a way that drives down costs, and Obama's mixture of government-regulated exchanges to encourage cost-effective strategies among providers.

Hubbard and the anonymous Romney campaign official both said that if the former Massachusetts governor is elected, he would move quickly to enact some version of the Medicare reform and the tax reforms he has proposed. Romney's prospects for success would hinge, of course, on whether Republicans retain control of the House and whether they are able to wrest control of the Senate away from Democrats.

"We have to do something pretty significant on entitlement reform soon," the anonymous adviser said. "I don't know if it's a day one thing, but it's certainly a first few months thing."

Hubbard said he sees similar priorities: "Whoever the president is has to deal with that and in my mind it starts with the spending restraint and glide path changes in entitlement programs, and then tax reform," he said.

"What has to be articulated well is how are we going to do this in a way that's both gradual and fair, gradual in the sense that it gives people time to adjust, and fair in the sense that most of the burden of adjustment will be born by the well to do," Hubbard said. "I think people are persuadable."

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