CHICAGO -- President Obama arrived in his hometown of Chicago Saturday night looking to collaborate with European allies at the NATO summit on bringing the war in Afghanistan to a close, but the shadow of the Eurozone economic troubles is sure to blanket the talks.

"As all the leaders here today agreed, growth and jobs must be our top priority," the president said as the G-8 summit wrapped up at Camp David. " A stable, growing European economy is in everybody's best interests -- including America's."

Despite the financial focus in Maryland Friday and Saturday, Afghanistan will still have a place at the forefront of the summit that includes not only NATO members but representatives of 61 different nations along with representatives of the European Union, United Nations and World Bank. The president's focus on Afghanistan will be evident from the time he arrives at McCormick Place, the massive convention center situated on the shore of Lake Michigan. The first event on the president's schedule Sunday is a meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. (read more)

When world leaders arrive at Camp David Friday evening to begin the G8 summit, they will add a new chapter to the history of the rural retreat that is an iconic part of the presidential past. The hideaway tucked into the Catoctin Mountains in western Maryland has never hosted a meeting of this magnitude.

"[T]he G8 meeting will be the largest gathering of leaders ever to stay at Camp David," National Security Director Tom Donilon said Thursday. "In fact, this is the first time that there will be more than two heads of state at Camp David."

The White House wants to make the gathering of leaders of some of the world's biggest economies an intimate affair. The leaders will meet around a dinner table in one of the camp's cabins and each will be provided accommodations for themselves and one aide.

Being the first to host the leaders in this type of setting is an idea the president liked as the decision was made to move the gathering from Chicago where some of the leaders will head Saturday night for a NATO summit. (read more)

The Republican National Committee filed a formal complaint with the Government Accountability Office Wednesday, accusing the Obama administration of using taxpayer funds to campaign on President Obama's recent trip to three swing states, despite White House claims President Obama was giving speeches at official events.

"Throughout his administration, but particularly in recent weeks, President Obama has been passing off campaign travel as "official events," thereby allowing taxpayers, rather than his campaign, to pay for his reelection efforts," the complaint letter by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus read.

The president gave speeches on college campuses in North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa in front of large crowds of students in which he called on Congress to prevent a hike in federal student loan interest rates. The RNC noted the location of the speeches, the large boisterous crowds and some of the president's recent rhetoric in its complaint, saying they created a campaign-like atmosphere. (read more)

President Obama spoke about the Secret Service Colombian prostitute scandal for the first time since returning from Cartagena, calling most agents' work incredible and those involved in the scandal knuckleheads.

"The secret service, these guys are incredible," the president said. "So a couple of knuckleheads shouldn't detract from what they do but what these guys were thinking I don't know. That's why they're not there anymore."

Mr. Obama made the comments during a taping of the NBC talk show "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he gave a speech on student loan interest rates.

Asked about the scandal that overshadowed the president's trip to Colombia for the Summit of the Americas, President Obama noted the majority of Secret Service agents do a great job protecting him and his family.

"They protect me. They protect Michelle. They protect our girls," he said. "They protect our officials all around the world. 99.9 percent of them every day, they put their life on the line. They do a great job." (read more)

It is called a tradition unlike any other and Thursday, the Masters golf tournament and its home course, the Augusta National Golf Club, made it onto a political stage unlike any other as the club's exclusion of female members was a topic of discussion for both President Obama's spokesman and the GOP frontrunner seeking the White House.

The private club has never admitted women members and though the policy has been protested in the past, the controversy died down in recent years. Typically the chief executives of companies that sponsor The Masters, the first of professional golf's major tournaments, gain membership to Augusta National. This year IBM is a sponsor but its female CEO Virginia Rometty hasn't been offered a spot.

With the tournament kicking off Thursday, reporters at the daily briefing asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney whether the president believes Rometty should be admitted.

"Well, the president's answer to this question is yes," Carney said. "He believes -- his personal opinion is that women should be admitted to the club."

Carney wouldn't say whether the president, an avid golfer who has hit the links 93 times since becoming president, would play at a club that excluded women. (read more)

President Obama started a speech Tuesday with some self-deprecating humor, joking about remarks he made last week in Seoul to Russian President Dimitry Medvedev that were meant to be private, but were caught by open microphones in the room.

"It is a pleasure to speak to all of you," he told the group gathered for an Associated Press luncheon in Washington. "And to have a microphone that I can see."

Obama was referencing the beginning of a bilateral meeting with outgoing Russian President Dimitry Medvedev while in South Korea for a summit last week, in which the president was heard by microphones admitting he would have an easier time dealing with Russia on missile defense after the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Medvedev indicated he understood the president's position and would "transmit" the message to his predecessor Vladimir Putin.

The president pointed back to Medvedev's offer during the luncheon Tuesday. "Feel free to transmit any of this to Vladimir if you see him," he said.

Critics spent last week slamming the president for appearing weak in front of the Russian president on an issue that has been one of the most contentious between the two countries. The open-mic misstep drowned out other news from the summit. (read more)

President Obama became the fourth sitting U.S. president to visit the Korean demilitarized zone, the sliver of land that divides North and South Korea and the most fortified border in the world.  

The zone lies just 35 miles north of Seoul, the South Korean capital. Seoul is the home of more than 10 million people and is hosting world leaders for a nuclear security summit.  

One of the world’s biggest and most modern cities, Seoul is in the shadow of a communist North Korea, a country with nuclear weapons and unstable leadership.

The president looked through binoculars across the volatile border to the north, and asked U.S. and South Korean military leaders to point out exactly where the border is located.  

The demilitarized zone, or DMZ, is an approximately 155 mile-long and just over two miles wide border between North and South Korea.   (read more)

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney backed off comments that were construed as calling GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich a liar when he claims that if elected president, he would lower gas prices to $2.50 per gallon.

Carney said Monday that anyone who claims to be able to get gas prices down to $2.50 quickly is "lying." But on Tuesday, he backed away from that assertion.

"I said yesterday that anybody who said that would be a liar and I shouldn't have gone in motivations, I should have said anybody who says that doesn't know what he's talking about," Carney said at the daily press briefing.

President Obama has criicized the assertion that as president, Gingrich would lower gas prices to $2.50.

"First of all, while there are no silver bullets short term when it comes to gas prices," the president said during a February speech at the University of Miami. "And anybody who says otherwise isn't telling the truth," he added.

Gingrich lashed out at Carney's original comments Monday night, challenging the president to a debate on energy, giving suggestions for a location.

"I'd be glad to meet you at a oil rig somewhere, at a refinery, I'd be glad to meet you at a gas station, I'd even go to a university campus where you feel comfortable," Gingrich said.

In a shot aimed directly at one of GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's primary talking points, White House spokesman Jay Carney amped up the rhetoric during Monday's press briefing saying a politician who promises $2.50 gas is lying.

"What he is not willing to do is to look the American people in the eye and claim that there is a strategy by which he can guarantee the price of gas will be $2.50 at the pump," Carney said of President Obama. "Any politician who does that is lying, because ... that strategy does not exist. It is a simple fact that there is no such plan that can guarantee the price of oil or the price at the pump."

While the White House has tip-toed up to the line of suggesting Gingrich is lying when he says he could quickly drop gas prices to $2.50 per gallon, neither the president, nor his spokesman had actually used the word lying before Monday's briefing. But during an energy speech in Miami last month, the president did question the truthfulness of Gingrich's campaign promise. (read more)

President Obama will address a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference in early March.

"The president welcomes this opportunity to speak to the strength of the special bonds between Israel and the United States," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.

Mr. Obama has spoken to the group in the past and this speech comes at amid concerns that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon that would threaten Israel's existence. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he believes Israel could launch an attack on Iran this Spring. But the White House said the president's policies have isolated Iran and that sanctions still have time to work.

"[T]he approach this administration has taken has lead to a situation where Iran is isolated as never before, where it is under pressure economically as never before, where there is an international consensus around the idea that ... the problem here is Iranian bad behavior; their refusal to live up to their international obligations," Carney said.

While Iran has claimed its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, it's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also rattled sabers by calling for death to Israel and saying the country will be wiped off the map. (read more)