Laura Bush Will Skip APEC Trip to Australia

Laura Bush plans to sit out the president's trip to Australia early next month for the APEC summit, due to a pinched nerve. Washington Post blogger Mark Silva speculates that the First Lady's decision may presage other stops being added to the president's itinerary for the trip, which comes just before his upcoming report to Congress on progress in Iraq.

After Dick Cheney's wife bowed out of a similar Australia trip earlier this year the vice president made unexpected stops in Islamabad, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Kabul, via Singapore and Oman.  The president may be doing the same.