Updated: Bush fever gone

A fever that kept former US president George H.W. Bush in hospital over Christmas has gone, his spokesman said today. Doctors at the Texas hospital where the ex-president has been treated for a month say they remain "cautiously optimistic" that he will recover, though no discharge date has been set. Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said doctors are being cautious because Bush is 88 and "sometimes issues crop up that are beyond anybody's ability to discern or foretell". Doctors want to keep him in hospital while they help him build up his strength and balance his medications, Mr McGrath said. Mr Bush has been receiving visitors for weeks, including two by his son, former President George W. Bush, and one by Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida. Mr Bush and his wife reside in Houston during the winter, and spend their summers at a home in Kennebunkport, Maine. The former president was a naval aviator in the Second World War - at one point the youngest in the Navy - and was shot down over the Pacific. He achieved fame in retirement for skydiving on at least three of his birthdays since leaving the White House in 1992.