George J Mitchell

Walt Disney Co. Chairman George J. Mitchell will receive an annual retainer of $500,000 in deferred stock, the company disclosed in a filing Friday. Mitchell's pay is retroactive to March 3, when the board tapped the former presiding director to take over as chairman. Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner gave up the chairman's post after 45% of the voting shares withheld their support for his reelection to the board at the annual meeting.

U.S. Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell traveled to Damascus on Thursday in a bid to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to support Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. U.S. and Syrian officials said little about the meeting, but Syria is thought to be skeptical about the talks and prospects for its own negotiations with Israel. Syrian officials don't believe Israel's leadership would be willing to return the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle Est War, and doubt an Israeli-Palestinian peace would last without the approval of the militant group Hamas, a foe of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that controls the Gaza Strip.

Two leading investor advisory firms have split on the question of whether Walt Disney Co. Chairman George J. Mitchell should be reelected to the board at the company's annual meeting next month. In a report issued Wednesday, Glass Lewis & Co. recommended that Disney shareholders withhold their votes for Mitchell but approve the 12 other directors.

The Obama administration said Thursday that its Middle East peace envoy is headed to the region this weekend to resume consultations, a visit that had been postponed earlier in the week over a diplomatic dispute with Israel. The news of the trip by envoy George J. Mitchell indicated possible progress in talks between U.S. and Israeli officials after a conflict over Israel's announcement last week of a new housing project in disputed East Jerusalem as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the country to promote peace talks with Palestinians.

The Obama administration said Thursday that its Middle East peace envoy is headed to the region this weekend to resume consultations, a visit that had been postponed earlier in the week over a diplomatic dispute with Israel. The news of the trip by envoy George J. Mitchell indicated possible progress in talks between U.S. and Israeli officials after a conflict over Israel's announcement last week of a new housing project in disputed East Jerusalem as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the country to promote peace talks with Palestinians.

From his dowdy suite in one of Europe's most frequently bombed hotels, American statesman George J. Mitchell personifies the commitment and the loneliness of the long-distance peacemaker. He is teaching civics in real time to the heirs of hatred in one country, and repaying an old debt to his own. Mitchell was Senate majority leader until he left politics in 1995--for greener pastures, he thought.

Perhaps it is a love story, this tale of the senator and his bride-to-be. But if so, it is more a mystery than romance novel. What is known, for sure, is this: George Mitchell, who is three heartbeats away from the presidency as majority leader of the U.S. Senate, has made three decisions: He is leaving the Senate. He is turning down a chance to be on the U.S. Supreme Court. And he is marrying a woman he met last fall.

Mitchell in Israel: A caption in Thursday's Section A with an article about Mideast envoy George J. Mitchell's arrival in Israel misidentified the man pictured with him as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Israeli President Shimon Peres.

President Clinton named retiring Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) as a special adviser to promote trade and investment in Northern Ireland. The announcement came as the British government said it will meet face to face for the first time with leaders of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army.

Outgoing Senate Democratic leader George J. Mitchell of Maine, who last April turned down an opportunity to become a Supreme Court justice, is joining a Washington law firm. Mitchell, who retired from his Senate seat, is to join Verner Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand as special counsel Jan. 9, the firm said Friday. The firm does lobbying and litigation and represents a wide range of companies.

President Obama's Middle East envoy ended his most intensive round of shuttle diplomacy Friday without an agreement on one of the administration's top foreign policy goals, a revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The envoy, George J. Mitchell, has been trying for months to coax a package of concessions from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Arab states that would help Obama launch a regional peace initiative this fall. Mitchell left the region after six days of talks failed to bridge the gaps over several issues, including Jewish settlement expansion on land claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.

Mitchell in Israel: A caption in Thursday's Section A with an article about Mideast envoy George J. Mitchell's arrival in Israel misidentified the man pictured with him as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Israeli President Shimon Peres.

George J. Mitchell, the new U.S. envoy to the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Wednesday to begin testing his axiom that there's no such thing as a conflict that cannot be ended. Yet even as Israeli and Palestinian leaders offered ideas on how the Obama administration can help bring about peace, the prevailing mood on both sides was that their decades-old fight had become almost hopelessly deadlocked.

President Obama dispatched his special Middle East envoy on his inaugural peacemaking trip Monday, declaring that former Sen. George J. Mitchell would speak for the White House in a search for "progress, not just photo ops." Obama's public appearance with Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was his second in five days and placed a strong emphasis on the peacemaking efforts, which come when many analysts rate the chances for Arab-Israeli peace as the worst in decades.

During a grinding 18-month stretch in the 1990s, U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell crossed the Atlantic more than 100 times in a dogged search for peace between Northern Ireland's Protestants and Catholics. Even though he is a Catholic, Mitchell convinced Protestant Unionists of his evenhandedness, eventually reaching the Good Friday agreement in 1998 to help settle the 800-year dispute. "He's got this incredible patience to sit there until the deal is done," said Ross K.

George Mitchell knows athletic frustration. Growing up in the central Maine town of Waterville, he was the youngest and least athletic of the four Mitchell boys. Either he brought the bats and balls to the baseball field, or he wasn't allowed to play. Despite such indignities, sports was a huge part of his young life. And it still is. "I know when he talks about steroids and baseball, that is very personal to him," says Harold C.

MR. REFORM: Sources say Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), who is spearheading legislation to curb the influence of money in politics, spent most of a recent week in Florida raising $400,000, mostly from fat cats. He told friends that he aims to raise $2 million by the end of the year in order to scare away potential challengers in the 1994 elections. . . .

Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) blamed President Bush for the slow pace at which he is filling top-level posts in the Administration, charging that no nominations have been made for nearly half the positions. Mitchell said that, according to the Congressional Research Service, there are 432 full-time positions in executive departments and independent agencies that require Senate confirmation. That list does not include ambassadors, U.S. marshals or U.S. attorneys.

Kirk Radomski was a batboy, a towel attendant, a clubhouse hanger-on. Then he bulked up one winter and offered his idols what investigators term a more specialized and sought-after service -- scoring steroids. And that would quietly make Radomski one of the most influential people in major league baseball. Now a Long Island, N.Y.

George Mitchell, who on Thursday delivered sobering evidence of widespread steroid abuse in professional baseball in recent years, is used to being in the hot seat. The 74-year-old lawyer and former politician also knows that his tight relationship with Major League Baseball left him open to criticism that he's too close to the sport that has been reeling under the weight of the steroid abuse scandal. But the former U.S.