In the Nation

WASHINGTON - The use of full-body scanners and invasive pat-downs at airports around the country will not change for the "foreseeable future," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

While saying she is always looking to improve the security systems in place, Napolitano added that the new technology and pat-downs were "objectively safer for our traveling public."

Napolitano, on CNN's State of the Union, dismissed a recent news report about major airports failing secret tests designed to get contraband such as guns and knives past security screeners. The report said some airports had a 70 percent failure rate.

"Many of them are very old and out of date, and there were all kinds of methodology issues with them," she said. "We pick up more contraband with the new procedures and the new machinery." - AP

WASHINGTON - A new National Economic Council director to succeed Lawrence Summers will probably be named next month, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday.

Summers is keeping his position through the end of the year, and President Obama wanted to "take some time to make a good decision," Gibbs told CNN's State of the Union. "It's an important part of our economic team."

Obama announced in September that Summers, 56, would return to Harvard University, where he was president from 2001 to 2006. He was Treasury secretary in President Bill Clinton's administration.

Possible candidates to succeed Summers include Roger Altman, founder of Evercore Partners Inc.; Gene Sperling, an adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Yale University President Richard Levin.

Gibbs said he did not expect other major personnel changes. - AP

CHICAGO - Richard M. Daley on Sunday surpassed his father's tenure, becoming the longest-serving mayor of Chicago.

Daley, 68, has served 7,917 days in office, or 21 years and eight months. That is one day more than his father, Richard J. Daley, who died in office in 1976.

Daley announced earlier this year that he would retire and not run for a seventh term. Between them, the Daleys have been in charge in Chicago for 42 of the last 55 years. - AP

President Obama and his family, vacationing in Hawaii, made a rare Sunday trip to church. They sat in the first row at St. Michael's Chapel, on the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay where Obama frequently golfs and goes to the gym during his visits to his native state.