Former US first lady Barbara Bush dies

Barbara Bush, the snowy-haired first lady and mother of a president whose plainspoken manner and utter lack of pretense made her more popular at times than her husband, president George H.W. Bush, died on Tuesday, a family spokesman said. She was 92.

Mrs Bush brought a grandmotherly style to button-down Washington, often appearing in her trademark fake pearl chokers and displaying no vanity about her white hair and wrinkles.

"What you see with me is what you get. I'm not running for president, George Bush is," she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband, then vice-president, was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan.