HOUSTON (Reuters) – Representative Gabrielle Giffords has begun to regain her speech a month after being shot in the head in an assassination attempt, and has even requested toast for breakfast, her spokesman said on Wednesday.

"She is speaking more and more with each passing day, most recently asking for toast," said spokesman C.J. Karamargin. "The congresswoman is working very hard and clearly it's paying off."

Giffords' accomplishment is the latest milestone in a recovery her doctors have called miraculous.

The Arizona lawmaker was shot in the head outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8. Six people, including a federal judge, were killed and 12 others were wounded in the attack. Jared Loughner has been accused in the shootings.

Giffords, 40, has been recovering at TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, where "she is undergoing a rigorous therapy program," Karamargin said.

"They are working with her on all kinds of language and speech exercises," Karamargin said.

Giffords -- known to friends and relatives as "Gabby" -- is eating three meals a day, her husband said.

"Gabby's appetite is back and -- even though it's hospital food -- she's enjoying three meals a day," NASA astronaut Mark Kelly said in a Facebook posting on Tuesday.

Kelly, a three-time space shuttle veteran, will command the shuttle Endeavour when it launches in April, NASA said last week.

"The doctors say she is recovering at lightning speed considering her injury, but they aren't kidding when they say this is a marathon process," Kelly said.

Doctors say Giffords' full recovery could take months.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Johns Pool; Editing by Xavier Briand and Todd Eastham)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans have no clue who they will nominate to face President Barack Obama in 2012, but conservative aspirants to the nation's highest office are hoping to put their names in play this week.

Several Republicans pondering a run in 2012 are to speak this week to a large gathering of conservatives in Washington, a chance to test their messages and generate some buzz.

A year ahead of the first state voting contests to decide who will face Obama in November 2012, no prominent Republican has formally announced a candidacy and no potential candidate has emerged as a favorite.

But plenty of politicians who can envision themselves in the Oval Office are running underground campaigns, visiting early voting states, talking to fund-raisers, organizing staffs. The first announcements are expected by March.

The Conservative Political Action Conference is to hear from a number of potential candidates on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as conservatives who have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of conservative giant Ronald Reagan search for someone who can wave his banner.

"It's one of the first times that they get to showcase their actual credentials among key constituencies and generate publicity for themselves early on in the cycle," said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

Among the speakers are two former governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota; former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich and sitting governors Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

Gingrich and two other possibles, Representative Michelle Bachmann and former Senator Rick Santorum speak on Thursday.

Romney, Pawlenty, South Dakota Senator John Thune, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Daniels speak on Friday and Barbour speaks on Saturday. Attendees will decide their favorites in a Saturday straw poll.

Absent from the proceedings are two Republicans who poll well among conservatives, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who are weighing whether to jump into the race.

NO HEIR APPARENT

Republicans have no obvious heir apparent in 2012 as they usually do, leaving party loyalists to ponder a crowded field that includes Romney, who fought hard but lost to eventual Republican nominee John McCain in 2008.

"It's totally wide open," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, though he said he now sees Romney as the front runner.

The party is on a high after wrestling control of the House from the Democrats in November's midterm elections and squaring up to Obama on spending cuts.

A key objective for the potential candidates is to do no harm. "What you want more than anything else, you want to come out of there without anything negative generated from it," said Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak.

And by delaying their formal announcements, the candidates save money and avoid peaking too soon.

"They can reach more people for free three times a day on Twitter than they can by buying a 30-second ad on television every night," said Republican strategist Rich Galen.

Part of the calculation a politician considers in whether to launch a run is to what extent their opponent can be beaten. All agree Obama will be hard to beat, but that it can be done -- depending on how the U.S. economy performs.

Obama appears to be enjoying an improved standing with Americans by taking some centrist moves after his Democrats were routed in congressional elections last November. A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday put his job approval rating at 51 percent after spending most of 2010 in the 40s.

A crowded Republican field may play to Obama's advantage.

"We're a closely divided country and we'll have another close election in 2012, but right now it's to the president's advantage to have such a large Republican field that will be battling among themselves," said Peverill Squire, political science professor at the University of Missouri.

(Editing by Todd Eastham)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. intelligence chiefs head to Congress on Thursday to answer questions about the soaring costs of spycraft and shifting threats to the United States nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

President Barack Obama's Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in November's congressional elections, largely due to voter anger over a slow economic recovery and a swelling government deficit.

The new Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee -- mirroring his party's very public focus on cutting spending -- is promising to take a close look at costs at the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center and other agencies.

"We know that we can't sustain growth rates in the intelligence community the way we have in the past decade," Representative Mike Rogers told Reuters.

Last year, the U.S. government disclosed it spent just over $80 billion on intelligence in fiscal year 2010, double the amount in 2001. Obama took office in January 2009 after the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, a Republican.

"Ten years after 9/11 we've had huge increases in intelligence spending and we're going to review ... where we were, where we are and where we need to go," Rogers said.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and seven other senior officials will testify at the annual hearing that is expected to touch on sensitive issues ranging from North Korea's nuclear programs to China's cyber capabilities in open and closed-door sessions.

A Senate committee will hold a similar hearing next week.

Much of the focus will remain on the evolving war against Islamist militants, Rogers said.

Al Qaeda's affiliates in troubled states like Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere are emerging as direct dangers for the United States, while the group's core leadership in Pakistan's border regions with Afghanistan are under unprecedented pressure from U.S. strikes by unmanned drone aircraft.

YEMEN VS PAKISTAN

In a preview of what may be heard on Thursday, Michael Leiter, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday he saw al Qaeda's Yemen-based branch as a major threat to the United States.

The group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has claimed responsibility for a failed Christmas Day attack in 2009 aboard a U.S. airliner and a more recent attempt to blow up two U.S.-bound cargo planes with toner cartridges packed with explosives.

Still, U.S. officials are split over whether al Qaeda in Yemen or Pakistan is the biggest danger.

"Which one is more dangerous or immediate, you get a debate about," a senior U.S. defense official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"AQAP makes more news through failed plots. The other failed plots don't necessarily do that. But that doesn't mean they don't exist."

The official did not say which threats went unreported.

On Egypt, Rogers defended U.S. intelligence ahead of the protests that threaten to topple President Hosni Mubarak. Critics have said Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were slow to grasp the scale of the upheaval.

"I think what you'll find is that this was not an intelligence failure," Rogers said, adding there had been plenty of warning of "chafing under Mubarak."

"Once it did occur, was there information sufficient to make real-time policy decisions? Well, as somebody who was getting briefed on a regular basis as this was unfolding, I can say absolutely yes."

The White House has shared that assessment. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said last week that Obama received "relevant, timely and accurate" intelligence on the crisis.

(Editing by John O'Callaghan and Cynthia Osterman)