The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush gets to know world leaders, Senate debates campaign finance reform, Fed expected to lower rates, Mir returns to earth, Oklahoma could see sports face-off, Davis faces re-election woes, Bush goes off line:

• President Bush will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori today in Washington, D.C., and the two leaders are expected to discuss economic policy, Reuters reports. "Few have high expectations for the summit," and Japan's Economics Minister Taro Aso "said he would explain to the U.S. side that Japan's biggest economic headache is the balance sheet deterioration of corporations, households and banks."
• Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will meet with Bush Tuesday in D.C., CBSNews.com reports. Sharon "plans to present Mr. Bush with 'proof' that the Palestinian Authority is 'directly involved' with terrorism."
• Bush also will meet with Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen this week, the New York Times reports. Missile defense will be one of the topics they discuss.
• "Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said a meeting last week with" Bush "left him satisfied that the United States remains committed to the peace process in Northern Ireland," Reuters reports.
• Officials from the United States and South Korea will meet today in Seoul to talk about "forging new trade relations," UPI reports.
• The Bush administration may have "stalled in churning out nominations" to appointed posts, the Washington Post reports.

• The Senate will begin debating campaign finance reform today, Reuters reports. The reform measure sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., "would ban unregulated and unlimited soft-money donations from corporations, labor unions and individuals that go to political parties rather than individual candidates." The debate is expected to last two weeks.
• If the bill becomes law, it "likely" would face a court challenge that would go to the Supreme Court, the Washington Post reports.
• Support for reform has waned as Democrats, "who provide the majority of support for McCain-Feingold," realize "that the soft-money ban is not in their party's self-interest," the Washington Times reports.
• "Senators are predicting that as many as 30 amendments will be considered, as well as a less far-reaching alternative bill offered by" Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., the New York Times reports.
• McCain and Feingold are "unlikely partners," the New York Times reports. Feingold, "whose political sensibilities crystallized when he was protesting the Vietnam War as a student at the University of Wisconsin," now "happily works in the shadow of the 64-year-old conservative Arizona Republican who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam."
• Meanwhile, a group of Democrats will meet with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., this week "to plead their case for equal representation on" a "new select committee on electoral reform," Roll Call reports.

• The Federal Reserve Board will meet Tuesday and is expected to cut interest rates by half a percentage point, CNNfn.com reports.
• The Bank of Japan, the country's central bank, said Monday that it will cut interest rates to near zero in an attempt to strengthen its economy, Financial Times reports.
• Time reports that if we don't get too "spooked," we could prevent the economy from worsening. "Job creation is growing at a faster pace this year than in the final months of 2000. Inflation is tame, and interest rates are falling fast, lowering the cost of mortgages and car loans."

• Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., "proposed a scaled-back tax cut on Sunday," agreeing to "an immediate cut in the 15 percent tax rate levied on lower-income Americans to 10 percent," Reuters reports.
• In an interview with the Washington Times, "Budget Director Mitch Daniels says the administration has received assurances from Congress that it will take up a budget plan that will significantly cut the rate of spending growth to the slower 4 percent level proposed by President Bush."
• Americans for Tax Reform is "orchestrating a campaign in state legislatures to win support for a resolution demanding that each state's federal lawmakers back the Bush plan," U.S. News and World Report's "Washington Whispers" reports.

• Juergen Trittin, Germany's environment minister, wrote a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman urging the Bush administration to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, an idea Bush "abandoned" last week, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• A California Energy Commission analysis shows that when captured "from rooftops, yards, parking lots and open land near transmission lines, solar energy could produce 68,000 megawatts of power," enough to supply the state with power all summer and still have some left over, the Sacramento Bee reports.
• Because of the energy crisis, there "is a revival of interest in nuclear power," the Washington Times reports.

• "With the conflict intensifying in Macedonia, the Bush administration and European allies" said Sunday that "they had no interest in using NATO-led peacekeepers to fight Albanian insurgents and that the problem was one for Macedonia's government to resolve with diplomatic and monetary aid," the New York Times reports.
• Seventeen Dominicans died Sunday after their boat crashed near Haiti, AP reports.
• "A secret report on an FBI investigation" into the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen "closely links the bombing to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden," Newsweek reports.

• Bush will no longer correspond with family and friends by e-mail because "White House e-mails form part of the federal presidential record and could be subject to subpoena," UPI reports.
• Members of Congress are getting so much e-mail -- a total of about 80 million messages last year -- that it is becoming difficult to read or respond to it, AP reports.

• The crew of the space shuttle Discovery has left the International Space Station and is expected to be back on earth on Wednesday, AP reports.
• Russia's Mir space station is falling toward earth, and the Russians plan to "dump" the "aging station in the Pacific Ocean," AP reports.

• "It's hard to pick one voting system over another" as the country tries to remedy the election problems experienced in Florida this year "because little analysis of voting technology exists, and the reports that are available often conflict," AP reports.
• A statewide poll in Wisconsin shows that most people in that state support "Republican Gov. Scott McCallum's plan to require voters to show a photo ID before they can cast their ballots," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

• Virginia Republican Attorney General Mark Earley's "success at recruiting convention delegates has startled a state GOP already worrying about unity in the tough Nov. 6" gubernatorial election, the Washington Post reports.
• Former Rep. Bob Franks, R-N.J., "cannot escape the talk" that he might run for governor in 2001, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Roll Call reports that Florida Democratic Sens. Bob Graham and Bill Nelson have "narrowed their preferred candidate list" for the 2002 governor's race against Gov. Jeb Bush (R) to Rep. Jim Davis and former Reps. Jim Bacchus and Douglas "Pete" Peterson. AP also reports on the possible bid by Peterson, the ambassador to Vietnam.
• In a poll of potential Massachusetts 2002 gubernatorial candidates, state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien (D) placed first and Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., placed second, while 61 percent of voters remained undecided, Roll Call reports.
• Michael Bakalis (D), who "suffered a crushing defeat" in Illinois' 1978 gubernatorial race, announced Sunday that he will seek his party's nomination in 2002, the Chicago Tribune reports.
• Oklahoma's 2002 gubernatorial race could end up becoming a face-off between two popular sports heroes, the Daily Oklahoman reports. "Democrat Jack Mildren, considered by many to be the best wishbone quarterback to play at the University of Oklahoma, confirmed last week that he is seriously considering running for governor." And former star receiver with the Seattle Seahawks, Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., "is considered the front-runner for the GOP."
• In Michigan, former Democratic governor nominee Geoffrey Fieger has announced that he is considering running for the post again in 2002 -- this time as an independent, AP reports.
• California's power woes make Gov. Gray Davis' (D) 2002 re-election not as easy as was expected, especially as "behind-the-scenes grumbling is getting louder among lawmakers fed up with the way Davis is operating," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that this could be the year Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., faces his first tough re-election campaign.

• "One passenger was killed and about 90 others were injured" when an Amtrak train derailed in southwest Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports. CNN.com reports that the "National Transportation Safety Board said 'track-related problems' may have caused the Amtrak train to derail late Saturday night."

• New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D) "new office in Manhattan costs more than any other U.S. senator's office in the country," the New York Post reports.
• The Miami Herald profiles Hugh Rodham, reporting that nothing in his professional career "paid off like the job he did in the dusk of his brother-in-law Bill Clinton's presidency."
• John Phillips, "co-founder and the primary creative force behind The Mamas and the Papas" died Sunday, the New York Daily News reports. He was 65.