The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush's meeting with Sharon, administration's energy warnings, Fed's announcement today, Japan's economic disagreements, campaign reform's roadblocks, Macedonia's rebels, Rep. Waters' endorsement, Arafat's health, cherry blossom season's arrival:

• On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington, and Secretary of State Colin Powell "renewed a pledge to stand by Israel and criticized Arab governments for withdrawing their ambassadors from Tel Aviv," AP reports.
• Sharon will meet with President Bush today, USA Today reports. White House officials have "urged Sharon to relieve economic pressures against the Palestinians and avoid other steps that could further inflame Arab hostility toward Israel and the United States."

• California experienced its "first deliberate statewide blackouts since World War II" on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports. The power outages could continue today.
• Bush said Monday there are no "quick fixes" to the energy "crunch" the United States is going through, Reuters reports. "His national energy policy development group... is expected to make recommendations by late April or early May on how to grapple with shortages and increasing prices."
• Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Monday that the energy crisis is the worst the country has experienced since the 1970s and "said he saw the power problem quickly expanding beyond California," the Chicago Tribune reports.

• The Federal Reserve Board meets today, and Wall Street is "counting on" a lowered interest rate, the Washington Post reports.
• "Economists are divided over whether the central bank will cut rates by half a percentage point or by a bigger three-quarters of a point, which many hard-hit stock investors want," CNNfn.com reports.

• Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori met Monday and agreed "to tackle their nations' deepening economic problems," AP reports. But the two leaders disagreed over the way Japan would work to revive its economy: "U.S. officials said that Mori had agreed Japan should boost domestic demand... rather than depend on selling exports to the rest of the world. Japanese officials said Mori had made no vow that Japan would refrain from exporting its way out of recession."
• Mori today will visit "the scene where the Ehime Maru," a Japanese fishing boat, was sunk by the USS Greeneville, the Honolulu Advertiser reports.
• Testifying at the court of inquiry hearing in Hawaii on Monday, "the USS Greeneville's fire control technician in charge of radar tracking admitted" that he "failed to follow standing orders for reporting surface ships," the Honolulu Advertiser reports.
• Navy Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, who was in charge of the USS Greeneville, will not have full immunity when he testifies at the hearing, which "indicates that Waddle is likely to face a court-martial for his role in the Feb. 9 accident," the Washington Post reports.

• The Senate began debating the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill on Monday, and its sponsors said "they can get 51 votes to pass the bill and to turn away any damaging amendments," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Senators narrowly defeated "an amendment to raise the limits on donations to candidates facing wealthy, self-funding rivals," CNN.com reports.
• There are several roadblocks to the bill, the Washington Times reports. Opponents "have organized a blitz of amendments to peel away support for final passage of legislation," and "Republican leaders revealed a move to leave any bill that is passed vulnerable to being overturned as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court."
• Big business donors already have scored three victories under the Bush administration, including Bush's "reversal on industrial emissions; a rollback on a costly new workplace safety rule, and a bill to make it tougher for consumers to wipe out debt," Reuters reports.

• Bush spoke with "a group of influential black pastors" on Monday and told them "that, despite opposition from some religious conservatives, he will seek government money for social services provided by religious organizations," Knight-Ridder reports.
• The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was reported to be an opponent of Bush's faith-based charities plan, says he actually likes the plan and was "misinterpreted" by the press, U.S. News and World Report's "Washington Whispers" reports.

• "Bush's top legal advisers questioned American Bar Association officials yesterday about why the group should retain a 'preferential role' in evaluating potential federal judges, but they stopped short of saying the administration would not rely on that advice before selecting nominees to the U.S. courts," the Washington Post reports.
• The federal government has projected that Social Security will "remain solvent until 2038" and "Medicare would be solvent until 2029," USA Today reports. Those reports are more optimistic than previous ones.

• The Supreme Court ruled Monday that witnesses have the right to take the Fifth Amendment because it "protects the innocent as well as the guilty," AP reports. The court ruled "that a baby sitter had a legitimate reason to fear testifying in a shaken-baby case, even though she was not charged with a crime."
• AP reports on all the court's actions from Monday.
• Brett Kimberlin, a "convicted bomber who once claimed he sold marijuana to Dan Quayle," lost his "claim that federal parole officials railroaded him when they canceled his scheduled release two years ago" in the Supreme Court, AP reports.
• A federal judge said Monday that he agreed with convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh's request not to have an autopsy performed after he is executed in May, the Daily Oklahoman reports.

• On Monday NATO "pledged to 'starve'" rebels in Macedonia "by cutting supply lines from neighboring Kosovo," AP reports.
• Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, "a key Taliban foreign ministry official and adviser to Taliban leader" Mullah Muhammad Omar, met with officials from the State Department in Washington on Monday, UPI reports. Hashimi was sent "to warm their government's icy relations with the United States," but the meeting did not cover any new ground.
• A report from the Committee to Protect Journalists found that "at least two dozen journalists were killed and 81 imprisoned for their work in 2000," the Houston Chronicle reports. The report "cited Colombia, Russia and Sierra Leone as particularly violent countries for journalists, accounting for one-third of those killed."

• "Indonesian businessman James Riady, a friend of former president Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty on Monday to making illegal campaign contributions and agreed to pay a record $8.6 million in fines" Reuters reports.
• On Monday Clinton "accepted a peace award from Cardozo Law School... while protesters outside questioned his status as a disgraced lawyer and chanted, 'Where's the peace' [in Israel]?" the New York Post reports.

• Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., announced she would back state Sen. Kevin Murray (D) in the race to fill Rep. Julian Dixon's (D) seat in California's 32nd District. Her endorsement "is expected to give his campaign added momentum and may catapult him to the top of the" April 10 race, the Los Angeles Times reports. Murray already has the support of Reps. Howard Berman and Henry Waxman and Dixon's widow, Bettye Dixon.
• Oklahoma first lady Cathy Keating said yesterday she is "seriously considering a race for Congress" after a poll showed "she had a good chance of winning," the Daily Oklahoman reports.

• California, Washington, Arizona, New York and Ohio "filed suit on Monday against cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., alleging violations of a landmark 1998 settlement aimed at curbing cigarette marketing to children," Reuters reports.
• In California, "a conservative bloc of San Bernardino County supervisors has voted to seek a ban on morning-after contraceptive pills in county-run health clinics," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• 71-year-old Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat is in "good health," according to his doctors, but he does suffer "from anxiety," the New York Post reports.
• "Milo Cleveland Beach, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art since 1987, yesterday announced his retirement, effective Oct. 1," the Washington Times reports.
• Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Aerosmith, Queen, Steely Dan, the Flamingos, Solomon Burke and Ritchie Valens were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night, AP reports.

• Today is officially the first day of spring. The Washington Post offers a Cherry Blossom Watch.