The Earlybird: Today's headlines

China VP visits D.C., Bush gives health care speech, Fed's cut doesn't help much, McCain-Feingold gets amended, Brazilian oil rig sinks, Mir lands, California stays dark, Harris proposes election reforms:

• Today President Bush will meet with Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen in Washington, the Washington Post reports. On Tuesday Qichen said "the U.S. sale of advanced destroyers to Taiwan could torpedo U.S.-China relations and raise the chances of military conflict."
• Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met Tuesday and "agreed that the stalled peace process had a chance for quick revival, but only if there's an end to the violence that has so often permeated the region," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Sharon said he approves of the United States' plan for a national missile defense system, CNN.com reports.
• In Jerusalem on Wednesday, "a U.S.-led fact-finding committee into Israeli-Palestinian violence met Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres," Reuters reports. Former Sen. George Mitchell, who leads the committee, would only say that "Israeli officials had 'responded fully and openly and frankly to our questions.'"
• Bush is on the invite list for "the U.S.-Russian Presidential Gala voyage on the USS Sequoia, the old presidential yacht," in April, a party that "former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has agreed to chair," U.S. News and World Report's "Washington Whispers" reports.

• Bush will be in Florida today to speak to the American College of Cardiology in Orlando and "deliver what aides are calling a significant speech to outline his positions on plans to expand health care access and improve the nation's medical systems," ABCNews.com reports.
• His plan will "endorse limited protections for patients in managed care plans," which "could short-circuit support for a more sweeping, bipartisan proposal," USA Today reports.
• For Bush's visit, "Democrats will roll out the not-so-red carpet with protests aimed at the president and television ads slamming" Bush brother and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the Orlando Sentinel reports.
• Democrats said Tuesday they want "twice as much money as President Bush requested" for Medicare prescription drug coverage in the next 10 years, the New York Times reports.

• The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Tuesday, but it "was not enough to revive battered confidence in financial markets" and stock prices continued to drop, Financial Times reports. Investors had been hoping for a slightly larger rate cut.
• More interest rate cuts are likely "by the time Fed policy-makers meet in June," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
  
• The Washington Post offers a timeline of the Fed's interest rate changes since 1990.
• The Labor Department will report its Consumer Price Index for February today, and investors are watching closely, CNNfn.com reports. "Excluding food and energy prices, consumer prices are expected to have risen 0.2 percent after a 0.3 percent gain the prior month."
• "The slowing economy and the steep decline in the stock market are leading Wall Street and some private economists to slash their budget surplus estimates for this year," the Washington Post reports.
• Meanwhile, European stocks "fell sharply" and Japan's Nikkei market "surged," BBCNews.com reports.
• During the past year, investors have fought the Fed's advice "that investors should buy stocks aggressively when the Federal Reserve is lowering short-term interest rates and be much more careful when rates are rising," the New York Times reports. The popularity of technology stocks was an example.

• During day two of its campaign finance debate on Tuesday, the Senate approved an amendment that would raise the contribution limits to candidates who are running against wealthy self-financiers, Reuters reports. Campaign finance reform proponents Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., supported the measure.
• The House Budget Committee is expected to approve Bush's budget plan today, which would include a $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut, Reuters reports. The bill would then head to the House floor next week.
• A group of pro-choice legislators "said Tuesday they will employ a rarely used law" -- the Congressional Review Act -- "to try to reverse an executive order by President Bush withholding federal funds from international organizations that engage in abortion-related activities," CNN.com reports.

• Bush on Tuesday signed Congress' repeal of former President Bill Clinton's workplace ergonomics regulations, Reuters reports.
• The Bush administration is working to reverse another Clinton regulation that would lower the amount of arsenic permissible in drinking water, AP reports.

• The world's largest oil rig sunk in the Atlantic Ocean near Brazil on Tuesday, CBSNews.com reports. Even though some oil already has begun to leak, "scientists and the government said the environmental impact would not be great, in part because the isolated location of the sunken rig, 75 miles off the coast at a depth of nearly one mile."
• Leaders in China and North Korea are preparing for a summit, UPI reports. The two nations are trying to develop stronger relations.
• "A 24-hour ceasefire period declared by the authorities in Macedonia for Wednesday is underway, but there has so far been no sign of a rebel withdrawal," BBCNews.com reports.

• The first crew of the international space station returned to Earth this morning after more than four months on the station, AP reports.
• Russia's Mir space station will land in the South Pacific on Friday, AP reports.

• Navy Cmdr. Scott Waddle, who was captain of the USS Greeneville, "accepted Tuesday full responsibility for the accident that killed nine Japanese," UPI reports.
• "The Army is drastically reducing training for 65,000 soldiers in Germany for fear that boots and equipment could spread the highly contagious" foot-and-mouth disease that has been found in Europe, the Washington Times reports.

• Ruling in a South Carolina case, the Supreme Court said Tuesday that some "juries should know that convicted killers would not be eligible for parole if they are sentenced to life in prison instead of death," the Columbia State reports.
• Americans United for Separation of Church and State on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Pittsburgh "trying to force the removal of a Ten Commandments display from the Allegheny County Courthouse," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

• "Jinxed by a combination of bad luck and bad decisions, utilities were forced to cut off power to more than half a million homes and businesses" in California yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• The Los Angeles Daily News reports that the "latest power woes were caused by maintenance problems at two major power plants, warm temperatures and alternative energy providers shutting down because of unpaid bills."
• The state's utilities "are demanding that higher electric rates" -- possibly a more than 50 percent hike -- "be a part of any deal to sell the state their power lines," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
• "The California Energy Commission has predicted that the state will make it through the summer without major problems with extra supply from upgraded power plants, the restart of existing thermal and renewable energy projects and small emergency generators that switch on during peak demand times," the San Francisco Examiner reports.

• Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (R) "on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious plan that would create a unified statewide ballot and touch-screen vote-counting system in time for the 2004 elections," the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
• Harris' plan would "update registration information, identify duplicates and remove the names of dead voters from the rolls," AP reports.
• State "Republican legislative leaders, who have held back election reform proposals from early passage and have been reluctant to spend state money for county voting equipment, expressed little support for the plan Tuesday," the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports.

• Both Democrats running for governor in New York -- Comptroller Carl McCall and former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo -- promised yesterday that they would move full-time to Albany if elected, the New York Post reports. Their promises drew "a scathing attack from" Gov. George Pataki (R), who is expected to run for re-election.
• Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood (R) "said she has been asked by supporters to consider not only the attorney general post but also governor and U.S. Senate," the Bloomington-Normal Pantagraph reports.
• Despite rumors, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating (R) is not interested in becoming a "drug czar" for the Bush administration, a spokesman for the governor said, the Oklahoman reports.

• Robert Kennedy's son, Max Kennedy (D), said yesterday that he is "closer to a decision" on whether to run for the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Joseph Moakley, D-Mass. Kennedy met "with top Democratic fund-raisers yesterday," indicating "he's on the verge of running," the Boston Herald reports.
• Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., "is 'very, very close' to deciding whether he will be a challenger next year for the Senate seat held by" Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. The "announcement will not be on April 1, despite rumors to that effect circulating in Arkansas."

• Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) "replaced his yearly Confederate History Month proclamation with one commemorating both sides in the Civil War" yesterday, the Washington Times reports. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that even "the renamed title of the proclamation, 'In Remembrance of the Sacrifices and Honor of All Virginians Who Served in the Civil War,' underscored the governor's attempt to walk a racial and political tightrope."
• In Maryland, a conservative state Senate committee passed a proposal banning "discrimination against gays and lesbians" yesterday. The committee blocked the same proposal two years ago, and this vote was "its biggest hurdle," the Baltimore Sun reports.

• "Newly revealed tape recordings" show that after former President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, "his top advisers shut themselves away in the White House Situation Room and nervously debated who was in command," AP reports. In the Atlantic Monthly, former Reagan National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen discusses transcripts of the tapes he made that day.