The Earlybird: Today's headlines

More tax cut travels, Hagel CFR bill vote, consumer confidence update, fighter jets still missing, Jerusalem explosions, Carter's election advice, new Davis challenger, Calif. energy rate hike:

• President Bush will travel to Kalamazoo, Mich., today to give a speech about his tax cut plan and the economy at Western Michigan University, AP reports.
• In his speech, Bush "is expected to emphasize the economic stimulus aspects of his 10-year, $1.6-trillion tax cut proposal," the Detroit News reports. Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, are opposed to the plan and are "helping to rally opposition to the timing and scope of the plan as presented."
• When he visited Kansas City on Monday, Bush said his tax cut plan "would create jobs and would help small businesses," the Kansas City Star reports.

• Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is "playing tax-cut poker" with Bush in order to get more tax cut benefits for his constituents, the Billings Gazette reports. Bush was in Montana Monday to tout his plan.
• Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Monday that he "wants to stimulate the economy with a tax plan that would immediately give each taxpayer a $300 check," CNN.com reports.
• White House National Economic Council Director Larry Lindsey said Monday that Bush's plan to repeal the estate tax "could be delayed up to two years to offset a larger tax break this year that aims to combat the economic slowdown," USA Today reports.

• Bush said Monday that "he did not get clearance from federal mediators to intervene in the strike by Comair pilots and that it was up to the parties involved to work out a deal," Reuters reports.
• The Bush administration is trying to close a loophole that has allowed "states... pretending to spend billions of dollars for Medicaid to draw down inflated matching money from Washington," AP reports. "This week HHS plans to announce a further crackdown on what investigators call a sham and a shell game."
• Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman lobbied Bush to "demonstrate his commitment to cutting greenhouse gases" the week before he "broke his campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions," the Washington Post reports.
• On Monday Bush named former Sen. Howard Baker Jr., R-Tenn., to the post of ambassador to Japan. "Bush also formally announced his nominations of Howard H. Leach, a San Francisco banker, as ambassador to France and J. Richard Blankenship, director of the Mandarin Veterinary Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., as ambassador to the Bahamas," the AP reports.

• Today the Senate is expected to vote on the alternative campaign finance reform bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., which Bush supports, USA Today reports. "Hagel's measure would allow corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals to give up to $60,000 a year in 'soft money' contributions to political parties."
• On Monday the Senate approved an amendment to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill that would put limits on campaign advertising by advocacy groups, the Washington Post reports. "The proposal... could mobilize independent groups, many of which already oppose the McCain-Feingold bill, to intensify their efforts to defeat it."
• AP has a roll-call list of how senators voted Monday.
• Democrats in the Senate "are threatening to delay judicial nominees" now that Bush has dismissed the role "of the American Bar Association (ABA) in the vetting process," the Washington Times reports.

• Investors will find out the state of consumer confidence today when the Conference Board releases its report, CNNfn.com reports. Economists expect the indicator to decline, and "the lower reading would be a sign of a slower economy -- which may be interpreted positively by Wall Street because it could signal a continuation of the Federal Reserve's effort to cut interest rates."
• Despite signs of a slowing economy, charities gave away record amounts of money last year, New York Times News Service reports.

• White supremacist Buford Furrow "was sentenced to life in prison Monday after apologizing for killing a postal worker and wounding five people at a Jewish center" in California last year, AP reports.
• The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear an affirmative action case to decide whether "the U.S. Transportation Department's revised highway construction program," which is "designed to favor minority and other disadvantaged businesses," is unconstitutional, Reuters reports.
• The court also has decided to hear a North Carolina death row case to determine "whether executing mentally retarded murderers is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment," the Raleigh News & Observer reports.
• The Dallas Morning News reports that the court also will hear a similar case that involves Texas death row inmate Johnny Paul Penry. Penry is "one of only a handful of individuals to have his case argued twice before the nation's highest court."
• California death row inmate Robert Lee Massie, known as the "Dean of Death Row," was executed early this morning, UPI reports.

• "Two U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter jets are missing" near Scotland, AP reports, and an Army plane crashed near Germany Monday, killing two pilots.
• Rescue teams have "spotted wreckage.... roughly half a mile south east of Ben Macdui in the Cairngorms -- close to the area where the last radar contact was made with the pilots' two F15C fighters on Monday afternoon," BBCNews.com reports.

• "The Bush administration is moving a few steps closer to intervening in Macedonia's escalating crisis while urging the government there not to overreact in trying to suppress ethnic Albanian insurgents," AP reports.
• A group of 30 foreign policy experts has written Bush a letter telling him he "should support South Korea's efforts to reconcile with North Korea and resume talks aimed at eliminating the North's long-range ballistic missile program," the New York Times reports.
• The "ideologically conservative Pentagon" under Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and the "more moderate State Department" under Secretary of State Colin Powell "have already provided President Bush conflicting advice on central issues," the New York Times reports.

• Illegally imported meat is "believed to be behind the devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease which has swept through the British countryside," BBCNews.com reports.
• At least eight people died in Belgium Tuesday after "a crowded commuter train slammed head on into an empty locomotive," AP reports.
• "A pair of explosions rocked Jerusalem on Tuesday," one of which resulted in fatalities, CNN.com reports.
• The U.N. Security Council negotiated Monday to "adopt a resolution on Palestinian-Israeli clashes that would not draw a veto from the United States," Reuters reports.
• "China said Tuesday that a U.S.-based scholar who was arrested last month in Beijing has confessed to 'spying activities,'" UPI reports.

• Former President Jimmy Carter said on CNN Monday "that the United States does not have an acceptable democratic system because voting systems vary so much between the 4,000 counties within the country," CNN.com reports.
• "If the Florida situation woke up the rest of the country to weaknesses in the election system, it could prove a boon to the 32 million Americans of voting age who are either blind or disabled, those still agitating for full access to the ballot box," the New York Times reports.
• A study released yesterday sponsored by Information Technology Association of America and Unisys Corp. shows that 69 percent of those surveyed believe "using new technologies for voting would produce more accurate results," and 61 percent "said they would approve tax dollars" to "improve the existing voting system," Reuters reports.

• In Virginia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley picked up another 202 GOP delegates in Lynchburg Sunday, the Lynchburg News & Advance reports.
• California Secretary of State Bill Jones (R) called a press conference Monday to announce that he will challenge Gov. Gray Davis (D) in 2002, saying "he will set up campaign committees as the first step," AP reports.
• New York Comptroller Carl McCall, who is running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, "ripped" Gov. George Pataki's (R) "administration for what he called an over-reliance on outside consultants for work on Department of Transportation construction projects," the New York Post reports.
• Former Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., officially announced his intention to seek his party's nomination for governor Monday during a seven-city tour, the Greenville News reports.
• Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., "said yesterday the voter-approved state Clean Elections Law and its matching funds may provide his best chance to run a successful campaign for governor in 2002," the Boston Herald reports.
• In Ohio's 4th District, "Republicans are talking a good race, but so far they haven't produced much" to challenge Rep. Ken Lucas, D-Ohio, who "has raised dough, hired a campaign staff, opened a campaign office and is prepared to defend his seat," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
• A recent Michigan poll shows House Minority Whip David Bonior, D-Mich., "lagging well behind former Gov. James Blanchard and Attorney General Jennifer Granholm in Democratic match-ups against the GOP frontrunner, Lt. Gov. Richard Posthumus," CongressDailyAM reports.

• "California's top energy regulator said Sunday she will propose raising electricity rates as early as" today, "with consumers seeing higher utility bills in May," the Los Angeles Times reports. AP reports that the proposed rate hike is 40 percent.
• "The arraignment of Charles 'Andy' Williams, accused of killing two schoolmates," in Santee, Calif., "was postponed Monday," the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. AP reports that Granite Hills High School senior Jason Hoffman, "charged with attempted murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon," pleaded not guilty in the same courtroom as Williams had been in earlier that day.
• A group of Palm Beach County, Fla., landscapers filed a petition Monday saying that the "region's agricultural industry could be unnecessarily crippled if Phase 3 water restrictions are enacted," the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports.
• Three Long Island, N.Y., teenagers pleaded guilty as adults "in federal court... to arson and conspiracy for burning" down new homes and other buildings as part of environmental activism "under the name of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which the FBI has labeled as one of the country's greatest domestic terrorism threats," the Washington Post reports.

• "The Rev. Al Sharpton is quietly letting it be known that he's leaning toward skipping a mayoral run" in New York City, Long Island Newsday reports.
• Minnesota 2000 Senate candidate Rebecca Yanisch (DFL) "has been named commissioner of the state Department of Trade and Economic Development," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
• Alan Green, former ambassador to Romania, died Friday, AP reports. He was 75.
• "Francis Yohannan, a World War II aviator who was an inspiration for the protagonist of Joseph Heller's 1961 novel 'Catch-22,' has died at 79," AP reports.