The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Fight for trade, energy policy, flights over China, another U.N. embarrassment, Cincinnati cop indictment, Hager's Va. gov announcement, Rep. Largent's delay, Professor Gore's future:

• "As he prepares this week to ask lawmakers for broader authority to negotiate trade deals," President Bush said Monday "that expanding free trade would not only create more jobs but also improve human rights abroad," the Houston Chronicle reports. Meanwhile, "a majority of the Senate fired off a letter Monday warning the president they will not sign on to any agreement unless it ensures that American businesses are protected from unfair practices."
• Bush will appoint John Walters to be the new drug czar this week, CNN.com reports. "Walters was a top deputy to William Bennett, drug czar in the administration of the president's father."

• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday that Bush "is very concerned about the soaring price of gasoline but has no intention of asking Americans to dramatically limit their fuel consumption to improve energy supplies," USA Today reports.
• White House officials said yesterday that "Bush administration officials have begun warning Republicans on Capitol Hill that the energy policy to be released next week will do little to help with gas prices or California blackouts this summer," the Washington Post reports.
• "OPEC is likely to increase oil production in the coming months to prevent crude prices from spiking above current levels," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• "Record temperatures in California led the state's power grid managers to order rolling blackouts Monday for the first time since March," AP reports.
• California will "sell $13.4 billion in bonds to pay for electricity during the state's power crisis," Reuters reports. This will be "the biggest municipal bond issue in U.S. history."

• Today the Senate will begin three days of hearings on "how to better prepare the United States for terrorist attacks on U.S. soil," Reuters reports.
• Members of the Congressional Black Caucus "are threatening to oppose" campaign finance reform, and some say the bill would "hurt candidates in poor, inner-city districts," USA Today reports. Caucus members will begin reviewing the bill today.
• The Senate will vote today on the nomination of John R. Bolton as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, AP reports.

• "The United States resumed reconnaissance flights off the coast of China on Monday," New York Times News Service reports.
• China will not allow the damaged U.S. Navy spy plane to fly back to the United States on its own, AP reports.
• Former President Bill Clinton traveled to China today, but not "as an emissary of the Bush administration," AP reports.

• "In a second embarrassing blow to Washington at the United Nations," the United States has been voted off the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board, Reuters reports.
• Today Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will give his first major policy speech, the New York Times reports. The speech will focus on "sharply increasing the importance of outer space in strategic planning."
• "A team of senior U.S. officials arrived at NATO headquarters on Tuesday to kick off a diplomatic drive aimed at drumming up European support for President Bush's controversial missile defense system," Reuters reports.
• "Japan told a visiting U.S. envoy on Tuesday it understands Washington's missile defense plans but stopped short of offering clear support in an apparent attempt to avoid angering neighboring China," Reuters reports.

• "Cincinnati police Officer Stephen Roach was indicted Monday on the least serious charge possible in the death April 7 of an unarmed African-American teen-ager that triggered days of protest and rioting," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. "Protests on a rainy Monday evening were peaceful."
• Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday that "a federal civil rights investigation would be launched into the policies and practices of the Cincinnati Police Department," Reuters reports.

• Former Columbine High School student Robyn Anderson -- who "bought guns at a gunshow for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold" -- "settled lawsuits Monday with about 36 families of those killed and injured in the shootings at the school," the Rocky Mountain News reports.
• "Three major cigarette makers agreed Monday to pay $709 million to sick Florida smokers who won a $145 billion class-action lawsuit last summer in Miami-Dade Circuit Court," the Miami Herald reports.
• Oklahoma inmate Jeffrey Todd Pierce was freed Monday, "nearly 15 years after being wrongfully convicted," the Oklahoman reports.
• "A group of Hungarian Holocaust survivors and their heirs sued the United States on Monday" in order to seek "restitution for treasures stolen by the Nazis and later taken by U.S. troops," the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
• A federal judge in Washington released an opinion today that "upheld tough new government limits on sales of certain personal credit data," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Yesterday Pope John Paul II was in Syria, where he "called... for a 'conversion of heart' among all parties in the Middle East conflict to bring peace to a region so frequently beset by war," the Washington Post reports.
• "A Jewish settler was killed by Palestinian militants in the West Bank on Tuesday, a day after a 4-month-old Palestinian baby died in an Israeli shelling attack and Israel intercepted a large weapons shipment from Lebanon," AP reports.

• Virginia Lt. Gov. John Hager (R) announced Monday that he would continue his race for governor, ending "10 days of speculation about whether he would cede the nomination to his GOP rival, Attorney General Mark L. Earley, and either drop out of the race or run again for lieutenant governor," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• "Dropping his bid to wage a primary campaign without public financing," Jersey City, N.J., Mayor Bret Schundler (R) said Monday he would take state matching funds in his 2001 gubernatorial bid, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) "discounted 'speculation and rumor' that he was not going to seek a second term" on Monday, the Tallahassee Democrat reports. He said "he needs another month to decide whether to run for re-election."
• Tennessee state Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) announced Monday she will not run for governor in 2002, the Nashville Tennessean reports.
• Rep. Steve Largent, R-Okla., said Monday that he might "delay an official announcement of his gubernatorial candidacy until next spring," AP reports.
• The Boston Globe reports on the press coverage received by acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) since taking office: "The local media can be bruising," but the "national press seems one way to soften the unsympathetic image many in Massachusetts have formed" of the pregnant governor.
• "A major announcement concerning" Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson's (R) "possible appointment to head the Drug Enforcement Administration is expected as early as today," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. CongressDailyAM reports that if "Hutchinson leaves his strongly Republican 3rd District, the list of GOP candidates would include former state Reps. Jim Hendren and Jim Von Gremp and current state Sens. John Brown and Gunner DeLay."

• A 33-year-old man "attacked children with a fillet knife early Monday morning" at an Anchorage, Ala., elementary school, "slashing and seriously injuring four young boys," the Anchorage Daily News reports.
• The Texas state Senate on Monday passed a hate crimes bill, which the House had already passed, the New York Times reports. Two years ago, then-Gov. George W. Bush's "allies" in the Senate "suppressed similar legislation opposed by conservatives because it specifically included protections for gays."

• CNN.com asks: Does Al Gore "still want to be" president? "Frankly, Professor Gore's private life looks like preparation for a return to public life."
• Former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, received the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award yesterday in Kansas City, AP reports.
• First lady Laura Bush will meet "with military personnel" in Columbia, S.C., "to focus attention on a teacher recruitment program" today, the Greenville News reports.
• Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern said Monday "he doesn't agree with the current condemnation" of former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., "for a combat mission in which civilians were killed," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. McGovern ran a 1972 campaign based on opposition to the Vietnam War.
• Karin Stanford, the mother of Jesse Jackson's "out-of-wedlock child," spoke for the first time in four months Monday, detailing "a romantic relationship with Jackson that began several years ago, but reached a painful impasse in recent months over finalizing a support agreement for their daughter," the Chicago Tribune reports.