The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Energy standoff, Dem takeover, terrorist conviction, consumer confidence, Moakley successor, Virginia GOP convention:

• During a speech to the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles on Tuesday, President Bush "ruled out federal price controls on the wholesale costs of energy" in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Bush met with California Gov. Gray Davis (D), who said "he will sue the federal government to impose controls, which he deems essential to fixing the state's energy problems."
• EMediaMillWorks offers a transcript of Bush's speech.
• "Regardless of what happens to the Bush administration's plans to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the state is on the verge of the biggest boom in energy development since the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline was built in the mid-1970s," the New York Times reports.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said Tuesday that the Bush administration "will move ahead with a plan to sharply reduce emissions from older power plants and industrial facilities that produce haze and smog in the nation's 156 national parks and wilderness areas," the Washington Post reports.
• Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who is "expected to be named chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations" next week, said Tuesday that he will use that post "to investigate gas prices," the Lansing State Journal reports. Levin also said he will urge Bush "to tap the nation's strategic oil reserves."
• A new Web site from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "promises to help people track keep track of California's energy use on a 'minute-to-minute basis,'" the Sacramento Bee reports.

• Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Tuesday that "the secretive policy reviews that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld undertook three months ago to begin modernizing the military are likely to result in less radical change that commonly believed," AP reports.
• "The Pentagon said Tuesday it will haul the damaged Navy spy plane home from China in large pieces, reassemble it and eventually return it to reconnaissance duty," AP reports.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday failed to sell NATO's foreign ministers on the U.S. missile defense plan, the New York Times reports. "He could not even convince them that a threat of a missile attack against their countries actually exists."

• On Tuesday Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., "announced he will chair the Foreign Relations Committee," which means that Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., "will chair the Senate Judiciary Committee" when the Democrats take over as the majority party in the Senate next week, AP reports.
• California Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer said Tuesday that they have reached an agreement with the White House "on a process for judicial nominations in the state that will give each party significant ability to veto potential judges," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• Some House Republican officials said Tuesday that the House "will become the 'fire wall' against big spending bills that Senate Democrats hope to pass this year," the Washington Times reports.
• USA Today reports that "the abrupt change of power in the Senate... wrecks White House hopes of having Bush's nominees confirmed and in place by fall, senior White House officials say privately."

• The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Americans With Disabilities Act requires the Professional Golfers' Association to allow golfer Casey Martin "to use a golf cart during tournaments," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• The court also "let stand a lower court's decision that a 6-foot-tall granite tablet of the" Ten Commandments "on the lawn of the Elkhart, Ind., municipal building violates the constitutional separation of church and state," the Indianapolis Star reports.
• The high court "threw out the appeals court ruling and ordered the lower court to resolve the dispute" of a lawsuit brought by Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, against Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., Cox News Service reports. Boehner filed suit against McDermott in 1998 and accused him of "violating his privacy rights by giving reporters a tape of a cellular conference call among Boehner and GOP officials."
• And the court upheld the use of race as a factor in admission to the University of Washington Law School when it declined to hear an appeals court decision on the case Tuesday, AP reports.

• Four followers of terrorist Osama Bin Laden on Tuesday were convicted "of killing 224 people -- including 12 Americans -- in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa," the New York Daily News reports.
• Bin Laden "remains safe in hiding in Afghanistan under the protection of the fundamentalist Taliban militia," AP reports.
• Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh "reportedly has authorized his attorneys to draft a request to block his execution... based on about 4,000 documents the FBI turned over to McVeigh's attorneys earlier this month, just days before he originally was scheduled to be executed," the Tulsa World reports.
• The paperwork is likely to be filed Thursday or Friday in Denver, the Rocky Mountain News reports. A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that "the government is prepared to defend McVeigh's conviction and death sentence."
• "A Montreal man convicted last month for his role in a millennium terrorism plot has confessed that he intended to detonate a large bomb at Los Angeles International Airport and is cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• Federal prosecutors on Tuesday said "that the Rev. Al Sharpton is a 'danger to the community' and urged an appeals court to keep the civil rights activist in jail for 90 days for trespassing on US Navy land during a protest against military bombings on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques," the Boston Globe reports.
• "One of the 12 survivors from a border crossing that left 14 dead in the desert east of Yuma was arrested Tuesday and accused of being a smuggling guide," the Arizona Republic reports.

• The Conference Board on Tuesday "said its monthly index of consumer confidence rose" in May, CNNfn.com reports.
• The Bank of Canada cut its benchmark lending rate on Tuesday by a quarter percentage point, citing the economic slowdown in the United States as the reason, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Pakistan's military ruler formally accepted India's offer of peace talks" on Tuesday, AP reports.
• At least 20 people died after gunfire erupted in the Central African Republic on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The incident happened "a day after a failed coup attempt against President Ange Felix Patasse."
• Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs met Tuesday to begin peace talks, but no progress was made, CBSNews.com reports. "Israel demanded an end to violence, but the Palestinians replied that they were acting in self-defense."

• The New York Times reports on names being floated for the special election in Massachusetts' 9th District to replace the late Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass. Besides front-runner Max Kennedy (D), they include Democratic state Sens. Brian A. Joyce, Marc R. Pacheco and Stephen F. Lynch.
• Gov. Jane Swift (R) "is already being urged to avoid the date of municipal elections in Boston, Taunton and Brockton for legal and logistical reasons, possibly setting a special election date earlier this fall," the Boston Herald reports.
• Arkansas highway commissioner Jonathan Barnett (R) "said Tuesday that he will not run for the expected vacancy in the 3rd Congressional District," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

• AP reports that the GOP convention to pick a gubernatorial candidate in Virginia this weekend "comes against a backdrop of turmoil" as "hard feelings remain after a prolonged fight between" term-limited Gov. James Gilmore (R) "and Republican state Senate leaders over Gilmore's plan to cut the property tax on cars."
• New Jersey Democrat Jim McGreevey's 2001 gubernatorial campaign is shaping up much differently than his 1997 attempt, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. "The image that McGreevey is seeking to establish" with his ad campaign "is carefully designed to strike a chord with the middle-class swing voters that Democrats hope to target this fall."
• Rep. Bob Clement, D-Tenn., announced Tuesday that he will not run for governor in 2002, opening the field to Doug Horne, who "said yesterday he will join the race 'within days,'" and former state Sen. Andy Womack, who plans to announce his candidacy today, the Nashville Tennessean reports.
• Three New Hampshire Republicans "are moving quickly toward 2002 candidacies for governor," the Manchester Union Leader reports. "Yesterday, outgoing state university system board Chairman Bruce Keough of Dublin told The Union Leader he intends" to run, joining "2000 GOP standard-bearer and former Sen. Gordon Humphrey and Cabletron Systems Inc. co-founder Craig Benson."
• South Carolina state Sen. Bill Branton (R) will announce Monday his intentions to run for governor in 2002, the Columbia State reports.