The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush defends missile defense, Frist courts Dole, Senate to vote on education, bombing on Vieques to end, Gore gets a new office:

• During a NATO summit with 19 world leaders Wednesday, President Bush "defended his proposed missile defense system," the Houston Chronicle reports. Other leaders "remained divided on the wisdom of lending support to what many view as an expensive, dangerous and unproven weapons interceptor."
• Bush also asked the world leaders to set aside the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty "in order for the United States to move ahead with development of a missile defense shield," the Washington Times reports.
• After the meeting Bush said that "he had found 'new receptivity'" toward the missile defense plan, the Boston Globe reports.
• The leaders of France and Britain urged Bush yesterday "to back a greater NATO military role in the Macedonia crisis or stand back and watch his European allies take the initiative," Reuters reports.
• Today Bush meets with European Union leaders in Göteborg, Sweden, where he is "expected to face tough questions and public protests directed at his environmental policies," USA Today reports.

• The Senate is expected to approve the education reform bill today, Reuters reports. "But before the vote, the Senate must wade through a range of final amendments that could undercut bipartisan support for the measure."
• "Senate negotiators have reached a deal that would extend a moratorium on new Internet taxes until 2006 but open the door to increased collection of existing sales taxes that now go largely unpaid on Internet and catalogue sales," USA Today reports.
• "As both sides dug in their heels over the final details of a deal to reorganize Senate committees, GOP negotiators complained that the Democrats have yet to make the right offer to reach a settlement," Roll Call reports.
• Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "yesterday called for an investigation into the $1 billion in profits taken by investors in the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut in apparent evasion of federal law," the Boston Globe reports.
• The House voted 422-2 on Wednesday to "condemn Sudan's human rights record and to prohibit foreign oil companies doing business with Sudan from raising money in American markets," the Washington Times reports.
• House Republicans introduced legislation Wednesday that would give the president "power to negotiate trade deals with other countries, leaving Congress only to approve or reject, but not amend, such agreements," UPI reports.
• "The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday put a glaring stamp of disapproval on the controversial 'Tauzin-Dingell' broadband bill," National Journal News Service reports.
• Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., on Wednesday "broke with the White House and said he'd support legislation to give patients the right to sue HMOs," CBSNews.com reports.

• "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to approve a plan proposed by Congressional Republicans that would significantly expand the agency's efforts to limit electricity prices in California and other Western states," the New York Times reports.
• Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at a forum on energy efficiency on Wednesday, where he stumped for Bush's energy plan and noted "the nation had made great strides in the past three decades in making appliances, vehicles and turbines more efficient, but said much more needed to be done," Reuters reports.

• Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has approached former presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole (R) about running for the Senate in North Carolina, Roll Call reports.
• "Speculation mounted this week" in Denver that Mayor Wellington Webb (D) will announce his plans on Monday regarding a run against Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., in 2002, Reuters reports. Some say the mayor "may take longer to make up his mind."

• State Sen. Louise Lucas (D), candidate for Virginia's 4th District, called the Richmond Times-Dispatch "to express outrage" as she accused her opponent, state Sen. Randy Forbes (R), "of appealing to race in a district that is 39 percent black."
• Currently, Massachusetts state Sens. Brian Joyce, Stephen Lynch and Marc Pacheco are the only Democratic candidates in the 9th District race, but "several others are still deciding whether to jump in to fill the gap left by Matthew Maxwell Kennedy's exit," the Boston Globe reports.
• Republican state Sen. JoAnn Sprague "may jump into the... race, which so far is lacking a woman or a Republican," the Boston Herald reports.
• On Tuesday night, 250 guests spent $1,000 to attend a fundraiser for Mark Kennedy Shriver (D), who is challenging Rep. Connie Morella, R-Md., in 2002. It was held at his parents' Potomac mansion, the Washington Post reports. Some "supporters conceded that the 37-year-old delegate needs to articulate a substantial rationale for his candidacy so voters cannot dismiss him as trading on his gilded name."

• Former teacher Bob Vander Plaats (R) said Wednesday that he will stay in the Iowa governor race, even "if wrestling legend Dan Gable [R] decides to enter it," the Des Moines Register reports.
• Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., who is running for governor in 2002, criticized Gov. John Engler (R) "for what he characterized as neglect of Michigan cities and the environment" in an interview with the Detroit News.
• Former Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer (D) left "open the prospect -- however thin -- that he would once again try to become governor in 2002," the Baltimore Sun reports.
• New York state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D) said that he has "a year and a half to make" a decision on whether to challenge Gov. George Pataki (R), AP reports. Democrats Andrew Cuomo and Carl McCall are also running for their party's nod in the 2002 race.

• "Magic Johnson is considering taking up a new game: politics," AP reports. Johnson, who was an "ardent campaigner for Jim Hahn in this month's" Los Angeles "mayoral election... warned the mayor-elect not to get too comfortable in the job."
• One man was killed and two injured "when a small plane from Venezuela, reporting engine trouble, crashed short of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport onto an Interstate 95 exit ramp Wednesday night," the Miami Herald reports.
• A "fiery eruption" around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday on M Street in Georgetown knocked out electricity, threw rush hour into confusion and shut down one of Washington's "most vibrant commercial strips," the Washington Post reports.

• "Israelis and Palestinians began implementing a U.S.-brokered cease-fire agreement yesterday even as they quarreled over the provisions of a shaky truce that analysts on both sides predicted would not last long," the Boston Globe reports.
• The Pentagon is expected to announce today that it will "end controversial Navy bombing exercises off the coast of Puerto Rico's Vieques Island" in two years, AP reports.
• The Philippine government on Wednesday declared "war on Muslim extremists who hold more than two dozen hostages," AP reports. "The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who claimed Tuesday they killed one of the three Americans they hold, already said they would no longer negotiate with the government."
• American and North Korean diplomats met in New York on Wednesday "for what the State Department called a useful beginning to a dialogue between the two countries," the New York Times reports.
• "Dutch doctors offering abortions on board a floating clinic outside the Republic of Ireland's territorial waters face growing protests," BBCNews.com reports. The ship is an effort to "bypass Ireland's strict anti-abortion laws."

• "The Justice Department announced Wednesday that violent crime fell a record 15 percent last year, a finding that puzzled some criminologists because it came two weeks after the FBI reported that serious crime remained stable in 2000, ending an eight-year period of significant decline," New York Times News Service reports.
• Justice Department official Robert S. Mueller III "remains on the shortest of short lists to replace" outgoing FBI Director Louis Freeh, the Boston Globe reports.
• The Justice Department will "undertake a comprehensive study of the federal death penalty to determine whether the system is racially or ethnically biased," the New York Times reports.
• Several Democratic senators, including Russ Feingold, D-Wis., on Wednesday "called for a halt to federal executions" until the study is completed, Reuters reports.

• Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., continues to enjoy "enduring affection" in his 18th District and his popularity "appears undiminished in the wake of publicity about his friendship with Chandra Levy, 24, an intern who vanished six weeks ago in Washington, D.C.," USA Today reports.
• Meanwhile, "election-law experts questioned the propriety" of Condit's "plans to use campaign funds to pay an attorney to challenge coverage by several news organizations," Roll Call reports.
• "A handful of California politicos, including big-time lobbyist Vic Fazio and members of the state's congressional delegation, have urged" Condit "to go public with details of his relationship" with Levy in "a TV interview or press conference," the New York Post reports.
• AP reports that Bush adviser Karl Rove, "who owned more than $100,000 of stock in Intel Corporation, met in March with the company's chief executive and two lobbyists as they pushed for federal approval of a corporate merger." The approval went through "less than two months later." Rove has since sold the stock.
• Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., "has gotten a three-month extension to file his disclosure forms," the New York Post reports.

• Al Gore "will open an office in Nashville on July 20, the same day his official vice-presidential transition office shuts down in" Washington, the Nashville Tennessean reports. He will also return "to teaching next academic year as he continues to develop the community building seminars."
• Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards (D) "will become a senior adviser to the Austin-based corporate consulting firm Public Strategies Inc.," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., "will begin lecturing and teaching a course in government at" Morris Brown College in Atlanta this fall, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

• As of next year, passengers on American, Delta and United airlines will be able to hook up to the Internet while in the air, AP reports. "Passengers would use their own computers on board and pay around $20 an hour for the hookup."