The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush-Blair visit, Mexican immigrant supporters, today's faith-based vote, FBI testimony, hint of interest rate cut, new terrorist warning, another Florida gov hopeful, Virginia Senate challenge, Condit's CBS debut:

• Before the G-8 summit in Italy this weekend, President Bush will meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair today in London, the Dallas Morning News reports. They are expected to have a "civil" debate over "American-European disputes over the environment and missile defense."
• Bush will have lunch with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, BBCNews.com reports.
• In his second trip to Europe, Bush "is facing less criticism over missile defense and global warming than he experienced during his first trip five weeks ago," the Washington Times reports.
• Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on Wednesday "charged that the administration's failure to engage on a wide range of international issues is eroding U.S. leadership in the world," USA Today reports.
• The White House has decided that it "will not accept a new agreement" with Russia "that limits the development of antimissile defenses," the New York Times reports. Bush will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this weekend during the summit.

• A bipartisan group of senators held a news conference Wednesday to announce their "willingness" to join the Bush administration in "considering a plan to put millions of undocumented immigrants on a path to legal residency," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• "The Bush administration has strengthened its policy for allowing Mexican trucks full access to U.S. roads, promising to expand truck inspection and to double state inspectors at border crossings" by 2002, the Houston Chronicle reports.

• Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., on Wednesday announced an alternative plan for stem-cell research, the Nashville Tennessean reports. Frist's plan would provide federal funding "only for research involving human embryos that were no longer needed for infertility treatments and would otherwise be discarded."
• The National Institutes of Health released its 200-page study of the issue Wednesday, and supporters and critics "hailed different parts" of the study, the Boston Globe reports. "While the NIH report did not address the issue of federal funding, it urged further examination of both types of stem cells."
• Meanwhile, scientists conducting stem-cell research "say the research has gone too far to stop -- regardless of what politicians decree," the Washington Times reports.

• The National Abortion Federation has launched a controversial magazine advertising campaign for the "abortion pill" RU-486, AP reports.
• Today Senate Democrats will present witnesses to argue that Bush's plan to cut "U.S. aid for groups that advocate abortion rights abroad" will "lead to 'misery and death,'" AP reports.

• The House is expected to vote on Bush's faith-based initiatives proposal today, after delaying the vote on Wednesday in order to reach "an agreement with Republican moderates concerned about discrimination in federally financed charitable efforts," Reuters reports.
• "One House committee approved a package of energy tax cuts Wednesday for individuals and industry that is more generous than President Bush's plan, while a second panel agreed to a modest fuel efficiency boost for sport utility vehicles," AP reports.
• The House Ways and Means Committee will hold its first hearing on Bush's plan for Medicare reform today, Reuters reports.
• Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said Wednesday that he and other campaign finance reform supporters in the House "expect to join with Democrats to try to force a vote on the measure despite opposition from House GOP leaders," the Washington Post reports.
• Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., has introduced legislation that would make the penny obsolete, USA Today reports.

• FBI officials told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday about "massive problems inside the agency, including cover-ups, retribution against whistle-blowers and computers so outdated that they won't run basic software," the Houston Chronicle reports.
• Witnesses said during the hearing that "a small group of senior FBI executives who protect one another at all costs, resist change and retaliate against anyone who challenges them is to blame for the agency's recent debacles," USA Today reports.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan presented Congress with the Fed's twice-yearly economic report card on Wednesday, and he said that "the economy remained weak and susceptible to more bad news," the New York Times reports. Greenspan also "suggested that the central bank might cut interest rates at least once more this year."
• Greenspan's "assessment that the economy appears to be bottoming out suggests any cut in August could be the last for a while," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• On Wednesday the General Accounting Office "demanded... that Vice President Dick Cheney identify all the industry leaders who helped formulate the Bush administration's energy policy," AP reports.
• "The White House commission created to devise a plan to partially privatize Social Security will release a report today, warning that the program will run short of money sooner than people realize unless steps are taken to quickly change the system," the Washington Times reports.
• The Federal Aviation Administration has "fined American Airlines $285,000 for putting pilots in the cockpit without ensuring that the pilots had received a mandated rest period," USA Today reports.
• On Wednesday the Justice Department "opened settlement talks with the tobacco industry but made no progress toward resolving the government's multibillion-dollar lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The Drug Enforcement Administration shielded an informant for 16 years in spite of knowledge that he "compromised dozens of prosecutions across the United States by falsely testifying under oath and concealing his own arrest record," the Washington Post reports.

• The State Department said Wednesday "that 'terrorists' may be poised to attack American interests in the Arabian peninsula," CBSNews.com reports.
• Israel stationed tanks near Bethlehem on Wednesday but "denied that their troops were preparing to move into Palestinian-controlled areas," the New York Times reports.
• "A US F-16 fighter jet heading for a patrol over northern Iraq crashed in Turkey yesterday after apparently suffering engine problems," AP reports. The pilot was not seriously injured.
• Japanese officials charged "a U.S. Air Force sergeant on Thursday with raping a Japanese woman last month on Okinawa," AP reports.
• The European Court of Human Rights is expected to announce today whether or not it will extradite U.S. fugitive Ira Einhorn, who is accused of the 1977 murder of his girlfriend Holly Maddux, AP reports.
• "Macedonia yesterday bluntly rejected a peace plan backed by the United States and the European Union that would give ethnic Albanians more rights," AP reports.

• Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley (R) "appeared at ease yesterday as he preached the Republican gospel of low taxes and less government," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• A meeting that New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jim McGreevey (D) held "privately with a group of rabbis and other Jewish leaders" had its "desired effect," and the Jewish community is supporting the Democrat, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. But the meeting "also left U.S. Muslim leaders angry -- and puzzled."
• Former ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson (D) returned home to Florida Wednesday. "While not declaring his [gubernatorial] candidacy, Peterson told supporters not to lose their campaign signs -- or their zeal for defeating Republican Gov. Jeb Bush next year," the Tallahassee Democrat reports. AP reports that "Peterson said he planned to tour the state to determine if he could mount a viable campaign."
• On Wednesday, New York Comptroller Carl McCall (D) "faulted the Republican administration of a man he may run against next year for governor -- George Pataki -- for not making health insurance programs easier to navigate," the Albany Times Union reports.
• New York gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Cuomo's (D) "campaign overstated its available financial resources last week, a move allowing it to incorrectly claim a balance above $4 million," AP reports. The campaign actually has "just over $3.85 million."
• The Los Angeles Times reports that plans for former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (R) "to join the Los Angeles Unified School District after he left office" are "dead, as Riordan eyes a bigger prize -- the governor's job."
• A new poll shows Massachusetts Acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) -- who is expected to run for a full term in 2002 -- with a 67 percent favorable rating, the Boston Globe reports.

• "Retired Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, the highest-ranking woman in Army history," is considering a Democratic challenge to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in 2002. She said she will decide "in the next few weeks," the Washington Post reports. Roll Call reports that several "sources said she is 'leaning very, very strongly' toward running."
• Former Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., who "hasn't ruled out running for the Republican nomination to challenge" Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., announced Wednesday the formation of a political action committee "to aid Republican candidates for state offices," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
• The four Democratic state senators running in the Massachusetts' 9th District special election appeared last night in a televised debate, where they "politely split on combustible issues like flag burning and marching in the South Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade but echoed one another in opposition to school vouchers and a new runway at Logan Airport," the Boston Herald reports.
• Chicago Democrats are urging former Clinton White House adviser Rahm Emmanuel to run for the seat being vacated by Rep. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., who is expected to run for governor, Roll Call reports.
• New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie (D) said that he'll soon "take the next step" toward running for the 1st District seat held by Rep. John Sununu, R-N.H., should the congressman challenge Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., the Manchester Union Leader reports.

• Much of downtown Baltimore was shut down yesterday when "a freight train hauling hazardous chemicals caught fire," the Baltimore Sun reports. "Problems were expected to continue today, complicated by a water main break above the tunnel at Howard and Lombard streets."
• Two rounds of storms in the Cincinnati area Wednesday killed three people and caused "power outages, flooding and road closings," the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
• The California Public Utilities Commission "proposed Wednesday to provide rubber-stamp approvals of any future electricity rate increases that state power buyers find necessary," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• Washington police yesterday dismissed "results of a privately administered polygraph" taken by Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., "as having 'no investigative value' and suggesting that they still may need to talk to the congressman about his relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy," the Washington Post reports.
• Meanwhile, Condit "has been quietly telling his colleagues that he has no intention of resigning," Roll Call reports.
• Washington police said Wednesday that "Levy spent the morning of May 1 tapping her way through Internet sites ranging from California newspapers to the House Agriculture Committee," McClatchy Newspapers reports. "Police speculate that Levy was, at least in part, checking up on the panel on which" Condit serves.
• The Levy "story qualified for Dan Rather's 'CBS Evening News' for the first time last night -- 11 weeks after she disappeared," the New York Post reports. NationalJournal.com's "Network Newscasts" runs down all the stories on last night's broadcasts.
• CBSNews.com reports that the "FBI earlier this week officially transferred the Chandra Levy investigation to its 'Cold Case' unit, which historically has handled only the toughest of cases which have few clues."

• "With little fanfare," former Vice President Al Gore "is to open an office in Nashville, Tenn., on Friday that will be his new base of operations," AP reports.
• President Bush's 2000 campaign "still hasn't paid a Miami-based law firm $800,000 it was billed for the firm's help in the critical Florida vote recount last fall," AP reports.
• Bill Clinton will end "a self-imposed exile from Congressional politics" when he raises "money for House Democrats at an Aug. 8 golf-and-lunch event in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island," Roll Call reports.
• Clinton "will move into his new office space" in Harlem "this month -- and his delighted neighbors already are making plans to throw him a big welcoming party," the New York Daily News reports.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that Paul Gigot will take over duties as editorial page editor at the paper, replacing Robert Bartley, who has held the position for 30 years.
• Former Rep. John Porter, R-Ill., "is recovering in Virginia from" July 3 "open-heart surgery to repair two blocked arteries," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.