The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush-Putin agreement, Kyoto rescue, Lieberman's faith-based plan, Jersey's battleground, McCain's 3rd party, tomorrow's Fla.-01 race, Graham's funeral:

• President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin met Sunday and agreed "to discuss Mr. Bush's plans for a missile defense system in connection with Putin-backed proposals to reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Putin downplayed the agreement, saying it was "good progress, rather than a breakthrough," Reuters reports.
• National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice "will travel to Moscow from Kosovo on Tuesday to begin discussing what the Bush administration has described as a new security framework," CBSNews.com reports.
• Bush met with Pope John Paul II in Italy today, and the pope urged Bush "to bar creation of human embryos for medical research," AP reports.
• During the weekend G-8 summit, leaders vowed "to wage a united attack on global poverty and disease" but failed "to resolve a sharp dispute over global warming," AP reports.
• Bush "denounced protesters as 'dead wrong' for violently disrupting the Italian summit of industrialized nations that concluded yesterday," the Washington Times reports.
• The next G-8 meeting will take place June 26-28, 2002, in "a remote, 2,400-square-mile park in the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary," AP reports.

• During a United Nations meeting today in Bonn, environmental ministers "reached a last-minute compromise deal... to salvage the Kyoto accord on cutting the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming," Reuters reports. But some of the 185 nations at the meeting "might yet reject the plan at a plenary debating session due to start at 0900 GMT."
• Bush "refused to reconsider his rejection of the pact," AP reports.
• "The Bush administration is pushing to reduce the number of Environmental Protection Agency staff members who oversee whether federal environmental laws are being enforced" and shift resources to the states, even though there is "mounting evidence that many states are unable or unwilling to vigorously enforce the laws," the Washington Post reports.

• Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said on "Fox News Sunday" that he "is developing his own version of legislation passed by the House last week that would expand federal funds for religious charities," AP reports. Lieberman said his plan would "encourage religious-based organizations to help solve society's problems 'in a constitutionally appropriate way.'"
• The House will debate the patients' bill of rights this week, and "the one-time rift between Republicans and the American Medical Association has expanded into a chasm," Roll Call reports.

• The American Bar Association will release a study today saying that "candidates for judgeships should be funded by public money rather than by private contributions," the Chicago Tribune reports.
• A Department of Transportation study showed that "more than one-quarter of flights into 11 of the nation's busiest airports were at least 15 minutes late during the first five months of this year," the Seattle Times reports. Seattle and New York airports topped the list.

• On Sunday Israel "said it will not oppose the deployment of an expanded CIA-directed mechanism to oversee a U.S.-brokered cease-fire and truce-to-talks plan," UPI reports.
• "Puerto Rico has barred the sale of meat from livestock grazing near a U.S. Navy bombing range on Vieques island while the meat is tested for toxic substances," AP reports.
• In Macedonia, "Ethnic Albanian insurgents launched an infantry attack on government forces in the Tetovo area yesterday," AP reports. The attack violated a two-week cease-fire.
• Megawati Sukarnoputri was elected president of Indonesia "following a parliamentary vote to force out the country's embattled leader, Abdurrahman Wahid," CNN.com reports.
• The space shuttle Atlantis is expected to return from the International Space Station either today or Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle reports.

• "South Jersey is emerging as a key battleground in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Jim McGreevey and Republican Bret Schundler," the Newark Star-Ledger reports. The area "is expected to receive more attention -- in terms of television advertising, direct mail and candidate visits -- than in any election year in recent memory."
• Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, said on Friday that he's "not convinced" that former University of Iowa wrestling coach Dan Gable (R) will run for governor in 2002, the Des Moines Register reports.
• The New York state GOP is gearing "up to try to help Gov. George Pataki [R] in his expected re-election race next year" by "offering cash prizes and luxury cruises to local party activists who register the most new GOP voters by mid-October," AP reports.
• "Tennessee's gubernatorial hopefuls are staring at the anguished aftermath of the 102nd General Assembly, trying to divine the lessons it can teach about the politics of budgetary impasse," the Nashville Tennessean reports.
• "They were fierce rivals just three years ago, but now" Massachusetts acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) and former state Treasurer Joseph Malone (R) "are teaming up to raise funds for Swift's still unannounced campaign for governor," AP reports.
• California Young Republicans "are eagerly anticipating spending 'quality time' with" Secretary of State Bill Jones (R), who is running for governor, Friday in San Diego, the Los Angeles Times reports. Meanwhile, "much dust has been raised by the stampede of elected California Republicans to draft recently unemployed Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan."

• Newsweek reports that allies of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have "assembled a network of groups to challenge GOP orthodoxy and lay the ideological groundwork for a possible third party."
• Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber's (D) decision on a 2002 challenge to Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., could lead to "a bone-jarring contest between two political heavyweights with intense national interest in the outcome," the Portland Oregonian reports.

• Tomorrow is the primary in Florida's 1st District to replace retiring Rep. Joe Scarborough (R). Democrat Steve Briese is favored to come away with his party's nomination, while a Sept. 4 runoff is expected on the Republican side, Roll Call reports.
• "Election supervisors... are hoping for turnout between 20 to 25 percent Tuesday," the Pensacola News Journal reports.
• The totals from last month's special election in Virginia's 4th District are in: "The candidates and national political parties spent $7.1 million, making it one of the nation's most expensive House contests," AP reports.
• A new Boston Herald poll solidifies Massachusetts state Sen. Stephen Lynch's (D) "front-runner status" in the upcoming 9th District special election.
• House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., was in Iowa this weekend to raise money for Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports. Reuters reports that Gephardt called Iowa the "epicenter" of the 2002 battle for control of the House.
• Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla., "announced he would seek a fifth House term, breaking a pledge he made in 1994 to serve no more than eight consecutive years in the House," Roll Call reports.

• The Oregon Democratic Party's "central committee voted overwhelmingly to begin a campaign" to impeach the five U.S. Supreme Court justices "for the decision that effectively gave George W. Bush the presidency last year," Reuters reports.
• The Minnesota Legislature "has allocated $1.9 million to finance matching grants for cities, counties and townships to buy high-tech optical vote-scanning machines," AP reports.

• A Chicago heat wave has "contributed to the deaths of six people," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
• "Crews removed the last smoldering railroad car from a downtown" Baltimore tunnel today, five days after the train derailed "and created chaos across the city," AP reports.

• The late Washington Post executive Katharine Graham's funeral will be held today at Washington National Cathedral, the Washington Post reports. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., former Post editor Benjamin C. Bradlee and members of the Graham family are all expected to offer eulogies.
• The Post reports that Vice President Dick Cheney will attend the service, which begins at 11 a.m. and "will be open to the public and televised."
• The Washington Times reports that a "section of Wisconsin Avenue NW and part of R Street will be closed today for the funeral procession" following a service that "is expected to [draw] one of the largest crowds ever" to the National Cathedral.

• Newsweek reports that Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., met with Dick Cheney on Capitol Hill on May 1, making the vice president a "surprise alibi witness" for Condit in the case of missing intern Chandra Levy.
• Washington police "want to talk to" Condit for a fourth time, "but negotiations with his lawyers are 'just in the discussion phase,'" the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

• Hugh Rodham was cleared by the Florida Bar for taking money in exchange for presidential pardons from his brother-in-law, Bill Clinton, Reuters reports.