The Earlybird: Today's headlines

WH budget battles, troops in Macedonia, Social Security cuts, Norquist's assurance, Helms' departure, Condit's letter, Bono's wedding:

• The White House released its midyear budget report yesterday, the Dallas Morning News reports. The report "showed the government would have a surplus of just $1 billion this year."
• "But while the fiscal 2001 number was expected, the tight outlook for the following years was an unwelcome surprise to many: a reed-thin $1 billion beyond Social Security in 2002, $2 billion in 2003, and $6 billion in 2004," the Boston Globe reports.
• "White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels stressed the positive: The government's $158 billion surplus for this year is the second largest ever," USA Today reports. But Democrats accused the White House of "painting a rosy budget picture."
• The budget projections "could act as a catalyst for a renewed battle over spending priorities, entitlement trust funds, and the state of the surplus when Congress returns to work in early September," CNN.com reports.

• President Bush spoke with Mexican President Vicente Fox Wednesday by phone, the Houston Chronicle reports. The two leaders discussed "a range of issues, including negotiations to make it easier for Mexicans to work in the United States."
• A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies says that the "Republican Party is pursuing a lost cause in attempting to woo Hispanic voters," the Washington Times reports.

• Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said Wednesday in Moscow that "'a vast open space' still exists for an agreement with Russia on joint development of a limited defense against ballistic missiles," the New York Times reports. "Bolton denied, however, that he had issued an unofficial deadline of November for reaching such an agreement."
• "The first elements of a 3,500-strong NATO troop contingent began arriving yesterday on a mission to collect and destroy rebel arms and to steer Macedonians and a rebel minority of ethnic Albanians away from another Balkan war," the Boston Globe reports. Several hundred Americans are included among the troops.
• Bush on Wednesday "welcomed the latest International Monetary Fund lifeline -- this one worth $8 billion -- for troubled Argentina," Reuters reports.
• Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday that "he would have a new strategy in place by October to enable the Pentagon to keep its current commitments around the globe, modernize aging equipment and invest in future technologies," the Washington Post reports.
• "Administration officials said Wednesday that they expected President Bush to nominate Gen. Richard Myers, a former head of the Air Force's space command, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," AP reports. Bush is expected to make the announcement Friday.

• Richard D. Parsons, co-chairman of Bush's commission on Social Security, said Wednesday that the panel is looking at cutting Social Security benefits as a way to save the program, the New York Times report. The panel also determined that privatizing the program would not ensure greater retirement benefits.
• Officials at the National Institutes of Health began talking this week with "the handful of groups that have told the NIH they own embryonic stem-cell lines and could make the coveted cells available to federally funded scientists," the Baltimore Sun reports.
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a report Wednesday that says "the number of complaints of anti-Muslim discrimination it has received rose 15% in the last year," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• On Wednesday Brazil said it would break international trade laws to "produce a generic version of an anti-AIDS drug currently under patent protection," the Boston Globe reports.
• "Seven Palestinians were killed yesterday as violence surged in the West Bank and Gaza," AP reports.
• "An Israeli missile was fired at the car of a Palestinian official near the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, wounding him and two others," AP reports.
• "Colombia's Supreme Court on Wednesday approved a U.S. request to extradite Fabio Ochoa, one of the top former members of the Medellin cocaine cartel," Tribune News Services reports.

• Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist "has assured" Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley (R) "that he could support having a referendum to increase the sales tax in Northern Virginia without violating his signed pledge to oppose all tax increases," the Washington Post reports.
• Democratic nominee Mark Warner "is courting mostly rural and less-affluent voters in five media markets with ads geared toward southwest Virginia and communities interested in vocational education," the Washington Post reports.
• In Roanoke on Wednesday, Earley and other Republican candidates charged that Warner and his fellow Democratic candidates are "too liberal" for Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. "This campaign is about Virginia values, not Vermont values," Earley said.
• "Though the group declined to back him when he ran for governor in 1997, the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club endorsed Democratic candidate Jim McGreevey" yesterday, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Illinois State Sen. Patrick O'Malley yesterday said he is in the Republican gubernatorial "contest to stay" after "several leading GOP lawmakers lobbied" him to drop out to give Attorney General Jim Ryan a clearer shot at the Republican gubernatorial nomination, the Chicago Tribune reports.
• 1998 Illinois gubernatorial nominee Glenn Poshard (D) "said Wednesday he would 'consider' running for lieutenant governor if" former Commerce Secretary and Gore 2000 Chairman William Daley "seeks the state's top elected job and asks him to be his running mate," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
• New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) on Wednesday "registered the Shaheen for Senate Exploratory Committee with the Secretary of the U.S. Senate," which "allows her to start fundraising for a campaign against" either Republican incumbent Sen. Bob Smith or his possible primary challenger, Rep. John Sununu (R), the Manchester Union-Leader reports.

• Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., announced last night he will retire from the Senate on "Raleigh's WRAL-TV, the station where he launched his political career as a sharp-tongued commentator in the 1960s," the Charlotte Observer reports
• "During a sometimes rambling, 10-minute appearance that was broadcast at the start of the station's 6 p.m. news program, Helms said his advancing age persuaded him and his family that he should not run again," the Washington Post reports.
• President Bush said in a written statement that "the Senate is losing an institution with the decision of Jesse Helms to retire after three decades of distinguished public service," Reuters reports.

• Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., "told his constituents in a letter that he has helped investigators in the search for former government intern Chandra Levy since he first heard she was missing, and said his silence with the media over the last few months shouldn't be misinterpreted," CNN.com reports.
• People magazine plans to run an interview with Condit in its Sept. 3 issue "and will have the congressman and his wife, Carolyn, on the cover," the San Jose Mercury News reports. "Condit also will talk to a television station and newspaper in California and to Newsweek magazine," Condit spokeswoman Marina Ein said.

• Newly released FBI files show that former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover "waged a decade-long war of enmity against the late Sen. Albert Gore Sr." because in 1954, Gore "groused to a colleague on the Senate floor that the FBI was spreading loose gossip about a friend," the Washington Post reports.
• Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., who took her late husband Sonny's seat in Congress, "will be married again this fall" to Glenn Baxley, a businessman from Jackson, Wyo., the Sacramento Bee reports.