The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush returns to Florida, Dow drops big, Senate postpones education debate, six die in Kuwait, N. Korea calls off talks, Justice investigates Clinton pardons, multiracial America grows, Schwarzenegger could be serious, Nancy Moore Thurmond says she's not interested:

• President Bush visited the Marina Civic Center in Panama City, Fla., yesterday to ask "conservative Panhandle voters Monday to pressure" Democratic Sens. Bob Graham and Bill Nelson to vote for his tax cut, the Tallahassee Democrat reports. Both supporters and spectators were there to greet him.
• While he was in Florida, Bush "shrugged off a newspaper report saying" former Vice President Al Gore "actually won the presidency according to recounted ballots in Palm Beach on Monday," UPI reports.
• During his visit, Bush "tried to deflect the continued accusations that his budget plan will hurt" Social Security and Medicare, the Palm Beach Post reports.
• Bush's budget will not include $750 million "in military aid sought by Israel, Jordan and Egypt," UPI reports.
• It will include a "14 percent hike in funding for the State Department," the Washington Post reports.
• On Monday the Kennedy family spoke out against "Republican consultants" using "the words of John F. Kennedy in radio ads touting President Bush's tax cut plan," the Boston Globe reports.

• "The Nasdaq slipped below the 2,000-point mark and the Dow Jones industrial average shed 430 points Monday," CBSNews.com reports. "Asian stocks sank as Japan's finance minister warned the world's second-largest economy is in a state of deflation -- not seen in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s."
• "The overwhelming negative sentiment continued to be fuelled by Friday's comments from Cisco Systems that the U.S. economic downturn was spreading to other parts of the world," Financial Times reports.
• After stock prices fell Monday, Wall Street looks "set to rebound" today, CNNfn.com reports.
• Monday's stock market plunge renewed fears of a recession, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• "Europe's major stock markets fell sharply on Tuesday," CNN.com reports.

• Six people in Kuwait died Monday after "an American jet accidentally bombed an observation post during a training run," CBSNews.com reports. Five were American and one was from New Zealand.
• "In such training runs, a person on the ground will give a pilot nine different identification points for a target, often illuminating it with smoke or white phosphorous and then give final clearance," the Miami Herald reports. "It was not clear late Monday whether the person on the ground gave the wrong coordinates or the pilot aimed at the wrong target.... Military experts said the accident was the worst in memory involving live-fire training."
• "An accident investigation board has been appointed and will arrive in Kuwait this week," BBCNews.com reports.
• Discussing the accident during his Florida visit, Bush said it "was a reminder of the risks that are part of military service," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports.
• Meanwhile, "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a coterie of advisers are quietly fashioning what may be a drastically altered military for the 21st century," the Baltimore Sun reports.

• The Senate has decided not to debate Bush's education plan "until late April or early May," Reuters reports. Senators will first consider bankruptcy, campaign finance reform and the budget.
• Senate Republican leaders said they "are not backing away from the size or components of President Bush's proposed $1.6 trillion tax-cut plan as Democrats and centrists seek to water it down," the Washington Times reports.
• House Republican leaders, who already helped pass Bush's $1.6 trillion income tax cut, now say they want even more tax cuts, AP reports.
• Today Bush will sign legislation that names Boston's new federal courthouse after Rep. J. Joseph Moakley, D-Mass. Weather permitting, it will be Bush's first Rose Garden bill signing, the Boston Globe reports.

• "North Korea has abruptly called off Cabinet-level talks with South Korea that had been scheduled to begin today," AP reports.
• Samuel R. Berger, former President Clinton's national security adviser, said during an interview with the Boston Globe Monday that Bush is making a mistake by "turning away from negotiations begun with North Korea by his predecessor."
• "Israeli troops shot and killed one Palestinian and wounded at least five others Monday during clashes that erupted when about 1,500 protesters marched on barricades and trenches cutting off the West Bank town of Ramallah from surrounding villages," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• The head of the Pacific Fleet's submarine force testified Monday that "an improper periscope search for surface vessels may have been the most crucial cause of the fatal collision last month between the USS Greeneville and a Japanese fishing vessel," UPI reports.
• About 40 percent of the State Department's special envoy positions "that existed in the Clinton era" will be abolished, AP reports.

• A judge on Monday approved American Airlines' $742 million acquisition of "bankrupt Trans World Airlines Inc.," AP reports.
  
• The Michigan state Court of Appeals has ruled that former Rep. Barbara Rose Collins (D) "was not defamed by a 1996 Free Press story in which she was inaccurately quoted," the Detroit Free Press reports.

• "The percentage of children who were reported to be multiracial is up to three times greater than that of adults" in the 2000 Census, USA Today reports. The Atlanta Journal-Consitution reports that "roughly 6.8 million Americans identified themselves as belonging to more than one race."
• "Asians, whose U.S. population grew by more than 52 percent during the 1990s, joined Hispanics in showing the highest growth rates during the decade," the Chicago Tribune reports.

• "The Justice Department has designated a special team of prosecutors to investigate all" 177 "last-minute clemencies granted" by Clinton before he left office, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• Clinton was in the Netherlands Monday to speak at "a conference where guests paid thousands of dollars to hear his views but journalists could not get in at any price," Reuters reports.
• "Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin knew about President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as early as 1996," UPI reports. Most Americans did not know about it until 1998.

• "The talk is serious" in California about Arnold Schwarzenegger running on the GOP ticket for governor, the New York Times reports. The idea is "that perhaps the brawny Terminator is just the hero to stop the party's long slide toward political irrelevance."
• Nancy Moore Thurmond, estranged wife of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., "says she has no desire to finish the term of her husband" should he be unable to do so, the New York Times reports.
• Former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., who has been "considered the Democrat's strongest candidate for governor of Massachusetts," has announced that he will remain at the nonprofit Citizens Energy Corp. and not run in 2002, AP reports. The Boston Globe reports that this is the fourth time in 12 years that Kennedy "has considered running for governor and taken a pass."
• Democrat Jim McGreevey officially announced his gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey yesterday, saying "he would run on an agenda of education reform, property tax relief and reducing the state's debt burden," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.

• "Pressure is mounting for" California Gov. Gray Davis (D) "to disclose details on the billions of dollars in taxpayer money California is spending to buy electricity," the Los Angeles Times reports. The Sacramento Bee reports that a Republican state legislator has threatened to sue the governor "if he doesn't release records showing how much power the state has purchased and how much it paid."
• Today Florida will hold its "first big election since the disastrous presidential vote count last year," choosing "Broward County and Palm Beach County city commissioners and mayors." Although some hanging chads seem inevitable, butterfly ballots will be nowhere to be found, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports.
• Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) yesterday said the "crisis is over" as he "balanced the state budget and preserved his signature car-tax phaseout," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. "Gilmore identified $506 million to more than make up for a $421 million revenue shortfall."
• In Maryland, the Carroll County Republican Central Committee "generated so much money, national attention and Democratic disgust" when it raffled off a gun last year "that organizers are offering up two firearms this year," the Washington Times reports.
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., "announced Monday it received a record $360 million donation," the largest gift ever made to an American university, the Albany Times Union reports.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan "is scheduled to speak to former Vice President Al Gore's journalism class at Columbia Wednesday," Reuters reports.
• "Suspense novelist Robert Ludlum, author of a series of best-selling spy thrillers and other novels, died Monday. He was 73," UPI reports.
• "Morton Downey Jr., the firebrand talk-show host who raised the decibel level of TV talk, died yesterday." He was 68, the New York Post reports.
• "S. Dillon Ripley, who headed the museums and research of the Smithsonian Institution for 20 years," died yesterday. He was 87, AP reports.