The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Patients' rights, post-trip analysis, power price caps, Mideast violence and election updates:

• President Bush is back in Washington after his trip to Europe last week. When he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, the two leaders had a "warm rapport," the New York Times reports: "The public display of warmth by Mr. Bush seemed in marked contrast to the chilly attitude toward Russia in the first months of the administration."
• Bush said during an interview that "Putin is now more receptive to Bush's proposal to build a national missile-defense system," USA Today reports.
• White House officials said Sunday that "the United States will break free from a cornerstone arms control agreement with Russia when U.S. technology makes it possible to build an effective missile defence," AP reports.
• White House officials said "that they never intended to make major policy changes last week" during Bush's trip to Europe, "and that the views expressed by Europeans and Putin will be considered in due course," the Boston Globe reports.
• Bush's trip "has earned him high marks from both Republicans and Democrats, who say he exceeded expectations and achieved most of his goals," the Washington Times reports.
• Leaders of the European Union gave Bush "good marks for presentation" during his European trip, "but they also showed new signs of defiance toward his policies on global warming and missile defense," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Bush said his trip was a success, AP reports.

• During a White House briefing last month on the nation's nuclear arsenal, Bush "was stunned at the amount of destructive power in a president's hands," Newsweek reports. The magazine reports that Bush said "I had no idea we had so many weapons.... What do we need them for?"
• "If efforts by the United States to build missile defenses lead Russia to stop reducing its long-range missiles, Moscow could end up in 2010 with 3,500 strategic warheads, three times the number now projected for the end of the decade," the Washington Post reports.

• This week the Senate will debate patients' rights legislation. The New York Times reports that "for Democrats, the decision to use their new control of the Senate agenda to try to pass the long-stalled patients' bill of rights brings them full circle. In 1994 they lost control of Congress on the heels of their failure to enact President Bill Clinton's ambitious plan for universal national health insurance."
• Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Sunday "that he could support giving patients the right to sue an HMO or insurance company in state court, as sought by Democrats," AP reports.
• Republican leaders are "scrambling" to write an alternative patients' rights bill, Roll Call reports.
• Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Sunday that "Senate Democrats will not seek an investigation of a meeting senior White House aide Karl Rove held with Intel Corp. executives while they were seeking federal approval of a proposed merger," Reuters reports.

• The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will meet today, and the group is "expected to expand electricity price limits in California to include 10 other Western states and to cover sales outside of periods of power emergencies," AP reports.
• Bush will support FERC's limits, the Washington Post reports. Previously, Bush had "argued against price caps on California electricity."
• On Sunday, California's "power grid operators... issued their first long-term warnings for possible rolling blackouts today and tomorrow," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
• The American Taxpayers Alliance will release "campaign-style TV ad" today in California "blaming Gov. Gray Davis [D] for California's energy crunch," the Los Angeles Times reports.

• The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the "goal is simple" in Virginia's 4th District special election tomorrow: Randy Forbes (R) "must get a big turnout in his home base of Chesapeake, while" Louise Lucas (D) "must get a big turnout from the 39 percent black population in the" district.
• "House Democrats last week were openly discussing the long odds Lucas faces in the cycle's most competitive and closely watched special election," Roll Call reports.
• "Although a half-dozen special House elections have been scheduled this year because of deaths and retirement, none is expected to generate as much national attention as the 4th District race," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot reports.

• Rep. David Phelps, D-Ill., "has backed off threats to retire and said he is determined to run for re-election in 2002," even though redistricting left him "without a district to run in," Roll Call reports.
• The Providence Journal-Bulletin reports that even though Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy's (D) "public approval-rating has taken another dive," a recent poll shows that "even the best known Republican in the state" -- Gov. Lincoln Almond -- "would have a tough time beating him."

• The Newark Star-Ledger profiles New Jersey gubernatorial candidate and former Rep. Bob Franks (R), starting with "his first campaign as a 13-year-old in the Midwest, handing out literature for Republican Charles Percy's bid for governor in Illinois."
• Franks' primary opponent, Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler (R) -- who "grew up wanting to become a Christian minister, where his opinions would reach large audiences" -- gets similar treatment from the Star-Ledger.
• Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan's (R) press secretary said his boss will decide by year's end whether to run for governor in 2002, Reuters reports.
• The Wisconsin "Democratic Party convention speeches, interviews with some of the more than 800 enthused local party workers, and an unofficial straw poll had the early -- very early -- betting favoring Attorney General James Doyle or U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett to be the party's nominee for governor in 2002," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Meanwhile, Gov. Scott McCallum (R) "is not expected to face any challenge within his party for" the GOP nomination.
• A "spat" between between Doyle and Barrett about whether Barrett could "change his congressional campaign war chest to a state campaign war chest... underscores just how vicious the fight to become the Democratic candidate for governor is about to become," the Green Bay News Chronicle reports.
• The Miami Herald reports on the job that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) holds today: It "is far more potent than the one he landed less than three years ago." Bush recently announced he will run for re-election in 2002.
• South Carolina lawyer Ken Wingate (R) became "the sixth Republican to enter the" 2002 gubernatorial race, the Columbia State reports. Wingate "said he has formed a campaign finance committee and will file a campaign disclosure form next week."

• On Sunday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) "vetoed an effort by lawmakers to ban the death penalty for mentally retarded killers in Texas," the Austin American-Statesman reports. AP reports that Perry "has said he wanted to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue, expected this fall."
• "The chairman, vice chairman, executive director and treasurer of the [Mississippi] Democratic Party resigned their administrative positions Saturday in an apparent protest over the rehiring of a party employee," the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports.
• "At least four people were killed and others were missing yesterday after the remnants of Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to 10 inches of rain" in the Philadelphia area, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
• CNN.com reports that the storm "claimed at least 35 lives and left at least 13 others injured" as it swept "from Texas across to Florida and then moving up the coast to New England."

• "The death of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip" on Sunday "has weakened" the U.S.-brokered cease-fire, the Baltimore Sun reports.
• On Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "rejected a proposal... for his foreign minister to meet with Yasser Arafat, saying there can be no negotiations without a complete halt to violence," AP reports.
• "Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday he would travel to the Middle East at some point if a U.S.-brokered truce holds between Israel and the Palestinians and leads to progress," Reuters reports.

• "Philippine officials said Monday that the government believes U.S. hostage Guillermo Sobero is dead, as Muslim rebels claimed last week," UPI reports.
• A State Department official said Sunday that the United States "was looking into the arrest by India of three people, linked to Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, who allegedly planned to bomb American embassies in India and Bangladesh," Reuters reports.
• Today bombing exercises will resume on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• Bulgaria's former king, Simeon II, who was exiled 55 years ago, has "won a decisive victory in the country's parliamentary elections," BBCNews.com reports.

• AP reports that "an exuberant Chelsea Clinton graduated from Stanford University on Sunday." The former first daughter is off to "Oxford University in England, where her father was a Rhodes Scholar from 1968 to 1970."
• Some 20 calls to California Rep. Gary Condit's (D) pager were listed among Chandra Levy's cell-phone records, the New York Daily News reports. The New York Post reports that "Condit may use campaign funds to pay his mounting legal bills over the mysterious disappearance" of Levy.
• "A man imprisoned for fraud in Texas paid $200,000 to an Arkansas group that promised in 1998 to arrange for a presidential pardon through Roger Clinton," AP reports.

• Over the weekend, "53 entrepreneurs, including mom-and-pop operations and computer giants" gathered in Billings, Mont., "to sell their wares to more than 600 state and county elections officials" at a trade show for voting equipment, the New York Times reports. The "desire by county officials to avoid the Florida experience and the promise of billions of federal dollars have suddenly transformed the industry into a high-stakes shootout."