The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush-Koizumi meeting, patients' rights fights, CFR accusations, unease in the Middle East, rising unemployment, more for Traficant:

• Vice President Dick Cheney will be back at work today after having a pacemaker put in over the weekend "as an 'insurance policy' against irregular heartbeats," USA Today reports.
• President Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi over the weekend, AP reports. Bush gave his support to Koizumi's "tough-medicine economic package," and Koizumi "backed off his criticism of Bush's environmental plans."
• "Some climate change experts and environmental leaders agreed yesterday" that Bush was "in a much stronger position to dictate the pace and direction of future negotiations over" the Kyoto global warming treaty after his meeting with Koizumi, the Washington Post reports. Koizumi told Bush Saturday "that he would not sign off on an agreement without U.S. participation."
• C. Bruce Tarter, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said during an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Bush administration has asked scientists "to examine ways that nuclear-test explosions beneath the Nevada desert could resume more quickly if the government decides to end a nine-year moratorium on nuclear testing."
• Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Sunday that a forecast to be released this week will show that "gas prices are lower than a year ago," CNN.com reports.
• "The first installment of the tax cuts signed into law by President Bush takes effect Sunday, but only for certain middle- and upper-income taxpayers," AP reports.
• On Sunday Bush "formally lifted trade sanctions the United States had imposed on $191 million worth of French handbags, British bed linens, and other European products in a fight over European banana barriers," AP reports.

• Kim A. Gandy, the new president of the National Organization for Women, said Sunday that her goal is to "send George W. Bush back to Texas," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
• Some Republicans are saying that Bush "doesn't have the jam to win re-election," U.S. News and World Report's "Washington Whispers" reports.

• House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said Sunday that he expects Bush to sign "a new compromise patients' bill of rights crafted by House Republicans as an alternative to the Democratic version the Senate passed Friday night that the administration opposes," the Washington Times reports.
• Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Sunday that he is "prepared for a fight" with Bush over the patients' rights legislation, CNN.com reports. Bush "has vowed to veto the version passed by the Senate."

• An adviser for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that McCain "might withhold support for House Republicans in 2002 if GOP leaders continue to block" his campaign finance reform legislation, Roll Call reports.
• Hastert accused McCain Sunday of "trying to intimidate his fellow Republicans into supporting" the bill, AP reports.

• "United Airlines said Sunday it has decided to end its quest to buy US Airways and become the largest air carrier in history because the Justice Department won't allow the megadeal to go forward," USA Today reports.
• Justice Department figures show that "more than 150,000 of the nearly 7.7 million firearms or permits sought nationwide last year were rejected under the provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act," the Washington Times reports.
• "The number of Californians seeking to buy guns from licensed dealers dropped by nearly 25 percent last year," the San Jose Mercury News reports. Nationally, the drop was 11 percent.
• New unemployment reports are expected to show the rate climbing to 4.6 percent in June, Bloomberg reports. That would be an increase from 4.4 percent in May, and the highest in two years.
• Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking at a "religious patriotic rally at Des Moines' largest church on Sunday," told the audiences that President Bush "welcomes prayer" in the White House, Reuters reports.
• "Education Secretary Rod Paige told the nation's largest teachers' union Saturday that public schools face increasingly stiff competition," AP reports. "It's tempting to pretend public schools are exempt from the law of supply and demand," Paige said. "They are not. This pretension will destroy our system."

• "Five Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli forces Sunday," AP reports. Yasser Arafat's media adviser, Nabil Abourdeineh, "said the Israeli policy of assassination 'will lead to the collapse' of the cease-fire."
• In what "a Palestinian group called retaliation for Israel's assassination of Islamic militants," "two car bombs exploded near Tel Aviv's airport" Monday, Reuters reports. In addition, on Sunday "Israel sent warplanes to attack Syrian positions in Lebanon, killing at least three soldiers -- two Syrians and one Lebanese" -- "two days after Hizbollah guerrillas wounded an Israeli soldier in a rocket attack in the flashpoint Shebaa Farms area."
• The Saudi government said Sunday that "11 of the 13 Saudis indicted by the United States about 10 days ago in connection with the truck bombing of the Khobar Towers apartments in 1996 were in prison in the kingdom and that the case would be referred to Saudi, but not American, courts soon," the New York Times reports.
• A U.S. diplomat visited Macedonia Sunday "and called on political leaders to work harder to end a conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels," AP reports.
• "Northern Ireland's independent disarmament commission is expected to report on Monday that IRA guerrillas have made no move to give up their weapons, dealing another setback to the peace process," Reuters reports.
• China said Sunday it will allow entrepreneurs to join its Communist Party, the Washington Post reports.

• Education is likely to be the top issue in New Jersey's gubernatorial race, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. "Part of the mix will be some of the most explosive issues in the nation's schools, from student testing to teacher tenure to vouchers."
• New York City "mayoral wannabe Mike Bloomberg [R] took another step forward in his political education yesterday, speaking before the congregation of a prominent Harlem church," the New York Post reports.
• Los Angeles Mayor-elect James K. Hahn (D) will be officially sworn in today, the Los Angeles Times reports.

• Florida has passed a new law that exempts government agreements with drug companies from the state's open records laws, the St. Petersburg Times reports. Pfizer, which has promised "millions in savings to the state in exchange for... an inside track to lucrative Medicaid business," is the first company to benefit from the change.
• The city of Tampa, Fla., "has become the first in the United States to install high-tech security cameras to scan crowds for wanted criminals," AP reports.
• More than half of Indiana's public schools "fall short of the higher academic standards outlined" in the state's new school accountability law, Chicago Tribune news services report.
• The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Minnesotans "blame the Legislature by a 4-to-1 margin over [independent Gov. Jesse] Ventura for the long stalemate" that almost caused a state government shutdown.

• Federal prosecutors may press additional charges against Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, Roll Call reports.
• Sue Bailey, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and James Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, have been hired by Ford Motor Co., the Wall Street Journal reports. The two consultants will help address federal inquiries into the safety of Explorer sport-utility vehicles.
• The "liberal advocacy group" Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is "taking on Brit Hume's 'Special Report,'" on Fox, saying it "tilts... to the right," the Washington Post reports.
• Dr. Brigitte Boisselier has promised federal regulators that her Raelian religious sect will not experiment with human cloning in the United States, the New York Times reports.
• The St. Paul Pioneer-Press profiles Minnesota Democratic Sens. Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone: "While they share liberal beliefs, their personal styles inside the U.S. Senate could hardly be less alike."
• And the Wall Street Journal profiles Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and reports that "the newly empowered" Finance Committee chairman "faces problems all around."