The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush's birthday, China talks, Japan rape, J. Bush's bid, Levy rumors, Lincoln's flag:

• Bush met with a group of governors and school superintendents at the White House Thursday, and he said that "Congress should quickly pass an education bill so that educators can better plan for the coming school year," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• Bush "has turned down an invitation to speak at next week's annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New Orleans, citing a busy week on Capitol Hill," the Washington Times reports.
• Today is Bush's 55th birthday, AP reports. He is celebrating in Kennebunkport, Maine, for the weekend with family and friends.

• Bush talked with Chinese President Jiang Zemin on the phone for the first time on Thursday, the New York Times reports. The two leaders discussed building a better relationship between their nations.
• Parts of the Navy spy plane that made an emergency landing on China's Hainan island about three months ago arrived at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia on Thursday, AP reports.
• The State Department said Thursday that "trials are underway in China for an American citizen and a U.S. resident who are charged with spying for Taiwan," AP reports.

• The Bush administration "has drafted a new policy that would allow states to define 'an unborn child' as a person eligible for medical coverage under the Children's Health Insurance Program," the New York Times reports.
• "The White House signaled Thursday that it will delay plans to win passage of popular tax breaks for charitable giving and energy production," USA Today reports.
• "GOP insiders fret that White House discipline is slipping along with Bush's polls," the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" reports.

• More than 175 House members have have signed on as cosponsors of legislation that would cut the beer excise tax to its 1990 level, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

• The Justice Department on Thursday "asked the Supreme Court for a 30-day extension to respond to accusations by convicted Oklahoma City conspirator Terry Nichols," the Washington Times reports.
• "Former representative Edward M. Mezvinsky, charged with swindling banks and clients out of $10.4 million, will plead not guilty by reason of insanity to fraud charges," AP reports.
• Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Thursday commuted the sentence of Whitewater figure David L. Hale, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Hale was convicted "in 1999 for falsifying insurance company documents."

• "NATO brokered a general cease-fire agreement yesterday between ethnic Albanian rebels and the Macedonian government, a crucial step in halting a slide toward civil war that threatened to destabilize the Balkans," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
• Iraqi officials said Thursday that the nation will resume its oil exports soon now that it has "accepted the terms of a new Security Council resolution extending the UN oil-for-food program," AP reports.

• "Japanese and U.S. negotiators agreed today to hand over a U.S. serviceman accused of rape in Okinawa to Japanese authorities later in the day," AP reports.
• "The Navy said Thursday that it is moving ahead with plans to consider South Texas as a new location for bombing exercises," the Austin American-Statesman reports.
• The Navy is also "sizing up sites from Nevada to North Carolina" to replace its Vieques Island training grounds, AP reports.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday "that two Navy recruits at Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Illinois died of adenovirus infection" last year after a pharmaceutical company stopped making a vaccine for the virus, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

• Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) "officially began his re-election bid on Thursday by opening a campaign account with state election officials," Reuters reports.
• Georgia Republicans are claiming that public service ads featuring Gov. Roy Barnes, D-Ga., "are really campaign ads in disguise and should be withdrawn," AP reports.
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that at least $500,000 has been spent to produce and air one of the disputed spots.
• GOP hopeful Linda Schrenko has raised just $5,625 for the 2002 Georgia governor's race, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

• The Colorado Legislature has "appointed a bipartisan task force to discuss congressional redistricting before a special session in the fall," USA Today reports.
• Virginia legislators are likewise holding hearings to discuss new district lines, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

• Washington police have "all but ruled out" that missing intern Chandra Levy committed suicide, the New York Times reports.
• Linda Zamsky, an aunt of Levy's, has gone on the record with ABCNews.com about "conversations with Levy in which the intern talked extensively about a six-month love affair" with Condit.
• Police interviewed Carolyn Condit, Rep. Condit's wife, about the case Thursday, AP reports.

• "The economic downturn is pinching the revenue states get from income and sales taxes," USA Today reports. Proposed tax cuts "are tiny compared with the tax-slashing binge of the past seven years," surpluses "are headed to their lowest level since 1995," and 10 states are considering tax increases.
• Local Oregon officials are declining to support Klamath Basin residents who used "civil disobedience to reopen an irrigation canal" closed by the federal government to protect the endangered sucker fish and coho salmon, AP reports.
• "New York City expects 46,000 recipients will run into the new five-year federal time limit on welfare and 11,000 of these people are failing to cooperate with attempts to help them find jobs," Reuters reports.
• A study in Washington state has found that "leasing out state-owned acreage for cattle grazing" earns "as little as 14 cents an acre each year," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
• "An oil company that hoped to build a power plant" in a California state park "officially has dropped the plans in the face of major opposition," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• New Jersey's McGuire Air Force base is angling for "$36 million in this year's defense budget... to accommodate an expected fleet of C-17 Globemaster transport planes," the Trenton Times reports.
• "Aetna will bail out of the HMO business in central Indiana" at the end of the year, the Indianapolis Star reports.

• Former FBI agent and accused spy Robert P. Hanssen is expected to plead guilty to spying charges this morning, the Washington Post reports.
• The flag that decorated Abraham Lincoln's theater box the night he was assassinated has been found in a Connecticut museum, the Hartford Courant reports.