The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Iraq attack, vacation defense, human cloning, Microsoft appeal, Kenya memorial, NGA meeting, Illinois gov announcement, Harris computers, end of Clinton investigation:

• After U.S. Air Force planes "bombed an air defense site in northern Iraq yesterday," President Bush defended the action as necessary and "pledged to keep Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's military ambitions in check," AP reports.
• Bush said he wrote a letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Tuesday "assuring him of the U.S. commitment to ending the more than 10 months of clashes between the Palestinians and Israel," Reuters reports.
• Meanwhile, the Israeli army "took another step away from a tattered U.S.-brokered cease-fire Tuesday by easing its rules of engagement for soldiers battling what it said was growing Palestinian unrest," USA Today reports.
• "Two Israelis were shot dead in the West Bank, an Israeli was gunned down in neighboring Jordan, and two Palestinian youths were injured in clashes in the Gaza Strip" during "a series of violent episodes Tuesday," AP reports.

• Bush on Tuesday defended his monthlong vacation in Texas, saying he is "the kind of person that needs to get outdoors" and that he is "working a lot of issues, national security matters," AP reports.
• Today Bush will help build a "Habitat for Humanity home for a single mother of two children" in Waco, Texas, Reuters reports.

• At a National Academy of Sciences forum on human cloning Tuesday, Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori, entrepreneur Dr. Panayiotis Michael Zavos and chemist Dr. Brigitte Boisselier "vowed... to press ahead with separate efforts to create the first cloned human being," the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, experts warned that "experiments in human cloning would inevitably lead to babies that are deformed, or die soon after birth."
• The forum "tended more toward circus than science," the Boston Globe reports. "In the scientific community," the doctors' plans "have been almost universally denounced."
• "Because all three doctors operate in secret, it is difficult to assess how serious they are or whether their assertions are realistic," the Houston Chronicle reports.

• On Tuesday American and Russian officials met at the Pentagon to discuss the United States' proposed missile defense plan, AP reports. The talks "intended to lay the groundwork for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's meetings in Moscow next week with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov."
• Rumsfeld's aides "are calling for deep personnel cuts to the Army, Navy, and Air Force in order to pay for new high-tech weaponry and missile defenses that are cornerstones of President Bush's plan to 'transform the military,'" the Wall Street Journal reports.
• "The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that an aggressive Clinton administration initiative to reduce emissions from aging coal-fired power plants should be scaled back," the Washington Post reports.
• "A smoky, two-alarm fire forced evacuation of CIA headquarters in Langley late yesterday," the Washington Post reports.

• On Tuesday Microsoft "asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appeals-court ruling that the company earlier had portrayed as a victory, arguing that the court should have thrown out nearly the entire case because of judicial bias," the Seattle Times reports.
• This week the Department of Justice is expected to file a brief with the Supreme Court "defending a rule allowing affirmative-action programs, infuriating conservatives who worry that the Bush administration is softening its opposition to racial preferences to curry favor with minority voters," the Boston Globe reports.
• The American Bar Association on Tuesday "defeated... a rule designed to make it easier for lawyers to report wrongdoing by their clients," Bloomberg reports.

• A study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "women and the elderly, who make up a significant percentage of heart disease patients, are still vastly underrepresented in heart-related studies despite federal efforts to close the gap," AP reports.
• A report filed by a federal prosecutor concludes that "federal investigators did not target former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee based on his ethnicity," the Washington Post reports.

• Yesterday a memorial park opened in Kenya to commemorate the Aug. 7 bombing three years ago of the U.S. embassy there, the New York Times reports. The bombing killed 207 Kenyans and 12 Americans.
• On Wednesday the Vatican "accused some Jewish historians on a joint Catholic-Jewish research commission of having 'a clear propagandistic goal to damage the Holy See' as they press for access to its World War II archives," the Washington Post reports.
• In Bolivia, Jorge Quiroga took office as president Tuesday after Hugo Banzer "stepped down to battle cancer," AP reports.

• "The National Governors Association concluded a four-day meeting" in Providence, R.I., "yesterday with governors approving a 'comprehensive national energy' policy statement that takes no stand on drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," the Providence Journal-Bulletin reports.
• Michigan Gov. John Engler (R) was elected chairman of the NGA Tuesday, replacing Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening (D), AP reports.
• The Washington Post reports that as Republican "governors look to election battles this fall and next, they fear their dominance is endangered": "As the annual summer meeting of the" NGA ended, "GOP leaders said they are now playing defense."

• Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mark Earley (R) "is scheduled to announce today that, if elected governor, he will convene a commission to 'preserve Virginia's military installations and protect Virginia's military personnel,'" the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R) on Tuesday "insisted he has not made up his mind on his political future or what he will announce to family, friends and neighbors" today, the Chicago Tribune reports. "God strike me dead, I haven't decided," Ryan said.
• A CBS 2/Chicago Sun-Times poll shows that 67 percent of Illinois adults think Ryan should not seek re-election.
• California Secretary of State Bill Jones (R), who is mounting a 2002 challenge to Gov. Gray Davis (D), "said Tuesday he reviewed bills submitted to the state controller by Davis energy advisers" and that "at least 40 did not file financial disclosures with the state," AP reports.
• The Sacramento Bee reports that former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (R) "sure sounds like a candidate" for governor, though he "hasn't decided whether to plunge into the" race.

• New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler (R) "altered his stance on so-called right-to-carry legislation even as a new poll showed him falling farther behind his rival," Jim McGreevey (D), the New York Times reports. Schundler said "he did not favor allowing New Jersey residents to carry concealed weapons and that he would not seek to change the state's gun regulations."
• The new Quinnipiac University poll showed McGreevey with a 19-point lead, AP reports.
• New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) campaigned with Schundler in Middletown, N.J., and "lauded the Republican's record as Jersey City mayor" at a press conference, the New York Post reports.
• Former presidential candidate John Anderson (I) announced yesterday that he will back New Jersey state Sen. Bill Schluter, who is making an independent gubernatorial bid, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.

• Former U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland (D) today will "formally launch his campaign to be the Democratic standard bearer against" Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard (R), the Rocky Mountain News reports.
• Arkansas' 3rd District special election "gained a seventh declared candidate Tuesday," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Brad Cates (R) is "a private business consultant who wants to rein in federal law enforcement agencies."

• An investigation by "a group of news organizations" of the computers used by Secretary of State Katherine Harris (R) and her staff during the Florida recounts found "evidence that the machines were used more extensively than either Ms. Harris or her spokesman had acknowledged" and "that some information had probably been permanently erased earlier this year after new operating systems were installed on three of the four computers," the New York Times reports.
• The review also shows "at least two instances of campaign-related documents pushing George W. Bush's candidacy for president," AP reports.
• "Legal experts were divided" on the issue of whether using "state equipment to write political speeches or for other partisan purposes is prohibited by Florida law," the Miami Herald reports.

• The independent counsel's investigation of former President Bill Clinton and his wife Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has ended after seven years, USA Today reports. The Justice Department "has taken over five minor legal matters that were still pending."
• Chaim Berger, who was "wanted in a fraud case that led to a federal probe of President Bill Clinton's pardons, was brought before a New York judge yesterday and held without bail," the New York Post reports.
• The New York Post also reports that Hillary Clinton "wanted a convicted cocaine dealer sprung from prison, and it was 'very important' to her," which "appears to contradict Clinton's repeated claims that she knew nothing about brother Hugh Rodham's pardon-for-pay work to get her husband to free drug trafficker Carlos Vignali."
• Roger Clinton "on Tuesday was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of reckless driving," the Los Angeles Times reports. The former president's half brother will not have to serve jail time.

• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Young S. Han, an 18-year-old Green Party candidate for the Washington state Legislature, got a "painful civics lesson" when a man named Stan Shore "seemed genuinely interested" in helping the young man out, paying his filing fee and organizing a Green Party convention. "Turns out Shore is a longtime Republican strategist" who is currently working for a Republican state senator.