The Earlybird: Today's Headlines

Bush's school speech, Mideast push, Iraq bombing, Internet tax plea, Cheney's fund raising, Gore's Iowa agreement, Florida's voting machines:

• During President Bush's visit to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado on Tuesday, he "touted his newly inked wildland fire plan against a backdrop of picturesque mountains," the Denver Post reports. The plan "emphasizes fire prevention through the reduction of fuels, such as dead timber and dense forest undergrowth."
• Last night Bush "bolstered the re-election bids" of Colorado's Republican Sen. Wayne Allard and Gov. Bill Owens "with a glitzy, million dollar Republican fund-raiser at the Adam's Mark hotel" in Denver, the Rocky Mountain News reports.
• After Bush "drew criticism from the NAACP after agreeing to appear at a fund-raiser at an Adam's Mark hotel Tuesday night in Denver," Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, said she will "not go forward with a scheduled reception at the Adam's Mark Hotel in downtown Dallas" because of the NAACP boycott on the hotel chain, the Dallas Morning News reports.
• Bush today is in Albuquerque, N.M., where he plans to give a speech with Education Secretary Rod Paige at the North Valley elementary school on its first day of classes, the Albuquerque Tribune reports. Paige "will announce plans for his 'Back to School, Moving Forward' tour -- a multicity tour to outline details of Bush's school reform effort."

• Bush on Tuesday "urged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to halt suicide bombings and called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to be less provocative," the Houston Chronicle reports.
• "Israeli undercover troops killed a Palestinian militia leader in a shooting ambush in the town of Hebron on Wednesday, hours after an Israeli paratrooper company took position at the entrance of another West Bank town in a warning to Palestinian gunmen," AP reports.
• Israeli analysts said that Israel is now "seeking to draw Palestinians away from their guerrilla campaign and toward more conventional fighting -- the kind of war between armies that the Jewish state is adept at winning," the Boston Globe reports.
• The Christian Science Monitor conducted interviews with "Palestinian militants involved in suicide bombings, a young man who has considered carrying out such an operation, the father of a deceased bomber, and some Israelis who were affected by one attack" in order to "offer a closer look at this form of violence -- the motivations of its perpetrators and the experiences of its victims."

• On Tuesday the United States bombed a radar site in southern Iraq, AP reports. The bombing was an "attempt to disable increasingly effective air defenses used against allied pilots."
• Bush "faces an autumn of tough decisions on Iraq, with difficult options and complications all around," the Wall Street Journal reports. "Most immediately, he has to decide whether to get tougher with Iraq over its aggressive challenges to American planes patrolling the 'no-fly zones.'"

• The Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it will delay until September making a recommendation on "requests from oil companies and electric utilities to stop tightening pollution standards on old power plants and refineries as they are modernized," AP reports.
• "The Bush administration has decided to pull back -- and soften -- new federal rules that would have immediately promised nearly 20 million poor people on Medicaid the same kind of protections that Congress is struggling to guarantee Americans in managed care," the Washington Post reports.
• A study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that "more than 40 percent of HIV-positive Americans don't know they are infected until just before developing full-blown AIDS, sometimes missing out on a decade or more of treatment," AP reports.

• More than 40 governors will send a letter to Congress this week urging members "to reject extending a 1998 moratorium on other Internet taxes unless states are given the opportunity to come up with a system that would allow them to collect online sales taxes," the Washington Post reports.
• The National Conference of State Legislatures is meeting this week in San Antonio, Texas, the New York Times reports. "This year, for the first time since the early 1990's, about a third of the states have had to deal with budget shortfalls, according to a fiscal report prepared by the conference's fiscal affairs office."

• "A United Nations racial discrimination committee concerned with U.S. police violence and brutality aimed at minority groups and foreigners has suggested a possible death penalty moratorium and has cited the legacy of slavery as a contributing factor to continuing discrimination in the United States," UPI reports.
• Texas inmate Napoleon Beazley is scheduled to be executed today, AP reports.

• "A California scientist said yesterday that he had developed two new families of embryonic stem cells, the first such public disclosure in the United States since the field started in 1998," the Boston Globe reports.
• A report published today in the journal Human Molecular Genetics says that "human cloning may not be as difficult as cloning lower animals, such as sheep or mice, because of a difference in one gene that helps regulate growth," UPI reports.

• Today NATO ministers will meet in Brussels to decide "whether to deploy 3,500 troops in Macedonia as planned, after Albanian rebels pledged to disarm," Reuters reports.
• An Italian court on Tuesday "ordered the release from prison... of three Americans and 17 Europeans arrested in connection with violence at last month's Group of Eight summit in Italy," AP reports.
• The Irish Republican Army on Tuesday rescinded its offer to disarm, the Boston Globe reports.
• Pakistani Gen. Pervez Musharraf "promised Tuesday to hold nationwide elections -- the final stop on a 'road map to democracy'" -- in 2002, the Los Angeles Times reports.

• Former Vice President Al Gore agreed Tuesday to speak at "the Iowa Democratic Party's annual fund-raising dinner next month, yet another signal that he is positioning himself for a return to politics," AP reports.
• The Des Moines Register reports that the "fund-raising event will be Sept. 29 at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines."

• Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mark Warner (D) today unleashes a "new statewide TV ad, scathing direct mail and a public plea today to urge voters to 'make a clean break' with the GOP infighting that produced this year's historic budget impasse," the Washington Post reports.
• Warner picked up the endorsement Tuesday of the United Mine Workers of America, which "tends to support Democrats," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• "Influential" Pennsylvania state Sen. Anthony Williams (D) yesterday postponed his endorsement of state Auditor General Robert Casey Jr. (D) in his primary race against former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell (D), the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "The move came amid intense competition between Casey and" Rendell "for the support of Democratic elected officials on Rendell's home turf."
• Pennsylvania Republicans expect an announcement by Gov. Tom Ridge (R) as early as tomorrow endorsing Attorney General Mike Fisher (R) "as his chosen successor in the 2002 race for governor," the Philadelphia Inquirer said.
• Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., held "a 'Coney Dogs with the Underdog' party with supporters Tuesday in his hometown and kicks off a four-day statewide campaign swing" today as part of his gubernatorial bid, AP reports.
• Former Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Commissioner Timothy Hagan (D) said yesterday that he will run for governor, though he will not make his formal announcement until September, the Columbus Dispatch reports. "Hagan acknowledged that his connections with Hollywood and with the Kennedy clan could yield campaign cash."

• A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Tuesday "listed Republican Sens. Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon and Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas among 'the top tier of pickup opportunities for us,'" the Washington Times reports.
• Vice President Dick Cheney (R) "is expected to raise more than $200,000 for" Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's (R) campaign when he visits Idaho Aug. 25, AP reports.
• "There's a whispering campaign going on among Democratic insiders" in Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, but Chicago Democratic ward bosses "can't believe that" Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) would give his brother, former Commerce Secretary and 2000 Gore campaign chairman Bill Daley (D), "the green light to run" for governor in 2002.
• Former U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, Ala., Doug Jones (D) told supporters Monday night that he plans to challenge Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., in 2002 and "said he would officially enter the Democratic primary in the next few days," the Birmingham News reports.
• Arkansas state Rep. Jo Carson (D) on Tuesday became the first Democrat to file for the upcoming 3rd District special election to replace former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

• Two weeks after he had surgery to remove a cancerous prostate gland, FBI Director Robert Mueller "has a 'very high likelihood of cancer cure,' is in excellent physical and mental health, and is fit to serve" his 10-year term, his doctors told the New York Times.
• The Rev. Al Sharpton's "announcement in June that he would explore a presidential run in 2004 provoked more discussion than derision among political experts," USA Today reports.
• Brian Hunt, the gay stepson of Massachusetts acting Gov. Jane Swift (R), told the Boston Globe "he thinks Swift's opposition to same-sex marriage is politically motivated."

• Voters in Florida's Duval County went to the polls yesterday in a state Senate primary and successfully used "new voting machines, whose rapid tabulations brought the evening to an early close," the Florida Times-Union reports.