Afternoon Quickie

• By a 62-2 vote, the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports.
  
  By its vote, the House committee attached the ports language to a must-pass $91 billion measure financing hurricane recovery and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The full House could consider that measure as early as next week. [WaPo]
  
  
• Doing what Chelsea could not, Arsenal beat Real Madrid (and the steaming/steamy Ronaldo, seen at the right) to advance to the semi-finals of the Champions League [BBC]
  
  
• The WaPo's Dan Froomkin's latest White House Briefing points to Dick Cheney still acting as WH muscle in getting the Senate Intelligence Committee to put a halt to a proposed investigation of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.
  
  Cheney took point in the White House effort to quash a full-blown investigation into the program. And the guy still gets the job done.
  
  
• The biofuels market grew by 15 percent in 2005, and will more than triple during the next decade, according to a new report by research firm Clean Edge. The Clean Energy Trends 2006 report says that biofuels ethanol and biodiesel netted $15.7 billion last year, with the United States and Brazil as the two leading producers. Despite distribution challenges, Clean Edge expects the biofuels market to reach $52.5 billion in 2015. [Wired's Autotopia]
  
  
• Take that Starbucks! Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee-shop icon known for its addictive Timbits donuts, is heading into a war zone to serve the country's troops a taste of home. The coffee-shop chain, Canada's largest, announced on Wednesday that a Tim Hortons store will open at the Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan within the next few months. [Reuters]