Morning News Roundup (06 Mar)

• In a corallary to the Paul Krugman column noted below, the LATimes has a report that contradicts President Bush's assertion that education is the medicine to help stave off the personal effects of globalization:
  

  But the president's assertion that the answer to foreign outsourcing is education, a mantra embraced by Democrats as well as Republicans, is being challenged by a growing body of research and analysis from economists and other scholars. Education — at least as delivered by most of the nation's colleges, universities and technical schools — is no longer quite the economic cure-all it once was, nor the guarantee of financial security Americans have come to expect from college and graduate degrees.
  [...]
  Starting in 1975, the earnings difference between high school- and college-educated workers steadily widened for 25 years. But since 2000, the trend appears to have stalled. Census figures show that average, after-inflation earnings of college graduates fell by more than 5% between 2000 and 2004, whereas the earnings of those with only high school degrees rose slightly.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency chief said on Monday he hoped a deal to defuse a standoff over Iran's nuclear aims could be reached soon. "I am still very much hopeful that in the next week or so an agreement could be reached," Mohammed ElBaradei said, while acknowledging that Russia's proposal to enrich uranium for Iran had snagged on Tehran's determination to purify nuclear fuel itself. [Reuters]
  
  
• Iran's chief negotiator renewed a threat to interrupt petroleum exports if the IAEA board of governors followed through on its vote last month to report Iran to the Security Council pending a last stab at a diplomatic solution. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. [WaPo]
  
  
• The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail. [Guardian]
  
  
• Poland has confirmed its first case of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, in two wild swans. [BBC]
  
  
• Interesting: On "Meet the Press" Sunday, Tim Russert asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to describe how things were going in Iraq. "I'd say they're going well," Gen. Peter Pace responded. "I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at." [Salon's War Room]
  
  
• Finally, curmudgeonly WaPo media critic Tom Shales has a bone up his ass about last night's Oscar presentation:
  

  It's hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year's Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by.

  Really? I, and the assembled party we had here at Cracks Centraal, found it to be one of the funniest Oscar shows in recent memory. Are we that out of touch with "mainstream" tastes? Overly politicized? Fundamentally flawed in our collective hero worship of John Stewart? I'd like to think not, and I hope that Stewart is asked back for next year--and avoid any appearances by the unfunny Whoopi Goldberg and the increasingly unfunny Steve Martin (sorry, Kat).