Morning News Roundup (20 Mar)

• In his address marking the third anniversary of the Iraq War start date, the Boston Globe reports that President didn't use the word "war." And AmericaBlog notes that the word of the week for Iraq is "progress."
  
  
• The anniversary was marked by clashes between US forces and insurgents, which resulted in several non-combat fatalaties (aka, civilians); via the WaPo:
  

  A top police official, as well as a resident who claimed he saw the fighting, said U.S. troops also shot and killed a family of three during house-to-house searches after the firefight.

  We still have the third anniversary of the announcement of the end of "major combat operations" to look forward to (that's about as tongue-twisting to say as "weapons of mass destruction related programs"). For a stroll down memory lane, check out this handy dandy Iraq War timeline from ThinkProgress.
  
  
• Protesters marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war made their voices heard around the world, with the largest marches in London, Portland and Chicago, though in numbers that were often lower than in previous years. About 10,000 anti-war protesters in Portland took nearly an hour to pass through downtown streets Sunday. In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march Saturday from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square. The anniversary last year attracted 45,000 protesters in the city. [SFChronic]
  
  
• The Independent reports that the chaos is increasing in Iraq:
  

  Unseen by the outside world, silent populations are on the move, frightened people fleeing neighbourhoods where their community is in a minority for safer districts.

  There is also a growing reliance on militias because of fears that police patrols or checkpoints are in reality death squads hunting for victims.
  [...]
  One effect of the escalating sectarian warfare is to strengthen the Sunni insurgency as their own community desperately looks to its defences.
  [...]
  Iraqi political parties have now spent three months since the election on 15 December trying to form a government. But ask an Iraqi on the street what he wants from a new government and many reply: "What government? It never does anything for us." Supply of electricity, clean water and sewage disposal are all down from 2003. The only improvement is in electricity supply outside Baghdad but even this is sporadic.

• Rising ocean temperatures have stoked the growing fury of hurricanes, according to a study made public Thursday that intensifies a debate over the link between global warming and the ferocity of storms. [LATimes]
  

  Of all the factors that drive a major storm — such as humidity, wind shear or broad air circulation patterns — only the steady increase in sea surface temperatures over the last 35 years can account for the rising strength of tempests in six oceans around the world, including the North Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology reported.
  
  "This firms up the link between sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity," said climate variability expert Judith A. Curry, a senior author of the study who heads Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "It is an important piece of the global warming debate."

• Let the Denim Revolution begin: Thousands of people poured onto a snow-blown central square Sunday night to protest the results of a presidential election in which incumbent Alexander Lukashenko was heading to the kind of overwhelming victory that his opponents charge lacks any credibility. [WaPo] But still the protesters kept coming in their hundreds, carrying flowers and wearing the denim blue colour that identifies the opposition. Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich called on the protesters to rally again today. [Sydney Morning Herald]
  
  
• In a big win for environmentalists, a federal appeals court on Friday struck down a Bush administration rule that would have made it easier for coal-burning power plants to make equipment changes without installing controls to fight the pollution that would result. The court shot down an Environmental Protection Agency rule that said power plant owners would only have to install modern pollution fighting controls if equipment changes cost more than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the plant. [ENN]
  
  
• The futuristic terrorist thriller "V For Vendetta" blew up its rivals at the weekend box office, selling tickets worth some $26.1 million across the United States and Canada. [Reuters/Yahoo!]