Morning News Roundup (18 Apr)

• As sectarian killings continue to rise in Iraq, the central morgue in Baghdad is unable to keep up with the daily influx of bodies. The morgue is receiving a minimum of 60 bodies a day and sometimes more than 100, a morgue employee told IPS on condition of anonymity.
  
  A report Oct. 29, 2004 in the British medical journal The Lancet had said that "by conservative assumptions, we think about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq." In an update, Les Roberts, lead author of the report said Feb. 8 this year that there may have been 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion. Such findings seem in line with information IPS obtained at the Baghdad morgue.
  
  
• Daniel Gri and James Mott were two of about 200 gay and lesbian parents who came with about 100 children to the traditional Easter Egg Roll, along with about 16,000 other families. Gri, Mott and their boys wore the colorful garlands to show that "we are everywhere," Mott said.
  
  A half-dozen protesters stood outside the South Lawn gates with large signs and a bullhorn. They yelled at all the families, telling the heterosexual parents that their children would be punished with colds for coming to an event that included gay men and lesbians. They also compared gay families to the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, saying that all three are make-believe. [WaPo]
  
  
• Security forces fatally shot a fifth protester Monday as defiance of royal rule continued to spread through a paralyzed Nepal. Twelve days of often bloody pro-democracy protests and a general strike have emptied Nepal's highways, and cities were running low on fresh food and fuel.
  
  Daily protests have hit nearly ever major city since the opposition campaign began April 6. Sunday saw upward of 50,000 people march across Nepal, and on Monday tens of thousands returned to the streets, many chanting for the king to be ousted or simply killed — a rare sentiment in a land where monarchs have for generations been revered as Hindu god-kings. [LATimes]
  
  
• President Bush's plan to break the U.S. addiction to oil is languishing as Congress pushes instead for measures designed to address voters' more immediate concern about rising gasoline prices. With prices at the pump expected to jump 25 cents a gallon over those seen last summer, the president's goals for energy independence appear to have sunk close to the bottom of Congress' election-year priority list.
  
  Sen. Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who heads a panel that provides money for energy programs, is "very interested in fully funding the president's initiative," said spokeswoman Marnie Funk. But Domenici, who also chairs the energy committee, has complained that Bush is ignoring programs such as one to fund research on nuclear power and another to develop technologies for reducing factory emissions from coal. [Baltimore Sun via EVWorld]
  
  
• Bill Gates, John Doerr and Steve Case believed in the Internet long before Wall Street did. Now, they're betting on the next great "disruptive" technology: alternative fuels and other environmentally friendly products, but this time other investors aren't far behind.
  
  Last year, AOL LLC founder Case launched Revolution LLC, which has invested in companies such as car-sharing service Flexcar that promote sustainable lifestyles. In November, Microsoft Inc. founder Gates committed $84 million to a California company to finance the construction of five ethanol bio-refineries. And last month, Doerr, the venture capitalist who invested early in Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., set up a $100 million fund to invest in "green technology." [WaPo]
  
  
• In late March, then Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced that wetlands loss had finally come to an end, with 715,300-acre gains since 1997. It turns out she was counting artificial golf course water hazards and farm impoundments. The Fish and Wildlife Service reports a continued loss of 523,500 acres of natural wetlands during the same time period. [via ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Amazon is now offering 2,000 basic packaged foods as part of a push to become the top online shopping spot, the Financial Times reported. Shoppers can pick up 96 individual Kellogg's Corn Flakes portions for $31.20. [BBC]
  
  
• An unfortunate choice of wording, perhaps? From Tim Grieve at Salon's War Room:
  

  Washington state Republican chairwoman Diane Tebelius on Dick Cheney's appearance in Everett, Wash., on behalf of GOP House candidate Doug Roulstone: "He really fires everyone up and this will be a shot in the arm. This is my upset special for a Republican taking out a Democratic member of our delegation."

• Check out Kat's love letter to Al Gore. GO-Team 08!