Morning News Roundup (31 May)

• “Climate researchers at Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology separately reported new evidence yesterday supporting the idea that global warming is causing stronger hurricanes.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Dutch authorities will have to boost their already significant flood protection measures to cope with increasingly warmer, wetter winters and summer droughts, according to forecasts released Tuesday. Four possible future climate scenarios for 2050 presented by the official Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) show global warming continuing apace and sea levels rising. [TerraDaily]
  
  
• Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming. The United States already is counting on Canada to help wean it from oil from the Middle East. Other countries are eyeing the wealth; China has invested in two mining companies and a pipeline to move oil from Alberta to shipping ports on the Pacific. [WaPo]
  
  
• Hiba Abdullah survived the killings by American troops in Haditha last Nov. 19, but said seven others at her father-in-law's home did not. She said American troops shot and killed her husband, Rashid Abdul Hamid. They killed her father-in-law, Abdul Hamid Hassan Ali, a 77-year-old in a wheelchair, shooting him in the chest and abdomen.
  
  Four people who survived the killings in Haditha, including some who had never spoken publicly, described the killings to an Iraqi writer and historian who was recruited by The New York Times to travel to Haditha and interview survivors and witnesses of what military officials have said appear to be unjustified killings of two dozen Iraqis by marines. Some in Congress fear the killings could do greater harm to the image of the United States military around the world than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. [NYTimes]
  
  
• White House spokesman Tony Snow said President Bush learned of the Haditha killings only after a reporter from Time magazine asked questions. Time published an article in March that said the Pentagon was investigating the incident. [AP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• In an indicator of rising violence, more "multiple-fatality" bombings -- involving at least three deaths -- occurred this month than in any other since the war began in 2003, according to the Brookings Institution, which issues a twice-weekly report of security and reconstruction statistics. The report this week noted 44 such bombings as of May 25; since then, that number has risen above 50. The next-worst month was September 2005, with 46. [WaPo]
  
  
• Afghanistan's parliament has approved a motion calling for the government to prosecute the U.S. soldiers responsible for a deadly road crash that sparked the worst riots in Kabul in years--the toll from the unrest had risen to 20 dead, with more than 160 wounded. Rioters stoned the U.S. convoy, then headed to the city center, ransacking offices of international aid groups and searching for foreigners while chanting "Death to America!" [WaPo]
  
  
• “The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families announced Tuesday that it had secured more than twice the number of signatures it needed to refer the abortion ban passed by the 2006 Legislature to a vote of the people this fall.” The group gathered 37,846 signatures - “more than double the 16,728 they needed to get.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• The tenth UNAIDS report on the global AIDS epidemic was released today and India has overtaken South Africa in total number of HIV cases. South Africa, with 5.5 million HIV cases, has a much higher prevalence rate among adults (18.8 percent) compared with India's infection rate of just 0.9 percent. But UNAIDS estimates that 5.7 million Indians are infected with HIV, an incredibly troubling statistic given that, with a billion people, even a small statistical increase results in a huge number of new infections. [Foreign Policy's Passport blog]
  
  
• Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday that it planned to begin a global voluntary recall of nearly 320,000 of its hot-selling Prius gasoline-electric hybrid sedans to repair a potentially faulty steering system component. The campaign will involve about 170,000 vehicles sold in the U.S. [LATimes]
  
  
• Take that, Bill O'Reilly! The Dixie Chicks new album, Taking the Long Way, debuted at #1 with a bullet on the Billboard charts with first week sales of 525,829. Taking The Long Way has achieved one of the year's Top 5 first week's sales tallies and has the best first week's sales for any female act on the Top 200 in 2006. [Yahoo! via Atrios]