Morning News Roundup (05 July)

• 1,595:. Number of bodies Baghdad’s central morgue received last month, up 16 percent from May. The tally indicates that “the pace of killing here has increased since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• President Bush's stalwart foreign friends are fading fast. Most of the leaders who defied criticism at home to stand with him on Iraq and win his friendship are no longer players on the world stage, or are on their way out. And it was a small band of brothers to begin with.
  [...]
  Goodwill that flowed to the United States right after the Sept. 11 attacks has long been offset by growing opposition to the war in Iraq and to Bush's foreign policy leadership, polls show.
  
  A May poll by the Pew Research Center shows Bush's ratings and confidence in him to do the right thing on foreign affairs to be slipping ever lower in Europe — even at a time of growing apparent consensus with European allies on efforts to restrict the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. [AP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• Emotions in Mexico intensified Tuesday as the electoral commission counted additional ballots, shrinking the lead of López Obrador's opponent, Felipe Calderón, from 400,000 votes, or 1 percent, to 257,000 votes, or 0.64 percent. López Obrador's supporters have also reacted emotionally as the populist candidate and his top aides have outlined a growing list of alleged election law violations. No large demonstrations have been held yet, apparently because López Obrador's supporters are waiting for a signal from him and because they want to see the results of an official count that begins Wednesday. [WaPo]
  
  
• North Korea test-fires seven missiles, at least one of which was long-range, over the Sea of Japan. Tokyo is enraged and Asian markets falter. Here's the question everyone should be asking: Did China give the nod? Just yesterday, before the missile launch, China and North Korea announced two exchange visits by high-ranking officials. And Matt Frei at the BBC thinks Japanese PM Koizumi's chummy visit to DC and Graceland upset Beijing so much that the Chinese may have told Kim Jong Il they'd stand aside if he pushed the trigger. [Foreign Policy's Passport]
  
  
• Israel is once again vowing to step up its military operations in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants succeeded for the first time in hitting an Israeli city with a home-made missile. The armed wing of the Palestinian Authority ruling party, Hamas, said its militants built and fired a new type of missile that struck a schoolyard in central Ashkelon on Tuesday evening.
  
  The attack caused no injuries, but demonstrated that Palestinians can now fire their light missiles to a range of 12 kilometres - enough to threaten Ashkelon, home to 110,000 people, a big industrial zone and Israel's main oil-fired electricity plant. [SMH]
  
  
• Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet ordered the military to intensify air raids against Hamas as well as so-called targeted killing operations against militants who launch or order rocket attacks.
  
  The army was also given the go-ahead to increase an assault on northern Gaza by surrounding two key towns and enlarging an interdiction zone to be enforced by aircraft and artillery in a bid to stave off rocket attacks. [AFP]
  
  
• Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere may be killing coral reefs, according to a new report. Scientists and government officials call rising oceanic acidity “one of the most pressing environmental threats facing Earth.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• There's a speed bump in the road to carbon sequestration (capturing CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels and burying it under ground to keep it from contributing to global warming); via Treehugger:
  

  Richard A. Kerr writes in Science: "Scientists testing the deep geologic disposal of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide are finding that it's staying where they put it, but it's chewing up minerals. The reactions have produced a nasty mix of metals and organic substances in a layer of sandstone 1550 meters down, researchers report this week in Geology. At the same time, the CO2 is dissolving a surprising amount of the mineral that helps keep the gas where it's put." It's not leaking so far, but it will require a second look before carbon sequestration can be used on a large scale.

  
  
• Catch minute-by-minute action in the Portugal v France World Cup semi-final today at noon.