Morning News Roundup (24 July)

Still in San Diego, where the high heat of the weekend has now turned to heavy humidity. As we've gotta get ready for more family gatherings, this will be a short one.

• Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon today. The total death toll from the recent violence has climbed to 36 people in Israel and nearly 400 in Lebanon. The estimated damage cost from the conflict is $1.5 billion in Israel and $3 billion in Lebanon. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• After two hours of talks with Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and then a meeting with the country's top Shiite politician, Nabih Berri, Rice said she was "deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring. We are concerned about the humanitarian situation," she said.
  [...]
  On Sunday, the Saudi foreign minister personally urged President Bush to intervene to stop the violence in Lebanon, the most direct sign of mounting frustration among key Arab states with what they see as a hands-off U.S. posture toward Israeli strikes against Hezbollah. [WaPo]
  
  
• During a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland, Ms. Rice’s aides ran into a tired and angry group of Americans who had been evacuated from Lebanon and were trying to get home, but their plane, which stopped in Shannon, had broken down.
  
  Some of the Americans recognized Karen Hughes, the assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy. Within minutes she was surrounded by the group, who said they had been traveling for five days and had been at the airport for 24 hours.
  
  “I am so sorry,” she said, sitting at a bar drinking wine. [NYTimes]
  
  
• The Institute of Science and International Security concluded Pakistan is building “a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region’s arms race.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Where green parklands once provided cool refuges in our cities, newspaper photographs last week showed them to be bleached, white landscapes. Reservoirs were revealed as cracked, arid deserts. And from Cornwall, pictures of the nation's first cage-diving trips for shark-watching tourists, an experience normally confined to Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
  
  In addition, schools closed, steel railways buckled, and road surfaces melted. And finally, last Wednesday, the temperature reached 36.3C (97.34F), the hottest July day on record. Once more Britain experienced a scorching heatwave, the fifth bout of intense summer heat to have struck the country in 10 years. And the weather forecaster says there is a lot more to come.
  [...]
  [B]y 2050, very hot and dry summers will occur once in three years, according to the UK Climate Impacts Programme, while maximum temperatures will top 40C (104F). By 2080, south-east England could become on average 5C (9F) warmer in summer, making it as hot as Bordeaux today. The whole of the UK would be affected, although the south-east will bear the brunt, with London taking the worst hit because of 'urban heat-island effect'. [Guardian]
  
  
• The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee just recommended a primary line-up that gives him a great chance of nicking the nomination from under Hillary Clinton's nose. If the DNC approves the new calendar, the Iowa caucuses will kick things off as usual, followed in quick succession by another caucus in Nevada and then primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. It's hard to think of a better schedule for Edwards short of his own North Carolina gaining first in the nation status. Edwards came a strong second in Iowa last time out and has made the state a home away from home since 2004. He leads the field in early polls there, which considering Hillary's name recognition are a little more meaningful than usual. Next comes Nevada, where organized labor - assiduously courted by Edwards in recent years - has a heavy presence. ... South Carolina ends the early stages and Edwards, who won the primary there by 15 points in '04, must be confident of winning in the state of his birth again. [Foreign Policy's Passport blog]