Morning News Roundup (04 August)

Keep up with the latest news on the Israel-Hezbollah-Hamas conflict with these regularly updating news sources:

• Wall Street Journal
• BBC Crisis Map
• WaPo -- Latest Headlines | Interactive Updates

Now onto the rest of the day's news:

Top Story

• Starting with a small victory: Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bid to combine a tax cut for the wealthy with a wage increase for the working poor last night, adding a volatile economic issue to this fall's congressional campaigns.
  
  GOP leaders fell three votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and bring the package to the Senate floor, where it was considered certain to pass on a simple-majority vote. Republicans said Democrats will pay a price in November, contending that most Americans support the bill's call for an increase in the minimum wage and deep cuts in the estate tax.
  [...]
  Republican leaders in Congress have long wanted to eliminate or slash the taxes levied on estates left by wealthy people, but the Senate has repeatedly refused. Hoping to attract enough Democratic support, House leaders last week added a sweetener: the first increase in the federal minimum wage in nine years, plus an extension of several popular tax breaks for businesses. The House passed the complex measure -- dubbed "the trifecta" because of its three main facets -- and sent it to the Senate, which planned to vote before adjourning this weekend for the August break.
  
  Frist agreed to the deal, hoping that several Democrats could not resist a chance to raise the minimum wage, in three phases, to $7.25 an hour from the current $5.15. The bill would also have exempted from taxation all estates worth as much as $5 million -- or $10 million for a married couple -- and applied a 15 percent tax rate to inheritances above that threshold and up to $25 million. The value of estates exceeding $25 million would have been taxed at 30 percent. [WaPo]

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• Tony Blair is to delay his annual summer holiday to continue working on a UN security council resolution for a Lebanon ceasefire. He is now expected to depart for his three-week break - handing power to his deputy John Prescott - in a few days.
  
  Meanwhile, with violence boiling in the Middle East and his party's control of Congress up for grabs in fall elections, President Bush is forgoing his typical monthlong break from the White House. Instead, he planned to spend 10 days in Crawford before returning to work in Washington, his shortest summer vacation since taking office. [BBC, Seattle P-I]
  
  
• An Israeli air strike near Lebanon's north-eastern border with Syria has killed at least 28 people and injured 30, Lebanese officials have said. The raid hit farm workers as they loaded produce at a depot, they said. Hezbollah has continued its barrage of rockets, firing more than 130 across northern Israel and killing two civilians, Israeli police said. [BBC]
  
  
• Condoleezza Rice expressed support Thursday “for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon as the first phase in ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah,” the “most concrete signal yet that the U.S. may be willing to compromise on the stalemate over how to end the fighting.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]

Climate Crisis

• More Americans than ever disapprove of President Bush's handling of the environment, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, which also has found that spiraling fuel costs are altering household spending habits.
  
  Fifty-six percent of respondents in the national poll said the Bush administration was doing too little to protect the environment. The negative rating was up considerably from The Times' last major survey on the environment, in 2001, when 41% said he wasn't doing enough.
  [...]
  The survey of 1,478 adults, conducted over five days ending Tuesday, revealed a growing awareness of global warming. More than seven in 10 said it was a serious problem, and 58% said the Bush administration was doing too little to reduce it.
  
  Three-quarters said they had cut back on household spending or taken steps to conserve energy in response to rising energy costs. Forty-five percent said they approved of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska; 51% opposed it. [LATimes]
  
  
• An urgent project on the scale of the Apollo moon landings is needed to boost research into green energy sources and save the planet from environmental disaster, according to Britain's top scientist. Writing in the US journal Science today, Sir Martin Rees, president of Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, the Royal Society, expresses dismay at G8 leaders' "worrisome lack of determination" to accelerate development of new energy sources, given the expected 50% rise in the world's energy needs - and carbon dioxide emissions - in the next 25 years.
  
  He warns that without an international, focused programme to develop alternatives to fossil fuels it will be impossible to keep greenhouse gas emissions low enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. [Guardian]
  
  
• Heat waves like those that have scorched Europe and the United States in recent weeks are becoming more frequent because of global warming, say scientists who have studied decades of weather records and computer models of past, present and future climate.
  [...]
  Last week, Paul Della-Marta, a researcher at Switzerland's Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, presented findings at an international conference on climate science in Gwatt, Switzerland, showing that since 1880 the duration of heat waves in Western Europe has doubled and the number of unusually hot days in the region has nearly tripled.
  
  In a separate 2004 study, researchers at Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research produced computer models showing that greenhouse gas emissions had doubled the likelihood of events like the lethal 2003 European heat wave, and that by 2040 it is likely such heat waves will take place there every other year. [WaPo]
  
  
• The Rev. Pat Robertson said he hasn't been a believer in global warming in the past, but this summer's record-breaking heat is "making a convert out of me." And only a week ago, he bashed godless environmentalists in a session with scorched-earth skeptic James Inhofe. Said Robertson about Inhofe: "We appreciate him, and he chairs a vital committee on this matter, and I’m glad he’s standing for some very important principles." [DeSmogBlog]
  
  
• An unspeakably stupid video about Al Gore and penguins has been floating around YouTube for a while. Over at The Wall Street Journal, Antonio Regalado and Dionne Searcey pulled off a crackerjack bit of reporting, tracing the author to an email address, an email address to an IP address, and ...

  ... the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.

  DCI runs Tech Central Station, the notoriously bought and paid for opinion outlet. ("TCS is supported by a small group of sponsors: the American Beverage Association, ExxonMobil, Freddie Mac, General Motors Corporation, Gilead Sciences, McDonalds, Merck and PhRMA.") [Gristmill, which includes the video]