Archives: Morning Breakouts

"Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton clasped hands with residents of one of Haiti's massive tent cities Monday" during a tour of Port-Au-Prince, the Associated Press reports. "At a news conference with President Rene Preval on the grounds of the collapsed national palace, Bush said he was struck by the devastation caused by the Jan. 12 earthquake. 'It's one thing to see it on TV, it's another to see it firsthand,' said Bush, who was making his first visit to Haiti. 'Hopefully our visit will remind people that Haiti needs help,'" the news service writes.

Battle over health care reform continues.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) fought for each vote for the health care bill that passed the House on Sunday.

Following the health care vote, Obama moves from pushing health care reform to explaining it to the public.

Officials in 12 states have vowed to seek to overturn the health overhaul, arguing that it goes beyond the limits of federal power. But constitutional scholars say the states will have a tough fight making the claims.

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including a range of stories touching on everything from the politics and opposition related to the newly pased overhaul bill to its supporters' next steps and some of the measure's policy implications.

The Senate Parliamentarian Alan Frumin met with Democrats and Republicans Monday afternoon on a Republican challenge to health care reform using reconciliation.

Meanwhile, Republicans plot methods to repeal the legislation.

The House passes historic health care reform legislation Sunday night without any Republican votes and sends the bill to the President.

Senators are preparing for their own health care vote that could come as soon as the end of this week after the House passed the upper chamber's health care reform bill Sunday and sent the Senate a bill of "fixes" to that legislation.

Food security is central to President Barack Obama's Africa policy, "the administration's top official for Africa," Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, said in an interview with Reuters. "We want to see the food security initiative take on greater momentum as more African countries are drawn into this program," Carson said.

Former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are visiting Haiti on Monday "to spotlight the dramatic need ahead of a critical March 31 U.N. donors conference in New York, where Haitian officials will ask for $11.5 billion in reconstruction help," the Associated Press/New York Times reports. "It is the first joint visit to the impoverished Caribbean nation for the two former leaders, who were tasked by President Barack Obama with leading the U.S. fundraising effort" after the January 12 earthquake according to the news service.

"Almost a quarter of a billion people moved out of slum conditions in the past decade," but the number of people living in shantytowns around the world "increased by 55 million to 827.6 million as population growth and migration from the countryside outstripped the effect of upward mobility in cities," according to a U.N. Habitat report, released Friday, in Rio de Janeiro ahead of the five-day World Urban Forum "on the state of the world's cities," Reuters reports (3/19).

Both sides hope to use their arguments about the health care reform bill to gain advantages in the mid-term election.

The WHO on Friday announced "it had delivered the first doses of H1N1 [swine flu] vaccine to Cuba, and a dozen countries in Africa would receive millions of doses in coming weeks," Reuters reports. According to WHO spokeswoman Karen Mah, Cuba received an estimated 1.1 million doses Wednesday, and Honduras and El Salvador shipments are "en route," according to the news service.

"Human beings are flushing millions of tonnes of solid waste into rivers and oceans every day, poisoning marine life and spreading diseases that kill" 1.8 million children each year, according to a U.N. report (.pdf) released on Monday Reuters reports.

Following the House's vote, some aspects of the health care fight will now be played out on the state level. News outlets examine how lawmakers from different states voted and what states have to gain and loss from the national overhaul.