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• British Prime Minister Gordon Brown "heaped praise on George W. Bush with language evoking Tony Blair on Thursday, as he sought to overcome the impression that the 'special relationship' had entered a cooler phase," the Financial Times reports. "Speaking at a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Brown said he stood 'shoulder to shoulder' with Mr Bush in a transatlantic bond that was 'stronger than ever.'"

• Brown and Bush "offered equally stern warnings Thursday about the potential dangers of Iran's nuclear program, and the Briton held out the prospect of extended European sanctions to block outside investment," the Los Angeles Times reports. "On a day when the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency said Tehran was making only slow progress toward production of material suitable for nuclear weapons, Bush and Brown joined in denouncing the Iranian government."

• "A new South Korean leader who talks tough about North Korea represents a welcome change for a Bush administration that thinks Seoul has been too soft on its communist neighbor," AP reports. "President Bush and Lee Myung-bak, in two days of talks to begin" today, "will be eager to signal a new, cooperative tone as they push a reluctant Congress to ratify an ambitious free trade deal and discuss ways to persuade the North to fulfill commitments in six-nation nuclear negotiations."

• "The Bush administration has no comprehensive plan for dealing with the threat posed by Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, where al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, according to a new report released" Thursday "from the research arm of Congress," the Washington Post reports. "The Government Accountability Office also said 'the United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven' provided by the tribal areas, despite having spent more than $10 billion for Pakistani military operations in the mountainous border region."

• "A records search by the Central Intelligence Agency has found no evidence that the agency violated a judge’s order when, in 2005, it destroyed videotapes that showed harsh interrogations, the C.I.A. said in a court declaration this week," the New York Times reports.

• "The Department of the Interior wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in one of the animals' two U.S. habitats," AP reports.

Congress: Farm Bill Stalls; Rove Questioned By Judiciary Committee

• "The Senate voted Thursday to direct the Department of Justice to investigate the controversial Coconut Road earmark connected to Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)," The Hill reports. "Senators voted 64-28 to add the amendment to a bill making technical corrections to the 2005 highway bill, despite opposition from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who on Thursday said the House ethics committee, and not Justice, should investigate the matter."

• "Farm bill negotiations deadlocked Thursday night despite movement toward a House-Senate package that would include some agriculture tax cuts combined with reductions in direct payment subsidies to help pay for more money for nutrition," the Politico reports.

• "The U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan through local reconstruction teams lacks clear goals, organizational structure and lines of command, according to a new congressional report," the Washington Post reports. "Funding for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams, which President Bush has called the leading edge of stabilization efforts in the two nations, is ad hoc and comes from so many sources that congressional investigators were unable to determine how much has been spent on the joint military-civilian teams."

• "Democratic lawmakers want to make sure people know where their food and drugs come from and the overseas plants producing them are regularly inspected," AP reports. "Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed Thursday that all produce labels be required to show the country of origin."

• "Lawmakers stunned by a dramatic jump in federal spending on wildfires say they have found a way to pay for the next disaster," AP reports. "A bill approved Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee would set aside up to $1 billion to pay for fighting major wildfires such as those that devastated Southern California last fall."

• "Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee" on Thursday "invited Karl Rove, a onetime White House adviser, to testify about his possible involvement in building a corruption case against former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D)," the Washington Post reports. "Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (Mich.) and three other Democrats on the panel also wrote to the Justice Department's inspector general and the chief of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, requesting that they open an investigation into what they claimed was a pattern of 'selective, politically motivated prosecutions.'"

• "Forget government corruption or corporate fraud. Three members of Congress want the Justice Department to investigate whether college football's Bowl Championship Series is an illegal enterprise," AP reports. "Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, are introducing a resolution rejecting the oft-criticized bowl system as an illegal restriction on trade because only the largest universities compete in most of the major bowl games."

• "A gaggle of right-leaning healthcare lobbyists have lashed out at one of their own, blaming" lobbyist John McManus"for assisting Democrats in an attempt to gut an insurance concept conservatives view as the future of healthcare," The Hill reports. "Opponents of the Democratic bill have accused" McManus "of selling out Republican principles by helping the other party weaken a signature conservative policy victory, the creation of tax-free health savings accounts (HSAs), in order to help his client leverage one of its patented products."

Iraq: U.S. Releases Thousands Of Detainees

• "U.S. commanders in Iraq have begun releasing thousands of detainees and expect to free more than half of the 23,000 held by American forces, according to senior military commanders," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports. "The moves are part of a broad effort to reshape the military's controversial detention policies, in part because the large number of Iraqis in U.S. custody is a source of public anger there. U.S. officials also believe freeing the primarily Sunni detainees will help persuade the embattled minority to participate more in Iraq's Shiite-heavy political process."

• "Trying to stem the infiltration of militia fighters, American forces have begun to build a massive concrete wall that will partition Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite neighborhood in the Iraqi capital," the New York Times reports. "The construction, which began Tuesday night, is intended to turn the southern quarter of Sadr City near the international Green Zone into a protected enclave, secured by Iraqi and American forces, where the Iraqi government can undertake reconstruction efforts."

• "A company of government troops abandoned its positions in Sadr City when the forces came under attack from Shiite militiamen who took advantage of a sandstorm to attack, police said" today, AP reports. "The reports of the latest setback for the Iraqi army come after government officials acknowledged that during fighting last month against Shiite militias in the southern city of Basra, more than 1,300 Iraqi soldiers and police deserted or refused to fight."

• "A suicide bombing killed 55 people at a funeral service Thursday in a village 90 miles north of Baghdad, police said, the latest in a string of deadly attacks this week attributed to Sunni insurgents," the Washington Post reports.

• "The troubled effort to build the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad seemed to be months away from completion when a team of top State Department officials flew to Iraq on March 20 to meet with senior staff from the prime contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. But as insurgent rockets began to rain down on the flimsy trailers housing diplomats inside the Green Zone, the two sides suddenly found ways to settle many of the major issues dividing them," the Washington Post reports. "On Monday, the State Department issued certificates of acceptance and completion, officially taking possession of the embassy."

• "Iran's U.N. Mission said allegations by U.S. officials that the country is supporting the insurgency in Iraq are 'unfounded' and 'baseless,'" AP reports. "In a statement Thursday, Iran's United Nations Mission said the charges are 'but futile efforts to distract the international community's attention, along with that of the U.S. public opinion.'"

Nation: Pope Travels To N.Y. To Address U.N.

• "Pope Benedict XVI talked and prayed with a small group of victims of clergy sex abuse" Thursday, "the first publicly known meeting between a pontiff and victims since the most recent scandal erupted in Boston six years ago," the Washington Post reports. "The 25-minute meeting at the Vatican Embassy put an intensely personal focus on a subject that has become an important part of the pope's Washington visit."

• "Pope Benedict XVI turned his attention" today "to the original purpose of his first U.S. visit as leader of the Roman Catholic Church," AP reports. "The pope, after an early morning flight from the nation's capital to New York City, will deliver an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, taking his first opportunity to truly talk globally."

• "About 300,000 U.S. military personnel who have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, a mental toll that will cost the nation as much as $6.2 billion over two years, according to a Rand Corp. report released" Thursday, the Washington Post reports.

• "It took only a few minutes from the judge’s opening gavel Thursday morning for an emergency court hearing on the fate of 416 children taken by" Texas officials "from a polygamist compound" in San Angelo "two weeks ago to dissolve into chaos," the New York Times reports. "Some lawyers complained heatedly to Judge Barbara Walther that the mass hearing, radically different from a typically intimate Family Court custody session, was unfair and benefited the state."

• "A 5.4 magnitude earthquake that appeared to rival the strongest recorded in the region rocked people up to 450 miles away early today, surprising residents unaccustomed to such a powerful Midwest temblor,' the Washington Times reports. "The quake just before 4:37 a.m. was centered six miles from West Salem, Ill., and 66 miles from Evansville, Ind. It was felt in such distant cities as Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Des Moines, Iowa, 450 miles northwest of the epicenter, but there were no early reports of injuries or significant damage."

Economy: Downtown Harder On Consumers Than Corporations

• "As first-quarter corporate earnings reports begin to roll in, a stark picture is emerging of an economy on two tracks," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports. "Banks and companies that sell directly to consumers are grappling with the impact of falling home prices and tightening credit. But many big businesses, especially those that sell to other U.S. companies or to customers abroad, are proving resilient."

• "The public's ratings of the national economy continue to sour, with assessments deteriorating faster than at any point in Washington Post-ABC News polling," the Washington Post reports. "Nine in 10 Americans now give the economy a negative rating, with a majority saying it is in "poor" shape, the most to say so in more than 15 years."

• "Americans feeling the pain of record gasoline prices now face the likelihood of another fuel shock, from natural gas," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports. "Prices in the U.S. have risen 93% since late August as power-hungry nations like South Korea and Japan compete in a global natural-gas market that scarcely existed a half-decade ago. Still, U.S. prices are as low as half the level of some overseas markets, suggesting they have much further to rise."

• "The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn," the New York Times reports. "Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy."

• "The effects of the subprime mortgage crisis and the downturn in the U.S. economy have cascaded into Mexico, causing a sudden, precipitous drop in the flow of money sent home by Mexican immigrants and highlighting this country's dependence on its wealthier northern neighbor," the Washington Post reports. "In January, the cash transfers, known as remittances, sagged almost 7 percent compared with a year earlier, the steepest monthly dip in at least 13 years, according to Mexican government statistics."

• "Vikram Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, has vowed to slash the beleaguered financial group’s cost base by up to 20 per cent, deepening fears that Wall Street and the City of London are about to be hit by tens of thousands of additional job losses," the Financial Times reports.

World: Carter To Meet With Hamas Leader

• "Former US President Jimmy Carter is in Syria, where he is due to meet exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal," BBC News reports. "Mr Carter is on a tour of the region and has met Hamas officials in Egypt and Israeli President Shimon Peres."

• "South Africa turned up the pressure on President Robert Mugabe in neighboring Zimbabwe on Thursday, calling the political stalemate there 'dire' and urging election officials to release results of the March 29 presidential vote," the Washington Post reports. "The statement, from government spokesman Themba Maseko, was South Africa's clearest and most forceful yet about the heightening political drama in Zimbabwe."

• "The Bush administration made another concession to North Korea" Thursday "by agreeing to keep secret part of a required declaration of the country's nuclear programs, saving Pyongyang a public embarrassment from its proliferation activities," the Washington Times reports.

• "Canadian federal police say they have uncovered two North American outposts of a Sri Lankan terrorist organization described by the FBI as one of the 'most dangerous and deadly' extremist groups in the world," the Washington Times reports. "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) seized two office buildings and bank accounts in Toronto and Montreal used to raise funds for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to documents unsealed this week in federal court in Canada."

• "Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti’s presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country’s prime minister packing," the New York Times reports. "That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments."

• "Attacks on its humanitarian convoys are forcing the U.N. World Food Programme to cut the rations it provides to millions of hungry people in Sudan's war-stricken Darfur region by about half, the agency said Thursday," CNN reports. "The cuts are to start in May, the WFP said, because 'banditry against WFP-contracted trucks is preventing sufficient stocks of vital food relief from getting through.'"

• "Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including 542 in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data compiled by U.S. government experts," the Washington Post reports. "The large number of attacks -- more than double the number in any of the past 25 years -- reflects a trend that has surprised and worried U.S. intelligence and military analysts."

• "Stamping out child labor is a tricky business for India's government," the Chicago Tribune reports. "As officials try to modernize both India's economy and its image, they aim to cut back on a practice that much of the world sees as abhorrent. But in a nation where tens of millions of kids work, children's labor is not just a key source of financial support for families, it is legal."

Campaigns: Superdelegate Speculation

Will anything less than a landslide for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania cause an exodus of superdelegates to Barack Obama? Earlybird's Campaign News section has details.

Commentary: Gordon Who?

Earlybird's Pundits & Editorials section has opinion from across the pond on British PM Brown's lackluster reception in America.