Morning Brief, Thursday, June 28

Europe

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images News

Promising to heed calls for change, the decidedly unphotogenic Gordon Brown moved into his new digs as Britain’s new prime minister Wednesday. And though Brown said little about Iraq yesterday, his new cabinet features Iraq War skeptic David Miliband as foreign secretary.

An Egyptian billionaire accused of spying for Israel in 1967 has died mysteriously in … where else? London, spy death capital of the world.

Easing a rule put in place during the Vatican II reforms, the pope moved to allow more Catholic churches to conduct mass in Latin. 

Americas

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House, the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Justice Department regarding the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program.

Phoenix has surpassed Philadelphia as the United States’ fifth-largest city, according to new demographic data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Also: From 2005 to 2006, the population of New Orleans dropped by 261,286.

Police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killed 13 alleged gang members during sweep operations ahead of July’s Pan American Games.

The American bald eagle soars again.

Middle East

The new new plan in Iraq: focusing on al Qaeda. Weren’t they doing that before?

It must be envoy season. First Tony Blair, and now President Bush announced his intention to appoint an envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Hamas and its supporters are keeping quiet in the Fatah-dominated West Bank. In Gaza, Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinian militants and two civilians.

Asia

Text messaging is proving to be a thorn in the side of Chinese authorities. 

China is punishing 29 financial institutions, 10 of them foreign, for “assisting speculative foreign capital to enter the country disguised as trade or investment”.

Responding to demands from the U.S. Congress, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary said that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had apologized enough for the Japanese military’s use of sex slaves during World War II.

Elsewhere

Warren Buffett decried a U.S. tax system that allowed him to earn $46 million last year and pay only 17.7 percent of that in taxes, while his secretary is taxed at 30 percent. Worldwide, the “super-rich” are getting much richer, while the merely rich are merely getting richer, new data shows.

David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal wonders if, “in Washington, on Wall Street and in global financial markets are tremors that signal a shifting of the tectonic plates that underlie the economy. “

Today’s Agenda

• Hugo Chávez calls on Vladimir Putin in Russia, where the Venezuelan president is expected to purchase a handful of diesel submarines and other military equipment.
• European business and foreign-policy heavyweights are gathering in Monaco as the annual Crans Montana Forum gets underway.
• President Bush talks terrorism at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
• A key vote in the U.S. Senate today could decide the fate of immigration reform.
• U.N. inspectors look under the hood of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor.

Yesterday on Passport

• Quotable: You cannot eat democracy
• We detain kids?
• Lugar to Bush: Revise Iraq policy or else