Billy Bob's Bulletins -- June 6, 2006

The devil's day: 666

No Escaping Iraq Violence (LAT)

Clad in camouflage uniforms, the gunmen came peeling through the thick morning heat in police trucks. They stopped at a downtown strip of travel companies where Iraqis gather each morning to board buses bound for the safer lands of Syria and Jordan.

The gunmen leaped to the ground, witnesses said, and they worked fast. They seized more than 50 bystanders, pulling men away from their families and hauling drivers from behind the wheels of the buses. They handcuffed the men, blindfolded them and stuffed them into the backs of the trucks like human loot. They covered some of their captives with sheets. And then they were gone.

Iran Seems Open to Incentives Package (LAT)

Iranian officials signaled Monday that they would look seriously at a package of incentives world powers are offering the country if it will suspend its nuclear program.

U.S. Is Offering Deals on Trade to Entice Iran (NYT)

The European Union's foreign policy director, Javier Solana, arrived in Tehran on Monday night with incentives intended to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, including a proposal to allow Iran to upgrade its aging civilian air fleet through the purchase of aircraft parts from an American company, Boeing.

Minor Figure in Iraqi Kidnapping Gets a Life Sentence (NYT)

A judge imposed a life sentence on Monday on a man who apparently played a minor role in the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi aid worker whose disappearance and death showed that no one was immune from insurgent viciousness.

Abbas Will Put Two-State Issue to a Vote of Palestinians (WaPo)

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas decided early Tuesday to hold a referendum to determine whether Palestinians favor creating a state on territory Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. He made his decision after talks with the rival Hamas movement failed to result in a political consensus on the question.

And then, a propos of this -- Senate Debates Measure to Ban Gay Marriage -- there is this from Tony Auth: