Welcome to First Look, our daily roundup of early-bird news:

• The DREAM Act narrowly passed the House yesterday, but its Senate prospects look dim. (Washington Post)

• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg joins 16 tycoons in pledging to give away most of his wealth. (Wall Street Journal)

• Unhappy Democrats say the tax cut compromise will pass as Senate debate begins today. (AP)

Here's our rundown of stories that evaded the full-on blog treatment today:

• The Supreme Court is mulling whether Arizona's effort to revoke the licenses of businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants violates federal law. (Washington Post)

• Haitian protesters, some brandishing sticks and setting fires, are railing against the official results of their country's recent presidential elections, charging that the vote count is illegitimate. (Wall Street Journal)

• George H.W. Bush is the latest establishment Republican to come out in favor of the Obama administration's New START nuclear arms accord with Russia. (Huffington Post)

In the months since the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf back in April, there's been no shortage of high-profile players in the disaster eagerly affixing someone else with the blame for the whole mess. However, here's a new one: A Halliburton employee working on the rig took a 10-minute smoke break, and in doing so may have missed critical warning signs that a catastrophe was in the offing.

Joseph E. Keith, a senior unit manager for Halliburton, told a U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department panel in Houston that he left his post on the night of the explosion to get some coffee and smoke a cigarette. Keith said that during his absence, pressure data would have given indications that the well was filling with natural gas and oil. Since he never saw that information, he was unable to warn the 11 workers who lost their lives in the explosion to vacate the rig floor.

"Without someone watching those crucial data points, the people working on the rig had no way of knowing something was