The City Council is set to vote on lifting term limits for their seats and Mayor Bloomberg on Thursday afternoon beginning at 1:30pm.

WNYC News is carrying the vote live online, at www.wnyc.org. You’ll see a special link on our home page.

PLUS: Earlier in the day at 10:06am, Brian Lehrer will host a conversation about Mayor Bloomberg’s plan with City Council members Rosie Mendez (CON) and Oliver Koppell (PRO).

The Brian Lehrer Show can be heard on WNYC 93.9FM, AM820, and on-demand at www.wnyc.org

David Bukszpan, WNYC’s publicist, always lets me know what’s going on at my favorite radio station. Today he’s up early getting the word out about the new morning show, The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji, which just premiered on WNYC from 6-7am on 93.9FM.

Luckily, a second fresh hour is will air from 8-9am on AM820. That’s just one minute away. He writes:

The sky’s may be dark and dreary in New York this morning, but the radio’s bright and fresh! The Takeaway is a co-production of WNYC and PRI, in collaboration with The BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.

I am about to listen to it. Excited. Excited.

ON WNYC YESTERDAY:

NEW YORK, NY February 14, 2007 —In a world full of brands – New York City is putting its name on an old fashioned product…a condom!

REPORTER: The city’s health department unveiled the NYC brand condom and handed 150,000 out to commuters this morning. It will continue to make them free from now on in an attempt to prevent HIV and other STDs.

REPORTER: Brooklynite Melena Gillard wonders if the condom will incorporate known landmarks on the packaging or design:

GILLARD: “Is it going to look like the Chrysler Building? its got a Chrysler building reservoir tip feature…(laugh) that makes it extremely desirable to who? I don”t know”

REPORTER: New York City is the first city in the country to have its own brand of condom.

Last week we heard that the death toll in the Iraq War may be as high as 600,000 people. And now it looks like October may be the deadliest month yet.

Ten more American soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past 24 hours, raising the death
toll for October to 69. The Muslim season of Ramadan has been violent
in each of the four years U.S. troops have been in Iraq. We never hear the daily Iraqi civilian death toll but we can only imagine…

From NPR:

But
this year, as American troops get more involved in the struggle for
control of Baghdad, they are increasingly caught in a crossfire between
Shiite and Sunni militias gunning for one another.

The
deadliest month for American troops in the war was November of 2004,
when 137 died, most of them fighting to recapture Falluja.

But
as a more complex battle rages within the Iraqi capital, military
analyst John Pike says October may see casualties again approaching
that level.

"October, at the rate we’re at now," Pike
says, "it looks like there will be well over 100 Americans killed in
action and well over one-thousand wounded this month."

Continue reading OCTOBER WILL BE THE DEADLIEST MONTH FOR AMERICANS IN IRAQ. →

Anne Garrels had a story this morning on NPR about poets in Baghdad:

A Shiite from the slums of Sadr City, where he lives in two cramped
rooms with several other family members, Hussein writes about a
homeland that is on the verge of disintegrating. His poetry is at once
a eulogy for Iraq, and a call for its salvation:

Peace for you, oh land of civilization, our vow is to you and will forever be, till the last breath.

Hussein’s poetry is laced with grief.

"Even if we want to write love poems, we would be fooling ourselves, because sadness haunts everything," he says.

Another poet, Sadiq Hattab, finds consolation in his imagination:

To escape from this troubled reality, the reality of explosions, if only for a few hours.