1. The LA Times reports President Barack Obama, with stimulus underway, warns mayors about waste. Obama told U.S. mayors that he will use the “full power” of the White House to expose fraud or misuse of economic stimuls money.

   “If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it and put a stop to it,” Obama told the mayors, who were gathered in the White House. “And I want everybody here to be on notice … if a local government does the same. I will call them out on it and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it.”

   Meanwhile the NY Times reports Obama bans budget gimmicks Bush used. “For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.”

   Obama will budget for the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements, and natural disaster response. Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the Obama Obama administration will put the country on “a sustainable fiscal course” by the end of 2012.

Four at Four continues with the SEC may look at corporate boards, China on a natural resource buying spree, and trouble in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

1. The Globe and Mail reports Obama arrives in Canada. “President Barack Obama stepped off Air Force One for the first time in a foreign country, descending a ramp to be greeted by Canada’s Governor-General, Michäelle Jean… Overnight snow left the capital draped in white, while mild temperatures left roads and sidewalks wet and slushy ahead of the President’s drive to Parliament Hill” and his meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

   The NY Times reports that discussions on Trade and oil are on the agenda. “The United States is a major importer of Canadian oil, and Mr. Harper has been trying to win an agreement to exempt Canada’s vast tracts of oil sands, which contain up to 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil bound into sand and clay, from regulation. Mr. Obama is under intense pressure from environmentalists to resist that effort.”

   According to the CS Monitor, Obama is visiting Canada to tighten ties. “Although the two leaders are likely to find common ground on many economic issues, the controversial ‘Buy American’ clause attached to the $787 billion economic stimulus plan signed into law by the president Tuesday has been playing badly in Canada.”

   Obama hopes the strategy for Afghanistan will be one “ultimately the people of Canada can support.” However, he stopped short of “asking Canada to reconsider its plan to pull its troops out at the end of 2011.”

2. The LA Times reports More troops may be needed in Afghanistan, U.S. commander says.

   A day after President Obama ordered additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said Wednesday that he may need still more troops in coming months to bolster an intensified war effort that could last as long as five more years.

   Army Gen. David D. McKiernan plans to use the 17,000 soldiers and Marines Obama authorized to try to break an impasse in fighting with the Taliban in the southern part of the country…

   McKiernan said that last year he had forecast the need for an additional 30,000 troops for 2009 and beyond. The 17,000 ordered Tuesday, combined with the earlier assignment of an Army brigade of about 3,500 from the 10th Mountain Division, provides two-thirds of the need, he said.

   Defense War Secretary Robert Gates thinks in addition to sending more U.S. troops, U.S. “allies must do more as well.” There is still no clear goal for the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan.

Four at Four continues with Israel’s reaction to the nuclear programs in Iran and Syria, and the shoe-throwing journalist’s day in Iraqi court.

1. The CS Monitor reports Obama’s order to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan comes before the US has set a clear strategy. “President Obama’s decision to deploy 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan may be a defining move that will either reverse the deteriorating situation there or mire the new administration in a war with no foreseeable end.”

   “This is the beginning of an almost unending need,” says one Pentagon official.

   “It is as yet unclear exactly what the new force will do. But it will face a determined insurgency operating in a vast, mountainous country… At the same time, the Obama administration still has not settled on a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and does not yet know its endgame.”

   Plus the NY Times reports Obama’s war on terror may resemble Bush’s in some areas. Despite abandoning the Bush administration’s policy of torture, “Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone. The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the ‘state secrets’ doctrine.”

2. From The Guardian a climate twofer. First the bad news: Melt-pools are ‘accelerating Arctic ice loss’, “New research has revealed that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster rate than computer models had previously predicted.” Since melt-pools “are darker than ice and snow, they absorb solar radiation rather than reflect it, which accelerates the melting process.”

   And some good news: a Fifth of world carbon emissions are soaked up by extra forest growth. “Trees across the tropics are getting bigger and offering unexpected help in the fight against climate change, scientists have discovered… Simon Lewis, a climate expert at the University of Leeds, who led the study, said: ‘We are receiving a free subsidy from nature. Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18% of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of change.'”

Four at Four continues with whear stem rust, wind turbines in Alaska, and the Blackwater mercenaries trial.

“Latin America’s Document-Driven Revolutions” is an interesting article at the Washington Post – interesting because of the subject and because of how ripe it is with pro-American imperialism propaganda with no sense of irony.

From the introductory paragraph:

Once a product of armed rebellion, the revolution in Latin America today is taking place on paper in the form of new constitutions, a mostly peaceful process influenced by the work of European legal scholars who have played a behind-the-scenes role in drafting the populist documents.

The U.S. has long meddled in Latin America and has backed those violent means of change. While Europeans have opted to contribute to a more peaceful path. Of course, Europe has a violent history in Latin America too… it goes back a bit father than the Monroe Doctrine.

What was done?

1. McClatchy reports the Stimulus is only beginning of Obama’s economic plan. “This week will be a pivotal one for President Barack Obama and the U.S. economy… Obama will hear from automakers Tuesday on how they’ll restructure to get more taxpayer bailout money. Then he’ll sign a $787 billion stimulus bill in Denver and fly to Phoenix, where on Wednesday he’ll unveil how his administration will spend at least $50 billion of Wall Street rescue money to begin halting mortgage foreclosures nationwide.” Also this week, the Treasury Department will provide more details on the $100 billion plan for the bank’s toxic assets.

   ProPublica is assembling a State-by-state breakdown of the economic stimulus plan. As of now, they have found breakdowns for school districts, transportation and infrastructure, and an estimate of jobs that will be created. States with high unemployment states are getting shafted.

   And Politico reports as part of the stimulus, Obama plots huge railroad expansion. The stimulus bill “dedicates $8 billion to high-speed rail, most of which was added in the final closed-door bargaining at the instigation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.” And, “when Obama outlines his 2010 budget next week, it will ask for $1 billion more for high-speed rail in each of the next five years.”

   According to Emanuel: “The president wanted to have a signature issue in the bill, his commitment for the future.” (Hat tip Jerome a Paris.)

   While the Obama administration and Democrats’ plan to restart the U.S. economy is about to get rolling, the NY Times reports the Dow nears its lowest level in a decade. “Analysts said investors were still nervous about the Treasury Department’s plans to shore up the financial system and help remove billions of dollars in troubled mortgage-related assets from the balance sheets of major banks.”

Four at Four continues with Iraq corruption and stacks of cash, new constitutions in South America, and coal is death.

1. The LA Times reports Missiles hit compound in Pakistan. “In the most lethal such strike since President Obama took office, suspected U.S. missiles today slammed into a compound near the Afghanistan border, killing about 30 people, by the count of local officials. Most of those killed were thought to be militants linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. The wrecked compound belonged to an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement, and was not far from Mehsud’s own headquarters.”

2. The NY Times reports Pakistan agrees to Islamic law in the Swat Region. “Pakistan government officials said they struck a deal on Monday to accept a legal system compatible with Shariah law in the violent Swat region in return for peace. The agreement contradicted American demands for the Pakistan authorities to fight harder against militants, and seemed certain to raise fears in Washington that a perilous precedent had been set across a volatile region where U.S. forces are fighting Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

3. The LA Times reports that a Conflicted Russia gives and takes on Afghanistan. “Russia seems to have a message for the Obama administration: Go ahead and boost your military effort in Afghanistan — but not without our help… Moscow has sent out increasingly broad offers to open its territory for transport. Last week Russia’s foreign minister even dangled the possibility of transporting weaponry to Afghanistan.”

4. The Guardian reports Terror suspects were tortured in Pakistan under UK policy. “A number of British terrorism suspects who have been detained without trial in Pakistan say they were tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by MI5… The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident currently held in Guantánamo Bay.”

5. Lastly, the Washington Post reports the CIA helped India and Pakistan share secrets in a probe of Mumbai siege. “The CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters… ‘Intelligence has been a good bridge,’ the U.S. official said. ‘Everyone on the American side went into this with their eyes open, aware of the history, the complexities, the tensions. But at least the two countries are talking, not shooting.'”

1. The LA Times reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein says missile-strike Predator planes are based in Pakistan. According to the Democratic senator from California, “unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.” This is the first disclosure “a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.”

2. The NY Times reports President Obama’s special envoy arrives in Afghanistan. “One day after a coordinated series of Taliban suicide attacks in Kabul”, Richard Holbrooke has arrived in Kabul. Security forces are on high alert, because “a Taliban spokesman claimed eight bombers remained at large in the city and were still ‘looking for a chance.'”

   Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reports at least Five children were killed in a battle. “Five children were killed in a night-time gun battle involving Australian special forces in Afghanistan, the Defence Force said yesterday. The battle, which also resulted in the death of a Taliban fighter and injuries to two children and two adults, comes amid a rising civilian toll in the eight-year-old war and marks a further setback for efforts to win local support against the insurgency.”

3. The Washington Post reports a Suicide bomber kills at least 35 on Iraqi pilgrimage route. “A woman wearing a vest rigged with explosives killed at least 35 Shiite pilgrims Friday morning at a checkpoint south of Baghdad… The attack was the deadliest in Iraq this year and marked the third consecutive day of bloodshed against Shiite pilgrims en route to Karbala… At least 67 people, mostly women and children, were wounded in the blast”.

4. ProPublica has A detailed list of the spending in the economic stimulus plan that the House approved today on a largely party-line vote. According to the Washington Post, the “Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the stimulus plan at $787.2 billion over 10 years”.

A bonus story about Neanderthals is below the fold.

1. The LA Times reports the FBI expects number of major financial bailout fraud cases to rise. FBI officials told Congress they do not have the resources to combat fraud with the $1 trillion plus bailout.”

   Top FBI and Justice Department officials said they believed mortgage fraud and other types of corporate criminal behavior has contributed to the economic tailspin. And they said they already have more than 2,300 open investigations into suspected illegal financial activity — including 38 probes specifically linked to the crisis…

   But the problems will worsen exponentially as the economy plunges, and as the Obama administration and Congress spend more than $1 trillion in various bailout and stimulus packages in an effort to forestall foreclosures, corporate bankruptcies and a prolonged economic depression, they said.

2. The Miami Herald reports Judge OK’s use of Guantánamo forced-feeding chair. U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler accepted “the Pentagon’s argument that its forced-feeding regime is humane.” 35 people at Guantánamo “were being force-fed through a regime that has guards strap a shackled captive into a chair and Velcro his head to a metal restraint. Camp staff then tether a tube through the man’s nose and down to his stomach to pump in a protein shake twice a day. Each feeding lasts about an hour.”

Four at Four continues with the 2002 Invasion of The Hague Act, Pakistan admits Mumbai attacks partially planned in Pakistan, and the Neanderthal genome.

1. The Washington Independent reports ACLU lawsuit tests Obama openness policies.

   This week, the Obama administration will face its second significant courtroom test of the president’s pledges to end unwarranted secrecy about the workings of the federal government. At stake is a set of documents that could expose intentional lawbreaking by senior Bush officials.

   While concealing them would seem to contradict Obama’s much-heralded promise of a new era of open government, revealing them could make it virtually impossible for the new administration to refuse to investigate potential criminal conduct by the Bush administration, something the new administration has sought to avoid.

   The case, American Civil Liberties Union v. Department of Justice, has been going on for five years now, with the ACLU battling the Bush administration to turn over documents sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act that would reveal crucial information about the development of policies regarding treatment of detainees in the “war on terror” and could help determine whether Bush officials broke domestic and international law.

2. The CS Monitor reports President Obama stalls Bush drilling plans. “President Obama is making good on campaign promises to move toward a comprehensive approach to US energy and to broaden environmental protections.”

   The LA Times has details on the Obama administration’s most recent move: Expanded offshore drilling is on hold. “Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he will extend public comments for six months on a last-minute proposal by the Bush administration to open swaths of the California, Alaska, Atlantic and Gulf coasts for drilling.” He also promised to “speed development of offshore wind farms”.

   The Monitor adds “also last week, the Justice Department said it is withdrawing a US Supreme Court appeal filed by the Bush administration against a court ruling governing mercury emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.”

Four at Four continues with attacks in Afghanistan, bombings in Iraq, and MORE MONEY FOR PAKISTAN!

1. McClatchy reports the ‘shocking’ news that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said: Financial system working against recovery. “Geithner said that federal bank regulators would be empowered to conduct “stress tests” on banks to determine their financial health. These tests could lead to moves to close banks before their problems worsen and compound the economic slowdown.”

   “Instead of catalyzing recovery, the financial system is working against recovery,” he said. “And at the same time, the recession is putting greater pressure on banks. This is a dangerous dynamic, and we need to arrest it. It is essential for every American to understand that the battle for economic recovery must be fought on two fronts. We have to both jump-start job creation and private investment, and we must get credit flowing again to businesses and families.”

   According to the Financial Times, Geithner’s “‘financial stability plan’ will create a new ‘bad bank’– style public-private partnership, which will bring in private money with the initial aim of buying $500bn-worth of distressed assets from banks.” If necessary, the bad bank would buy up to $1 trillion ‘worth’ of the black hole.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Geithner said to have prevailed on the bailout.

   In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials…

   He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

   While last night, President Obama gave his first press conference. According to the LA Times, Obama paints picture of Republican adversaries.

   Again and again in his prime-time news conference Monday, Obama painted his GOP adversaries as well beyond the mainstream. Some, he said, do not see any role at all for government in helping avoid an economic meltdown.

   “In fact, there are several who have suggested that FDR was wrong to intervene back in the New Deal,” he said, referring to President Franklin Roosevelt, the hero of the Great Depression. “They’re fighting battles that I thought were resolved a pretty long time ago.”

   At another point, he implied that his opponents wanted to stand by idly and watch the nation decline: “Do you just want government to do nothing, or do you want it to do something?”

   Me? I want the government to do something smart and different. Ya know. Change? Geithner’s plan seems like warmed-over Bush.

Four at Four continues with Bush cronism outlast Obama’s 1st term, Iran seeks improving U.S. relations, and plenty of jobs with wind power.

1. The Guardian reports High winds slash Spanish energy prices. “Spain has built so many wind farms in recent years that the arrival of high winds and the subsequent surge of electricity into the national grid now has an immediate impact on the price at which it is sold… Spain added another 11% to its wind-power capacity last year. That increase contributed to a year in which wind power accounted for 43% of new generation capacity – more new electricity capacity in Europe than any other source.”

   In a somewhate related story, The Economist adds Spain plans the most extensive high-speed rail network in Europe.

   New passengers reflect a revolution in Spanish travel. Domestic airlines have lost a fifth of their passengers in the space of a year. And long-distance trains have gained almost a third.

   This shift is the consequence of an ambitious programme for high-speed rail. The streamlined AVE trains, with their sleek corridors, work tables and spectacular views, are stealing the show. Those used to the tedious taxi rides, security checks and crowded shuttle flights traditionally endured by Spanish businessmen will not be surprised. The opening of the Barcelona-Madrid line a year ago marked the beginning of the end of airlines’ dominance…

   Spain’s high-speed network is still in its infancy. Another 9,000km of lines are planned over the next decade. The aim is to create Europe’s most extensive high-speed network, with 90% of Spaniards living within 50km of a station.

   Imagine what a country can do when it pulls out of stupid money and life wasting wars!?

2. Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A. The Washington Post reports the National security team Delivers a grim appraisal of Afghanistan war. “U.S. officials said more troops were urgently needed, both from America and its NATO allies, to counter the increasing strength of the Taliban and warlords opposed to the central government in Kabul. They also said new approaches were needed to untangle an inefficient and conflicting array of civilian-aid programs that have wasted billions of dollars.”

   And the NY Times adds President Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, says Afghan war ‘tougher than Iraq’. “It’s going to be a long, difficult struggle,” he said. Plus, the U.S. is risking the future of NATO by continuing the war in Afghanistan.

3. Surprise! Another Republican trojan horse. The $15,000 tax credit won’t help low-income home buyers, experts say, reports the LA Times. “To take full advantage of the credit, buyers would have to earn enough to use it and spend at least $150,000 on a home… Since the money comes as a deductible tax credit spread over two years, home buyers must earn enough to have $7,500 in income taxes — $81,900 per year for a family of four to get the full benefit, according to the housing coalition.”

   And according to Bloomberg News, U.S. taxpayers risk $9.7 trillion on bailout programs. “The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.”

4. Change in Iran? The LA Times reports a Former Iranian president declares candidacy. “Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami announced Sunday that he will run as a candidate in the June 12 election, setting up a challenge to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that could alter Iran’s domestic and foreign policies… Throughout his two terms, Khatami sought a detente with the West.”