Tag: 4@4

1. The LA Times reports a U.S. soldier and 17 Iraqis were killed in suicide blast.

   A suicide bomber detonated explosives Sunday amid U.S. and Iraqi troops who were investigating an earlier attack. Iraqi police said nearly 20 people died, and the U.S. military said they included one American soldier.

   It was the day’s worst attack among several that occurred across Iraq, including one at a crowded bus depot in Baghdad that left four people dead.

   The bloodshed came as U.S. and Iraqi negotiators tried to finalize details of an accord laying out the future for American troops in Iraq. The pact is needed because the United Nations mandate for the U.S. presence in Iraq expires at the end of the year.

   In comments on Iraq’s Al Hurra television, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the pact “is about to be finished” and probably would be presented to parliament when lawmakers return from their summer break next month.

   Zebari said Iraq was pressing for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, but he did not give dates. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said he hopes American combat troops can be gone by the end of 2010, leaving behind only advisors and support troops.

2. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports on A solar success.

   The first time you visit The Jerrys Farm – that’s what Hicks and Neff call their place – it’s easy to get a mite confused as to just what century these guys are living in.

   Those solar panels certainly say 21st century. But the draft horses and the antique mowing machine could suggest that the two Jerrys are stuck smack in the middle of the 19th.

   You can blame Neff and Hicks for the confusion. On their little farm here they’re trying hard to combine the best of the old and the best of the new.

   The story looks at the Jerrys Farm in Kentucky, where “all the various activities on the farm are designed to mesh and work together.” It may be radical to some, but these concepts are what, I think, our future in America will look like if we are to survive. The Jerrys Farm is also online. They’ve been farming since 2003.

   Farmers are not the only ones looking at solar. The NY Times reports Giant retailers look to sun for energy savings. “The nation’s biggest store chains are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource.” Many of the big chains “installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.” Most chains have only installed panels on 10 percent of their buildings.

   Of course, the roofs of big box retailers could have solar panels on them, but what also would help out their energy bills is skylights. Why not use the sun for lighting the stores too?

Four at Four continues with bicycles on college campuses and the accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice.

1. This seems almost coordinated. The Washington Post writes Obama hits back, too softly for some. For more than the past week, John McCain has been launching “increasingly personal attacks on Obama… Such attacks have raised worries among Democratic strategists — haunted by John F. Kerry’s 2004 run and Al Gore’s razor-thin loss in 2000 — that Obama has not responded in kind with a parallel assault on McCain’s character. Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be widespread, although few wished to be quoted by name while Obama’s campaign is demanding unity.”

   The campaign strategists worry that Obama isn’t sinking to McCain’s level of nastiness and since Obama has asked liberal independent groups from running attack ads, there are few attack ads coming from the left. However, Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama’s campaign responded, “This is a classic Washington story, anonymous quotes from armchair quarterbacks with no sense of our strategy, data or plan”.

   Meanwhile, the LA Times reports Obama ready to unwind in Hawaii. “After marathon bouts of campaigning, Obama is about to relent. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is heading off for Hawaii on Friday for a break that will be his last before the November election. Weighing the political risks of leaving the continental U.S. in the middle of the campaign, Obama conceded that the timing was not the best. But he told reporters aboard his campaign plane this week that he didn’t have much choice. He’s visibly tired. Gray hairs are sprouting. Perhaps more worrisome for Obama, a new poll shows voters may be tiring of him.”

Four at Four continues with a NRA mole, green dictatorship, and tropical fish off Long Island.

1. The Miami Herald reports Brakes put on Obama gas station ads. “A Barack Obama ad ready to air at Florida gas stations that have pumps topped with TV screens was nixed at the last minute because the advertising company’s chief said it reflected poorly on the oil industry, according to the presidential candidate’s campaign.” Ouch, the people of Florida watch ads while they pump gas.

   “The ad — which can still be viewed on television in Florida and other states — is more critical of McCain than Big Oil, describing him as a Washington insider who voted against alternative energy sources and higher mileage standards. ‘Barack Obama. He’ll make energy independence an urgent national priority . . . as we break the grip of foreign oil,’ the ad says.”

   While not the ad proposed to run at Florida gas stations, I guess Big Oil wouldn’t really want to remind people of this while filling up.

2. Mishima already touched upon the story about “500: Deadly U.S. Milestone in Afghan War” this morning, but I think this graphic from the NY Times was worth highlighting.

   About this graphic: “U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan grew through the second half of 2007 and continued at the same pace this year. Combat deaths rose and more involved improvised explosive devices. These charts show deaths of soldiers directly involved in the Afghanistan war for six-month periods. The 2001 deaths are for December only.”

   A paragraph from the article: “June was the second deadliest month for the military in Afghanistan since the war began, with 23 American deaths from hostilities, compared with 22 in Iraq. July was less deadly, with 20 deaths, compared with six in Iraq. On July 22, nearly seven years after the conflict began on Oct. 7, 2001, the United States lost its 500th soldier in the Afghanistan war.”

Four at Four continues with Iraq’s parliament going to recess and shutting down climate change help to poor nations.

1. The Hill reports the White House lauds Iraq’s reconstructions efforts. “The White House on Wednesday said Iraq has taken over much of the cost for its reconstruction”.

   White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters: “They’ve already taken over a lot of their reconstruction cost, and I think the vast majority of it. They want to be able to do more, and they are doing more.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports As Iraq surplus rises, little goes into rebuilding. Whoops!

   Soaring oil prices will leave the Iraqi government with a cumulative budget surplus of as much as $79 billion by year’s end, according to an American federal oversight agency. But Iraq has spent only a minute fraction of that on reconstruction costs, which are now largely borne by the United States.

   The unspent windfall, which covers surpluses from oil sales since 2005, appears likely to reinforce growing debate about the approximately $48 billion in American taxpayer money devoted to rebuilding Iraq since the American-led invasion.

   In one comparison, the United States has spent $23.2 billion in the critical areas of security, oil, electricity and water since the 2003 invasion, the report said. But from 2005 through April 2008, Iraq has spent just $3.9 billion on similar services.

   Now of course the Democrats are up in arms about this and the ‘leadership’ has severeal stern letters ready to be sent. The Hill reports Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said, “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves… We should not be paying for Iraqi projects while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4-a-gallon gas prices in the U.S.”

2. The LA Times reports a Amputee Marine returns to combat duty in Afghanistan.

   Just over a year ago, Cpl. Garrett Jones was one of thousands of Marines slogging through a tour of duty in Iraq. Today, he is deployed with the same unit in Afghanistan, but he serves now with an unusual distinction.

   On July 23, 2007, Jones was on foot patrol near the Iraqi city of Fallouja when he was injured by a roadside bomb. After the attack, his left leg was amputated above the knee. He developed infections and fevers. His weight dropped from 175 pounds to 125. At 21, Jones faced months of painful rehabilitation and a likely end to his service in the Marine Corps.

   One year later, Jones is walking smoothly on a prosthetic leg. He not only continues to serve on active duty, but he has worked his way back to a war zone, serving with his Marine battle buddies in Afghanistan.

   In previous wars, Jones would have been given a medical discharge. But today, “the Pentagon has made it possible for some amputees to return to duty — and for a few to deploy overseas again. Advances in medical care and high-tech prostheses have enabled amputees to function far better.”

   Jones wanted to return to duty and show others what is possible for amputees. “I want to be someone an injured Marine can talk to,” he said. “And I can tell them: ‘Times will be rough and not always easy as an amputee, but you can still make great things out of an unfortunate situation.’ That’s what I want to do.”

Four at Four continues with an essay by an Iraqi journalist in America and a story about a homeless camp on a millionaires’ island near Seattle.

1. Bloomberg reports Oil falls to $118 as global economy slows and storm danger lessens. The service sectors of the U.S. and European economies are slowing down and Tropical Storm Edouard appears to be leaving the oil rigs and refineries along the Texas coast undamaged. So “Oil has lost $27 since touching a record of $147.27 a barrel in New York on July 11”.

   Additionally, “U.S. gasoline stockpiles are 3 percent above their five-year seasonal norm at 213.6 million barrels, according to the Energy Department.”

   I expect the price of oil to continue to fall until after the November election, when it will rise again in time for winter heating bills. The question is will Americans remember the high price of gasoline when they go to the polls? According to the AP, Obama links the nation’s energy troubles to Dick Cheney. Obama noted that John McCain is more concerned about oil company profits and drilling than an overall energy strategy for America. “McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook,” he said.

   Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Gas prices have applied the brakes To suburban migration.

   Cheap oil, which helped push the American Dream away from the city center, isn’t so cheap anymore. As more and more families reconsider their dreams, land-use experts are beginning to ask whether $4-a-gallon gas is enough to change the way Americans have thought for half a century about where they live…

   Even the way the government pays for roads and transit is dependent on gas taxes, which is effective only if Americans keep driving…

   Federal spending is about 4 to 1 in favor of highways over transit. Today, more than 99 percent of the trips taken by U.S. residents are in cars or some other non-transit vehicle, largely as a result of decades of such unbalanced spending.

   The policies — building so many highways and building so many houses near those highways — have had a direct bearing on how and where people live and work. More Americans, 52 percent, live in the suburbs than anywhere else. The suburban growth rate exceeded 90 percent in the past decade.

   But there’s been a radical shift in recent months. Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer highway miles in May than a year earlier. In the Washington area and elsewhere, mass transit ridership is setting records. Last year, transit trips nationwide topped 10.3 billion, a 50-year high.

   The high prices at the gas pump may be less than they were a few weeks ago, but they’re not going away unless demand dramatically falls. The days of $1 a gallon gas are gone.

   And over the weekend, the NY Times reported Shipping costs start to crimp globalization. “Cheap oil, the lubricant of quick, inexpensive transportation links across the world, may not return anytime soon, upsetting the logic of diffuse global supply chains that treat geography as a footnote in the pursuit of lower wages. Rising concern about global warming, the reaction against lost jobs in rich countries, worries about food safety and security, and the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that political and environmental concerns may make the calculus of globalization far more complex.”

Four at Four continues with yet another impeachable offense of Bush, Denver’s police state, extinction for gorillas and monkeys, and bonus story about bulletproof bras.

1. The Wall Street Journal reports that by exploiting a tax break meant for employees, Companies tap pension plans to fund executive benefits.

   At a time when scores of companies are freezing pensions for their workers, some are quietly converting their pension plans into resources to finance their executives’ retirement benefits and pay.

   In recent years, companies from Intel Corp. to CenturyTel Inc. collectively have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into rank-and-file pension plans. This lets companies capture tax breaks intended for pensions of regular workers and use them to pay for executives’ supplemental benefits and compensation.

   The practice has drawn scant notice. A close examination by The Wall Street Journal shows how it works and reveals that the maneuver, besides being a dubious use of tax law, risks harming regular workers. It can drain assets from pension plans and make them more likely to fail. Now, with the current bear market in stocks weakening many pension plans, this practice could put more in jeopardy. There is no easy way to determine which companies are taking advatage of this scheme.

   By deferring corporate executive salaries into the employee pension plan, corporations are allowing executives compensation to grow tax free. The company does not have to pay the executives and when they ‘retire’ the employee pension plan covers their deferred salary. This and other moves that allows these highly-compensated executives and corporations to skirt around paying their share of taxes.

   Generally, only the executives are aware this is being done. Benefits consultants have advised companies to keep quiet to avoid an employee backlash.

   Hat tip Paul Kiel at ProPublica.

2. The New York Daily News reports FBI was told to blame Anthrax scare on Al Qaeda by White House officials. “In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out”.

   Mueller was “beaten up” during President Bush’s morning intelligence briefings for not producing proof the killer spores were the handiwork of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, according to a former aide.

   “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East” …

   Both Bush and Cheney were applying pressure to Mueller. Hat tip TPM Muckraker.

Four at Four continues with harnessing the wind and the first new steam locomotive in Britain in nearly 50 years.

1. Alok Jha of The Guardian reports on a Cheap way to ‘split water’ that could lead to an abundant clean fuel. “Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed a catalyst made from cobalt and phosphorus that can split water at room temperature, a technique he describes in the journal Science.”

   The technique, which mimics the way photosynthesis works in plants, also provides a highly efficient way to store energy, potentially paving the way to making solar power more economically viable.

   Hydrogen is a clean, energy-rich fuel that many experts believe could become important as nations attempt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The gas can be produced by splitting water but current techniques are expensive, use harsh chemicals and need carefully controlled environments in which to operate.

   Over at Dailky Kos, Litho gives more details in Solar Energy: MIT announces major breakthrough.

2. Huricanes can actually be beneficial. From the Great Beyond at Nature, Hurricane keeps dead zone small. “The huge ‘dead zone’ of oxygen-poor water in the Gulf of Mexico failed to reach record size this year.” Because, “Hurricane Dolly stirred the dead zone like a big pot of soup, aerating water that would otherwise have been oxygenless. Thus by the time scientists finished measuring it, the zone was smaller than predicted. It should shrink further in the fall, with cooler weather, fewer algae and more storms mixing the waters.”

   More evidence of self-repair from the Earth’s natural systems?

Four at Four continues with a couple stories about climate change, trolls on the net, and a troll running for the president.

1. The Washington Post is doing its best to spin positive: U.S. economic growth improves over first quarter. “The U.S. economy grew at a healthy pace in the second quarter, the government said today… Gross domestic product rose at a 1.9 percent inflation-adjusted annual rate in the April through June period, far above what forecasters would have expected just a few months ago. It was boosted by strong exports resulting from the lower value of the dollar and rising consumer spending by Americans, who benefited from government stimulus checks.”

   Rah-rah-rah! The problem is that this assessment is more Bush administration “cook the books” ala Enron. The NY Times does a little better with G.D.P. grows at tepid 1.9% pace despite stimulus.

   The economy grew less than expected from April to June despite a huge booster shot of tax rebates, the government reported on Thursday, dimming the outlook for a quick recovery. And more bad news may lie ahead: new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to a five-year high last week…

   A little more realistic assessment from the NY Times. The article went on to point out that “the government’s tax stimulus package, which put billions of dollars into consumers’ pockets, led to only a modest rise in consumer spending, and many businesses were caught off-guard by the slowdown in sales.” No idea why businesses were surprised by this, unless they are all run by Republicans, because I suspect nearly everyone who got a stimulus bribe is using it to buy gasoline or pay bills.

   But the real news comes from The Guardian, which is a little more blunt with their headline: United States economy shrinks for first time since 2001. Bloomberg News also reports on this with U.S. Recession May Have Begun in Last Quarter of 2007.

   The U.S. economy may have slipped into a recession in the last three months of 2007 as consumer spending slowed more than previously estimated and the housing slump worsened, revised government figures indicated.

   The U.S. economy “contracted at a 0.2 percent annual pace in the fourth quarter of last year compared with a previously reported 0.6 percent gain, the Commerce Department said today in Washington… The government also said incomes grew less than previously thought” too. The Bush administration got the numbers wrong? Amazing!

   Of course the Federal Reserve is still claiming there is no inflation because they “prefer” not to include the skyrocketing cost of food and fuel.

Four at Four continues below the fold with Brazil’s booming economy, ‘oil’ from algae, and a lake on Titan.

1. Barack Obama has made this promise before, but I think it’s good that he’s repeating it. The Associated Press reports Obama pledges review of White House powers instigated by Bush. Obama promised his administration would review George W. Bush’s executive orders and excise any that “trample on liberty”.

   Obama “talked about how his attorney general is to review every executive order and immediately eliminate those that trample on liberty,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

   “He indicated there would be a review in his administration,” said Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the House majority whip…

   Obama did not indicate who his attorney general would be, or any other member of his Cabinet. To lawmakers who asked about his Cabinet plans, Obama said: “Get me elected, and then I’ll worry about the Cabinet,” according to Nadler.

   Of course this begs the question, what if Obama finds Bush’s executive orders do not “trample on liberty” and, actually, he rather likes them? Will Congress do its job this time around?

2. McClatchy Newspapers ask Does John McCain have a Cuba embargo problem? “The pending merger of American beer giant Anheuser-Busch and a Belgian company that brews and sells beer in Cuba is thrusting John McCain into the middle of thorny Cuba-U.S. relations. McCain’s wife, Cindy, owns the third largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the country – which means she would stand to profit by partnering with a company that is in business with the Cuban government.”

   Of course McCain insist there isn’t a problem, not because the ridiculous U.S. embargo of Cuba should end, but because there is a “rigid firewall” between McCain and Cindy Lou’s business. He’s a kept politican. And besides, it’s just business™.

   The real story is not Cindy Lou’s business connection to a multinational beverage company with holdings in Cuba, but Cindy Lou’s wealth and how her father made that money and the family’s ties to organized crime.

Four at Four continues with two stories about the environment from the Pacific Northwest.

1. Reuters reports that U.S. and Iraqi forces launch crackdown in restive Diyala province. “Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police launched a major security operation in northeastern Diyala province on Tuesday in the latest move by the government to stamp its authority over militants… Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops have also been carrying out extensive operations in the northern Nineveh province, where al Qaeda is blamed for numerous attacks.”

   BBC News adds, “this latest operation was generally expected but its timing was kept secret, and army and police units were brought up from Baghdad unannounced.”

2. The Washington Post reports Sen. Ted Stevens has been indicted on seven criminal counts. The Alaskan Republican entered the Senate in 1968. “The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items.”

3. The Hill reports Rep. Henry Waxman believes Blackwater ‘misled’ officials to get contracts. “The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Inspector General on Monday released a report saying that “Blackwater or its affiliates obtained … a total of 39 contracts that were set aside for small businesses even though the bidder may not have met SBA’s criteria to be considered a small business.””

   According to Waxman, Bush administration officials “ignored blatant warning signs” to award Blackwater “dozens of lucrative federal contracts” for which it was ineligible.

4. From Boom… as the NY Times reports that the Gas rush is on, and Louisianians cash in.

   A no-holds-barred, all-American gold rush for natural gas is under way in this forgotten corner of the South, and De Soto Parish, with its fat check from a large energy company this month, is only the latest and largest beneficiary. The county leaders and everyone around them, for mile after mile, over to Texas and up to Arkansas, in the down-at-the-heels city of Shreveport and in its struggling neighbors, suddenly find themselves sitting on what could prove to be the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States.

   Already, several dozen people who own parcels of land over the field are becoming instant millionaires as energy companies pay big money for the mineral rights to the gas, which like other energy sources is worth far more than it was last year.

   Jalopies are being traded in for Cadillacs, plans for swimming pools are being hatched in rusty trailers, and the old courthouse here is packed to the rafters day after day with oil company “landmen” (and women), whose job it is to frantically search the record books for the owners of the mineral rights to land that has become like gold.

   To Bust… as the Washington Post reports that a California oil field goes from rush to a reflection of global oil limits.

   In May 1899, a pair of oil prospectors wielding picks and shovels dug into a bank of the Kern River where some gooey liquid had seeped to the surface. About 45 feet down, they hit oil…

   After the discovery of oil, it took 85 years to produce the first billion barrels from the field. It took 24 more years for the next billion. And… Chevron [engineers] hope to milk out 650 million barrels or so more over the next couple of decades.

   If they succeed in retrieving those final drops, it would be an achievement of modern technology. But then all the oil that can be recovered here — the inheritance of a natural confluence of events lasting millions of years — will be gone.

   One of the really sad aspects of the Louisiana story is the “instant millionaires” rushing off to buy Cadillacs, big American gas guzzlers. With the rising cost of energy, these Louisianians are being bought off cheaply. Once the fossil fuels are gone, they’re gone.

1. Two weeks without news and, yet, the news doesn’t change. The LA Times reports Bombings in Baghdad and Kirkuk kill 57. “Violence killed 57 people and left another 280 wounded as a militant blew himself up at a Kurdish demonstration in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk and three female suicide bombers targeted Shiite pilgrims marching in Baghdad.”

   The NY Times described the attacks as “one of the bloodiest sequences of attacks in Iraq this year”. In Baghdad, the three female bombers were “apparently using their flowing black robes, known as abayas, to carry explosives past checkpoints and the Iraqi policemen”.

   While the Washington Post adds that “in Kirkuk, the tensions have arisen over a power-sharing arrangement in a draft provincial elections law that would allocate Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens equal number of seats in the governing council of Tamim province, of which Kirkuk is the capital. But the Kurds were opposed to such a distribution, as well as an item in the legislation that called for a secret ballot to decide the power-sharing arrangement. After the Kurdish lawmakers walked out Tuesday, the parliament passed the bill.”

2. Bloomberg reports the U.S. deficit to reach record $490 billion in 2009. That’s only $83 billion more than Bush said in February when he forecasted the deficit to be $407 billion.

   The shortfall reflects a deterioration of the budget over the past seven years. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001. The budget worsened almost immediately, because of recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and, later, the war in Iraq that began in March 2003.

   Bush recorded his first deficit a year after being sworn in, and it widened to the current record of $413 billion in 2004.

   Five months ago, the administration projected a shortfall of more than $400 billion this year and next, reflecting a struggling economy, and forecast a recovery to a $160 billion deficit in 2010, declining to $96 billion in 2011 and finally a $48 billion surplus in 2012…

   The current projections may understate the deficit next year because the administration hasn’t requested money to prosecute the wars for the full year, leaving that to the next president. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan now are costing about $10 billion to $12 billion a month.

   And where did our money go? Not one, but two Wars of Choice™, and according to the Washington Post, U.S. says contractor made little progress on Iraq projects. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said Parsons, a California contractor, received “$142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished”. Oh and last week, after raking in millions of dollars in Bush administration contracts, Blackwater decided to get out of the “security” business.

3. So the Washington Post reports Justice officials repeatedly broke law on hiring.

   Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general’s report released today.

   Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party, said investigators… Sampson developed a system to screen immigration judge candidates based on improper political considerations and routinely took recommendations from the White House Office of Political Affairs and Presidential Personnel, the report said.

   Goodling regularly asked candidates for career jobs: “What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?” the report said.

   So what are the Democrats going to do about this law breaking? The Hill reports Leahy rips Bush administration over DoJ politicization.

   “The policies and attitudes of this administration encouraged politicization of the department and permitted these excesses,” Leahy stated. “It is now clear that these politically rooted actions were widespread, and could not have been done without at least the tacit approval of senior Department officials.”

   Yup, you guessed it. Not a damned thing.

4. And finally, the Earth says ‘do better’ to China. The Guardian reports an Emergency anti-smog plan announced for ‘Greyjing’. “Beijing’s Olympic organisers are planning a new set of emergency measures to reduce pollution after the draconian steps introduced a week ago failed to halt a grimy haze from smothering the host city.” A clean environment cannot simply be toggled off and on.

1. The NY Times reports the OPEC leader issues a warning about Iran and the oil supply. “Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC after Saudi Arabia, produces about four million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels.”

   Abdalla Salem el-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, warned that “oil prices would experience an ‘unlimited’ increase in the event of a military conflict involving Iran”.

   “We really cannot replace Iran’s production – it’s not feasible to replace it… The prices would go unlimited,” Mr. Badri said during the interview, referring to the effect of a military conflict. “I can’t give you a number.”

2. The Guardian reports an Afghan government inquiry has concluded that a US air strike wiped out an Afghan wedding party. “A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead. Another nine people were wounded in Sunday’s attack, the head of the Afghan government investigation, Burhanullah Shinwari, said.”

   “Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan. The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed.“

3. The LA Times reports that About 33% of coral species threatened with extinction. A worldwide assessment by international group of scientists have found that 32.8%, nearly one-third, of the more than 700 coral species “face an elevated risk of extinction from global warming” and destructive fishing practices and pollution. According to the study’s co-author, marine biologist David Obura, the “loss of coral reefs could have a profound effect on more than 500 million impoverished fishermen in the tropics who rely on them to feed themselves and their families”.

4. Finally, this from BBC News — Urban farming takes root in Detroit.

   The idea is very simple: turn wasteland into free vegetable gardens and feed the poor people who live nearby.

   Motown has lost more than a million residents since its heyday in the 1950s and it is common to see downtown residential streets with just a few houses left standing.

   Taja Sevelle saw the hundreds of hectares of vacant land in the city and came up with the idea of creating an organic self-help movement that would be “affordable (and) practical”…

   Visiting one of the largest allotments, on a site that had been derelict since Detroit’s infamous 1967 riots, locals spoke about an astonishing transformation…

   “That’s one cucumber you didn’t have to pay 69 cents for,” she adds, with a smile.

   There are no fences but one local said greed had not been a problem.

   “People are only taking what they need, because they know it’s for everybody,” he said.

   NPR also has a story about this: Farms Take Root in Detroit’s Foreclosures. Transforming Motown into Growtown!

Beginning on Monday and for the following two weeks, Four at Four will hopefully be brought to you by an amazing guest editor!