Morning News Roundup (27 July)

• The United Nations post where four peacekeepers were killed by Israeli fire Tuesday was hit at least 16 times over six hours, including five direct hits on the base as its unarmed staff repeatedly notified Israeli liaison officers and begged for help.
  
  U.N. officials who briefed reporters here said the attack began about 1:20 p.m. Radio contact with the post was lost about 7:30 p.m. During those hours, U.N. officials made at least half a dozen calls to top officials at the Israeli mission to the U.N. to seek an end to the attack, a senior U.N. official said. Additional calls were made to the Israeli military by U.N. generals on the ground demanding that the Israelis hold their fire.
  
  The calls went unheeded and the fire continued even when a U.N. rescue mission was underway after a direct hit on the observer post. [LATimes]
  
  
• Israel says Wednesday's decision by key world powers not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive has given it the green light to continue. At least 423 Lebanese and 51 Israelis have died in the violence since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July. [BBC]
  
  
• Israeli strikes killed 23 people in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including 16 militants and a mother and her two young daughters, in the deadliest day of fighting since Israel withdrew from the coastal strip last year. The violence, in which Palestinians said 76 people were wounded, came as Israel was embroiled in another deadly battle on its northern border with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. [AP/Detroit Free Press]
  
  
• The bird flu hysteria that gripped the world's media outlets and health organizations has been subsiding for some time now. It's been a number of years since the first panicked reports of the H5N1 virus emerged. Sure, this week Thailand registered its first bird flu fatality this year, but the virus hasn't mutated into a form that can be transmitted between humans and the world hasn't suffered an avian influenza pandemic. And now, it looks like the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline may have created a cheap vaccine. [Foreign Policy's Passport]
  
  
• A former Indian intelligence official said the U.S. nuclear deal with India “will allow India to produce 50 more nuclear warheads a year than it can now, by freeing up existing uranium reserves for military use.” Meanwhile, the House overwhelmingly approved the deal and “rejected amendments that aimed to curb India’s nuclear weapons program.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• After months of fevered lobbying and bitter debate, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance yesterday requiring “big box” stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, along with at least $3 an hour worth of benefits. The ordinance, imposing the requirement on stores that occupy more than 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing more than $1 billion annually, would be the first in the country to single out large retailers for wage rules.
  
  Wal-Mart’s response to the Council’s action was swift and blunt. “It’s sad — this puts politics ahead of working men and women,” John Simley, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “It means that Chicago is closed to business.” [NYTimes]
  
  
• Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's second-largest oil company, said Thursday its second-quarter earnings jumped 40 percent as high oil prices offset production difficulties in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico. Net profit rose to $7.32 billion from $5.24 billion a year earlier. Sales rose less than 1 percent to $83.1 billion from $82.6 billion. [WaPo]
  
  Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record. [WaPo]
  
  
• The government is failing to reduce health risks from toxic air pollution as required by law, congressional investigators said Wednesday. The Environmental Protection Agency has not met 30 percent of the Clean Air Act's requirements and regularly misses deadlines, they said.
  [...]
  The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the EPA largely has failed to regulate air pollutants from small sources, including dry cleaners and trucks. The GAO report said the EPA has not yet met 239 of the law's requirements; of those the agency did fulfill, only 12 were met on time. [ENN]
  
  
• Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water that appears to be triggered by global warming, scientists say. The area is larger and more deadly than in past years, and there are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
  [...]
  "We are seeing wild swings from year to year in the timing and duration of the winds that are favorable for upwelling," Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine ecology at Oregon State and a member of the Pew Oceans Commission, said from Corvallis. "This increased variability in the winds is consistent with what we would expect under climate change." [AP/MyWay]
  
  
• The Government of Northern Ireland is proposing changes to the Building Regulations which will make the use of renewable energy compulsory in all new buildings from 2008, according to Secretary of State Peter Hain MP.
  
  The changes, which all apply to all new homes, company and public buildings, will make micro-generation, such as solar panels to heat hot water, solar photovoltaic panels on roofs to generate electricity or small wind turbines for houses, mandatory in less than two years. [Green Car Congress]
  
  
• And finally... “Following on the heels of daily papers in Augusta, Ga., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a weekly in Greensboro, N.C., has decided to drop Ann Coulter’s regular column.” The paper explained reader feedback showed approval for “cutting her column at a ratio of two to one. And numbers don’t lie (unless, some would say, they’re being wielded by Ann Coulter).” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  Couldn't happen to a nicer woman.