Apocalypse, soon. Here we have on the front pages of the three-day weekend all four of the requisite horsemen.

Conquest We have invaded and taken over Afghanistan and Iraq -- especially, Iraq -- where we are the new rulers, after a fashion.

A shortage of money is hampering the U.S.-led effort to rebuild Iraq, and American taxpayers may end up footing a much larger bill than they expect, according to members of Congress and top U.S. officials in Baghdad.

War. A "revered cleric" -- Is here ever any other kind? Oh, that's right, there was Jimmy Swaggart. -- is killed at the war in place is predicted to worsen.

The killing of Ayatollah Hakim, the country's most prominent Shia cleric, has been likened to murdering the Pope, but it's more serious than that because popes these days have little real influence.
Ayatollah Hakim was also head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the leading Shia political organisation. A better comparison would be the murder of the Austrian archduke that sparked the first world war.

Famine. European heat wave puts starvatiuon on the menu. Noises off stage: 'But there is no so such thing as global warning! Monsanto said so.'

The damage has been most severe in Eastern Europe, which is now bringing in its worst wheat crop in three decades: in Ukraine, the harvest has been cut from 21 million tons last year to five million, while Romania has its worst crop on record. Germany is the worst-hit EU country: some farmers in the south-east have lost half their grain harvest. Official British figures will not be published until October.

Death. In the form of pestilence, as well as depleted uranium weapons. And not just in the Middle East.

Central China's Henan province is a specter that haunts the new leadership in Beijing. Henan became the focus of global attention in 2001, when overseas media reported an HIV epidemic in the rural province of more than 95 million. Henan's HIV epidemic, unlike SARS, was in essence spread by local officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who were making heaps of cash from illegal blood banks in the late 1980s and early '90s. They were making so much money from these unregulated and unsanitary "clinics" that they dubbed blood banks Henan's "third industry". In poor rural areas in Henan, locals were encouraged to sell their plasma to the numerous operations throughout the province. Unfortunately, employees at the blood banks either didn't know or didn't care about spreading HIV, as evidenced by the repeated use of individual needles on donor after donor. The inevitable result of such actions was an HIV explosion among people who could not afford health care even if they were lucky enough to have access to it.

And to think: we haven't even gotten to Liberia, India, Aceh or Colombia.