June 2008

FOX Business travels to the heart of America to bring you the stories from the flood. ... read more

They're calling this a 500 year flood. I also covered the 1993 Mississippi flooding, which was also called the 500 year flood. My understanding of a 500 year flood is that it comes once every 500 years. Not sure who is doing the arithmetic but something does not compute. I talked to the mayor of Muscatine, Iowa, Dick O'Briden, about this today as I stood hip deep in floodwater in downtown ... read more

This is my first blog. Blog, who came up with that name, blog, blogging, blogger. Anyway, natural disasters are tough stories. Hard to navigate, hard to be fully accurate and extremely easy to blow out of proportion. The weather events in the Midwest may have real influence on the price of food, American exporting, railroad shipping and not to mention truck shipping because virtually all the ... read more

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6:48 p.m. I am standing at the front of my vehicle, laptop on the hood of the car; mosquitoes are swarming me as I swat them away and the sound of clean up in downtown Cedar Rapids is deafening. There are three guys about twenty feet away tossing drenched sandbags into the back of a pick-up truck as a generator pumps water out of their business. They own a gift card shop, looked like it was nice ... read more

I've covered most of the big floods and every major hurricane of the past 25 years and my experience is that despite our best efforts, the coverage never fully conveys how bad it is. We can give you the numbers, like the 9 square miles and 1300 blocks of Cedar Rapids under water. We can broadcast a live tour of a flood victim's house as we did today. Or, like we did earlier this week along the ... read more

5:25pm Today I write from Iowa City. Home of the University of Iowa and if I remember correctly one hell of a party school. That’s just what I heard. The campus smells like a pig farm. Seriously, I am not kidding with you. Anyone who has ever been to a pig farm will understand. But, for those of you wondering, let me explain. You see, a pig farm is usually in a rural, less traveled region ... read more

There are lots of reporters and crews out in the flood zone. But we like to try and tell you something you don't already know or show you something you haven't already seen. I think that's what you'll get in our Fox Business News Special: "Mud, Sweat and Tears: Stories from the Flood," which airs this weekend on the Fox Business Network. Here is a sneak peak at a few characters you'll ... read more

After leaving the London rain behind us, my producer Lauren Bedsole and I are sitting in the Frankfurt, Germany airport waiting for our next flight to Saudi Arabia and the oil summit in Jeddah. We are truly flying into the unknown, to a meeting of some of the world's biggest oil producers and consumers who hope to find a way to cool down the surging crude oil market. The morning newspapers are ... read more

The day of the hurriedly assembled oil summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is upon us and for the hundreds of journalists from all over the world who are here to cover the event the big question remains... will it matter? We've already heard from U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman who says OPEC has to open the taps to help relieve a tight market that has pushed crude oil prices as high as $140 a barrel. ... read more