A property–tax increase for parks and green spaces will be on the November 4th ballot in Seattle. The levy will cost the average homeowner about $83 a year for six years. How do you use Seattle parks? Are you satisfied with your parks? Will you vote for the tax increase?

Perhaps you walk to your city park. Is it safe? There's going to be a public forum on pedestrian safety at city hall tonight. We'll talk to city council member Nick Licata, who's sponsoring the event. It's an issue of personal interest to Licata. His stepson was seriously injured while walking to catch a school bus.

And sewage from the Edgewater Hotel was spilling into Elliott Bay because of a broken pipe. How does this happen?

With the Olympics less than three weeks away, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh sure looked like America’s golden girls again at the Coney Island AVP Brooklyn Open.

The top-seeded beach volleyball duo defeated Jennifer Boss and April Ross, 21-14, 21-15, in the finals yesterday. The defending Olympic champions have won 17 straight tournaments and 96 consecutive matches.

The pair couldn’t be peaking at a better time. “We’re pretty good with staying really simple,” Walsh said, “but now we’re getting creative and working on that aspect and really trying to play head games with people."

South Korea has rejected a Japanese proposal to hold bilateral talks on the status of a disputed group of islets in the Sea of Japan, roughly halfway between the two countries.Japanese officials had suggested talks could be held on the sidelines of a regional security meeting scheduled for next week.

The offer followed escalating tensions over the island's following the recent publication of Japanese teaching manuals reiterating Japan's claim to the disputed territory.On Thursday protesters in Seoul staged a bloody demonstration outside the Japanese embassy, slaughtering live pheasants – Japan's national bird – on the street.

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In some ways it's like any other small seaside town gearing up for summer: the hedgerow is trimmed, the wainscoting freshly painted. But the shelves of the local markets tell a different story: they're stockpiled with Beluga caviar, black truffles and bottles of Bollinger.

There are two very different sides to the 17th-century towns – Bridgehampton, Southampton, East Hampton, Amagansett, Montauk and Sag Harbor – that make up the Hamptons. And you can choose the one that suits you best: unpretentious, small-town American values fostered by local farmers, shopkeepers and craftsmen; or fanciful, decadent and flash. Here's how to do it:

After an electricity transformer accident left Bulgarian resort of Slunchev Bryag (Sunny Beach) without power for several hours on July 5, hotel owners in the resort now fear that more of the same is to follow, Dnevnik daily reported on July 7.

Slunchev Bryag was not the only one affected by the power cut, the resort towns of Nessebur and Pomorie struggling to cope with its consequences as well.

"We made every effort to make do with electricity generators, but they were not enough to secure the necessary quantity of electricity. The power cut had a very negative effect on us," Dnevnik quoted Elenite holiday village manager Vladimir Demirev as saying.

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The home of a Town Center restaurant owner was engulfed with towering flames early Friday morning, leaving behind a charred house and a lingering stench of burnt wood along East Mercer Way as Islanders began to celebrate their Fourth of July holiday.

The burned home belongs to Bennent's Pure Food Bistro owners Kurt and Leslie Dammeier and their three children. The Dammeier's waterfront home is located at 3854 East Mercer Way. Reached on his cell phone while driving back to the Island, Dammeier said his wife, oldest son Max and their dog were in the home at the time the fire broke out.

"I was actually heading to a baseball tournament in Olympia with my two younger kids," said Dammeier. "We had left just 10 minutes before it happened."

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Are soaring gasoline prices and rising tolls forcing drivers to take mass transit to work?

Recent Port Authority figures indicate that may be the case.

Use of the Hudson River and Staten Island crossings dropped by more than 400,000 drivers for the month of May, the Star-Ledger is reporting. In New Jersey, that decline has been met with increases in ridership on trains and buses.

On a typical May day, the use of the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, and the George Washington, Goethals, Bayonne and the Outerbridge Crossing totaled about 348,000 vehicles, a 3.8 percent drop from numbers a year earlier, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.

A grand social experiment begins today in New York as four man-made waterfalls start their cascades around the East River.

More than just pretty moving postcards,The New York City Waterfalls'' are up to 120 feet high and located below the Brooklyn Bridge, between Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn, at Pier 35 off Chinatown and off the north shore of Governors Island.

The falls challenge the corrosive power of everyday indifference, said their creator, Olafur Eliasson. Bear with him on this, the Berlin-based, Danish-Icelandic artist begged during a talk at the Bloomberg New York offices yesterday.

Eliasson, 41, laid out a trajectory from noisy spectacle to wide-scale social change. Though New York is an island city surrounded by water, he said, its monuments are bridges and skyscrapers. The crashing water of the falls draws attention to the river and harbor and helps reveal scale, distance and the constantly changing nature of, well, everything.

Standardization and routine may be necessary, said the artist, but a static environment promotes indifference.

The world is not a neutral platform, where I put a sculpture on a pedestal,'' Eliasson said.There is the idea that a waterfall is relative to how you see it what memories you have, what expectations you have. That complex system is what constitutes art. If I succeed, people will be taking back something by having engaged in what they just saw.

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A new 12 square kilometre island city being developed on land reclaimed from the sea in Bahrain's Al Muharraq area at a total investment of $3.2 billion was unveiled earlier this week by a consortium of investors led by Kuwait Finance House (KFH).

KFH holds a 50 per cent stake in the consortium, called Diyar Al Muharraq, comprising a number of high net worth investors from the region. It will be building the residential township, which will have around 30,000 housing units for over 100,000 people.

Aaref Hejres, CEO of Diyar Al Muharraq, said: "Diyar Al Muharraq is signalling a new era and a proud future for Bahrain as it provides the stepping stone to meet all people's aspirations of property ownership. It will embody the best of what people expect and deserve in both a home and a community."

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Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls are designed to encourage New Yorkers to value their waterfront, writes Carol Vogel.

ON A cold and rainy afternoon, Olafur Eliasson is huddled under a large umbrella in lower Manhattan, gazing down the East River toward Governors Island.

It seems fitting that the Danish-Icelandic artist, famous for creating his own weather systems, is enveloped in a misty landscape that could well be of his own making.

Eliasson has travelled straight from the airport to Pier 35 on the East River after flying in from his home and studio in Berlin. A familiar presence at this site in recent months, he has visited every two weeks to check on the progress of his New York City Waterfalls.

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