cron task problem

What is the result of the following command? If there is more than one number listed then cron is running more than once which could cause this problem.

pgrep -l cron

By 'I have 4 tasks listing in /var/spool/cron/root', do you mean:

'I have 4 lines in root's crontab, all the same thing.'?

Please paste the output of 'crontab -l'. If it looks anything like:

6,36 * * * * python /usr/local/news.py >> /var/log/newlog
6,36 * * * * python /usr/local/news.py >> /var/log/newlog
6,36 * * * * python /usr/local/news.py >> /var/log/newlog
6,36 * * * * python /usr/local/news.py >> /var/log/newlog

That's definitely the problem :0