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...result is that farm payments that used to cost a few billion dollars a year have averaged $17 billion. They'll be lower this year because commodity prices are so high. But owners of eligible farmland will still get direct payments regardless of how much their farms earn or whether their farms are still farmed. And even though crop-insurance subsidies have increased nearly tenfold, farmers will still receive disaster aid if things go badly, no matter how often that happens. More than 21,000 farmers have cashed at least 11 disaster checks each in the past 21 years...
Your new Wal-Mart is being baked on the premises. The company is testing a dozen new store prototypes that have lower sight lines, woodlike fixtures and a more department-store feel in some sections. Let's not get carried away: it's still a big-box store, but that box isn't quite so stuffed anymore. The stores will use tons of recycled material and be vastly more energy-efficient. Wal-Mart has pledged to reduce energy usage at its stores 30% by 2012. It has embraced compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and less packaging. For instance, by next...
...future. For now, getting shoppers to change their habits is difficult. In a store in Secaucus, N.J., 470 miles (750 km) east of Elyria, CEO Scott is looking sternly at a serving platter priced at $24.99 as if it didn't get the memo. Around the pricey platter, lower-cost merchandise has sold briskly, and Scott is seeing evidence that Wal-Mart's attempt to move up the fashion/design/price ladder still has a way to go. It's not clear whether shoppers simply won't buy higher-priced stuff at Wal-Mart or, as happened in apparel...
...encourage refiners to ramp up production. The price hike is likely to alleviate the shortages - that is, until the next increase in global crude prices, says Gordon Kwan, a Hong Kong-based oil and gas analyst for CLSA Ltd. "When retail prices [in China] are nearly a third lower than in the rest of the world, why would producers want to boost supply?" Kwan asks. "The best way to solve the problem is to lift government regulation on prices...
...audacious as Estrada's. During the 2004 election, Arroyo was recorded talking on the phone to Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. Her political enemies charged that the oddly oblique conversation concerned the massaging of voting returns - a charge Arroyo has denied. The resulting impeachment attempt in the country's lower house of Congress was blocked by Arroyo's political allies. Her courting of foreign investment has also drawn fire. In early October, Arroyo canceled a $329 million contract with Chinese company ZTE to build a government broadband network after a businessman who had submitted a rival bid alleged that the deal...