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Wild swings in crop futures are damaging mechanisms that are supposed to cushion the jolts of farming, turning farmers into day-traders.
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Oil jumped to a record, and gasoline prices rose above $3.50 a gallon for the first time across the nation.
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Five of the six major airlines in the United States plan to start charging coach passengers as much as $25 next month to check a second bag, in their latest move to offset high fuel prices.
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The bank announced nearly $2 billion in write-downs and a 77 percent decline in profits for the first quarter.
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As Bank of America considers lowering its 9 percent stake in China Construction Bank, other bankers are starting to ask whether suffering Western banks will be forced to sell their Asian assets.
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The central bank said that it would allow banks to swap mortgage-backed securities valued at about $100 billion for government bonds in a bid to restore calm to financial markets.
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The Page, a concise collection of up-to-the-minute political news, has managed to break through the clutter, also attracting campaign strategists, pollsters and analysts.
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HOUSTON (AP) -- Halliburton on Monday posted a $21 million third-quarter loss due largely to a big debt repayment, but the oilfield services company did booming business and its top executive maintained a positive outlook in the face of the global economic slowdown.
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The Swiss banking giant conceded in a report that a blind drive for revenue led it to take more risks than it should have.
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Excluding the $1.4 billion gain from a partner drug company, Merck beat forecasts as sales edged up despite new generic competition and problems related to its Vytorin drug.
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Advertising from Gannett’s publishing units, which constitutes the bulk of revenue, fell to $1.1 billion from $1.2 billion in the first quarter as the economy weakened.
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Marketing its Wii video-game system at a lower price than competitors, Nintendo has caught a wider net of potential customers, but game sales have also been slower with this softer audience.
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Governments, consumers and food companies are feeling pressures to relax resistance to genetically engineered crops.
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Tension over sports blogging is one of the strains between sports franchises, leagues and reporters to have emerged during the digital age.
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Sales of Star Wars, Playskool and Nerf toys helped lift third-quarter profit and sales above Wall Street expectations.
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The largest U.S. toy company was hurt by lower sales of its Fisher-Price products, legal expenses and higher costs related to last year’s global recalls.
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The drugmaker posted a loss of $465.6 in the third quarter on a charge of almost $1.5 billion for an expected settlement of investigations into the marketing of its top-selling drug, Zyprexa.
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The shift of the Chinese market toward larger vehicles will probably push up the country’s already voracious demand for oil and make it an even bigger emitter of global warming gases.
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Political gaffes have now entered a supercharged ecosystem of cable, bloggers and digitally enabled mainstream media outlets. Indeed nothing is more viral than a screw-up.
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Higher than expected earnings at Google have hurt the stock of measurement firm comScore, which had reported a slowdown in paid clicks on the Web giant’s sites.
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The plane maker Airbus still intends to sell three manufacturing plants in Germany, but they will be taken over until their sale by a new holding owned by EADS.
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Richard B. Stolley, the former editor of People, at age 79 has being contributing a few short features to the magazine.
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Alan Colmes, the left-leaning voice on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes,” stands out for publishing a smattering of e-mail messages, and responses, every week on his personal blog.
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Restrictions set up by ABC in the use of clips from Wednesday’s presidential candidate debates were mostly ignored by cable channels.
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A marketing campaign playing on the controversy without being explicit made a new video game themed around military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan a success.
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Posted: April 21st, 2008, 1:31am EDT
ECONOMIC REPORTS It is a slow week for economic news, though there will be updates on the housing market with reports on existing home sales for March on Tuesday and new-home sales for March on Thursday.
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A crying need for training in digital technologies is one of the motivating forces for NBC’s new business venture, a partnership with the New York Film Academy.
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Customer behavior toward keeping up satellite-radio subscriptions depends on whether they have sought out the service or received it as a promotion.
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Posted: April 21st, 2008, 1:27am EDT
A NEW CHANNEL The sibling rivalry that is Sumner Redstone’s media empire turned fractious on Sunday, as Viacom’s Paramount Pictures movie studio said it would start its own premium television channel, ending a longstanding relationship in which it sold its movies to CBS’s Showtime.
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The highly regarded but unprofitable French daily Le Monde is looking at laying off almost a quarter of its staff, a move likened to cutting off a limb to save a life.
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Posted: April 21st, 2008, 1:26am EDT
The Treasury’s schedule of financing this week includes Monday’s regular weekly auction of new three- and six-month bills and an auction of four-week bills on Tuesday.
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Faced with the difficulty of recruiting during a long and unpopular war, the United States Marine Corps has started marketing itself to women in a concerted way for the first time.
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Viacom’s Paramount Pictures announced it would start its own premium television channel, along with MGM and Lionsgate.
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So far, the threat of a recession has not slowed the migration of ad dollars to the Internet, but the slowing economy might be changing where those dollars are being spent.
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By day, John C. Layfield is an investment banker and professional pontificator for Fox Business Network. By night, he peddles a love potion.
