BUSINESS BRIEFS
Germany to push G-8 leaders on food-price plans
Advertiser Staff and News Services
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she will push G-8 leaders at this year's summit in Japan to come up with a common approach for combating the rise in global food prices.
Merkel says action needs to be taken to ensure that agricultural areas are not converted to produce biofuels.
Merkel was speaking after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in Berlin yesterday. Germany handed over the G-8 presidency to Japan at the start of the year.
Fukuda says he agrees that we "need biofuels that do not threaten the production of food."
Fukuda says Japan will follow Germany in making climate protection a central theme for the G-8 during Japan's term leading the group of industrialized nations.
NO QUICK FIX ON OIL, PAULSON SAYS
DOHA, Qatar — U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said yesterday that there was no quick fix to high oil prices, which he called an issue of supply and demand.
Paulson said inflation in the Gulf is "significant" but suggested that Gulf countries pegging their currencies to the weak dollar was not the only reason for it. He said it was a "sovereign decision" by each country whether it wants to de-peg its currency from the dollar.
Speaking to reporters in the tiny Gulf nation of Qatar, Paulson also said the U.S. economy was experiencing a "downturn" and reiterated that a strong dollar was in the U.S. interest.
The Treasury chief was in the Middle East to deliver a message to officials of Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations that soaring oil prices are a burden on the global economy.
BEST BUY TESTING RECYCLING PLAN
SAN FRANCISCO — Under pressure to help dispose some of the electronic waste it helped create, Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don't poison the nation's dumps.
The trial, expected to be announced today, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer didn't originally sell the merchandise.
The pilot stores are in Best Buy's Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore markets, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
NEW ACROBAT CAN PACKAGE VIDEOS
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Adobe Systems Inc. is launching a new version of its document-sharing software Acrobat today, and this time it can package videos.
Acrobat allows users to package documents so they can be read across different hardware and operating systems.
Acrobat 9 comes with Adobe's video-enabling software Flash. Users can include Flash-based videos when they create and share documents with the portable document format, commonly known as PDF.
With a professional version of Acrobat 9, for example, users could package a Power Point presentation not just with images, but also with audio of the presenter's voice.
BRITAIN TARGETS TOBACCO FIRMS
LONDON — Britain's Department of Health has proposed banning tobacco companies from putting any logos or branding on cigarette packs.
One proposal for preventing young people from smoking is to sell cigarettes in plain black-and-white boxes with nothing on them but health warnings.
The British government is also considering banning cigarette vending machines. Another idea is to outlaw the sale of smaller, cheaper packs of 10 cigarettes available in Britain.
Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said Saturday that the government's priority is to protect children from smoking by taking away the temptation.
