Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Feb 11, 2013 (2)

choi

(3) Rodrigo Orihuela, Cheaper Electricity ub Brazil: Not That Cheap.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... ity-comes-at-a-cost

My comment:
(a) Summary underneath the title in print: President Rousseff cuts utility rates to boost a sagging economy
(b) View the bar chart only, which is reproduced here:

"Brazillian Power Before the Rate Cut[;] Price of electricity per kilowatt-hour as of August

Brazil******16¢
Mexico******15
Japan*******11
India********9
China********7
US***********6
Canada*******5
Argentina****4

DATA: FEDERATION OF INDUSTRIES OF THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO"

(c) Taiwan  
(i) Crystal Hsu, Power Rates Set to Rise by up to 37%; PAY TO PLAY: Households that use between 500 kilowatt hours and 620 kilowatt hours per month will see their bills increase by as much as 19%. Taipei Times, Apr 13, 2012
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ ... 12/04/13/2003530204
("Currently, electricity costs an average of NT$2.82 per kilowatt hour, while Taipower supplies it at NT$2.6 per kilowatt hour")
(ii) Taiwan to Relinquish Record Low Power Prices, China Post (Teipei), Apr 5, 2012
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiw ... 31/p1/Taiwan-to.htm
("The electricity rates in Taiwan will no longer be the lowest in Asia after they are increased on May 15")
(c) Taipei Times leans toward DPP, and China Post, KMT. The rate hikes (including those of other utilities) were highly unpopular in Taiwan (but probably necessary, in my view). So KMT played up the talk of Taiwan's utility rates being lowest in Asia. The figure supplied by Taipei Times before the hike (NT$2.82 per kilowatt hour) was 9 (American) cents.

choi

(4) David Fickling, Before the Fancy Bottle, Time Spending in a Bladder.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... nt-plastic-bladders

(a) graphic:  "32,000  Bottles of wine ft into one 24,000-liter plastic bag"

(b) paragraph 1: "Hardys became Britain’s best-selling Australian wine brand by selling for as little as £3.40 ($5) a bottle despite the 37 percent surge in its home country’s currency since 2009. To do that and still earn a profit, the winemaker turned to plastic bags. No, not those bag-in-a-box jobs found at your local Sam’s Club or Costco. We’re talking 24,000-liter plastic bags, each able to carry the equivalent of 32,000 bottles of vino. Accolade Wines, the maker of Hardys, pared shipping costs that can amount to as much as $3 a case by ditching glass bottles and shipping its fruit of the vine in giant plastic bladders. After the 10,000-mile journey, the wine is bottled at a plant next to a scrap merchant a two-hour drive from London.

(c) My comment:
(i) Summary underneath the title in print: To cut costs, most Aussie wine exports travel in a giant plastic bag
(ii) The article says, "No, not those bag-in-a-box jobs found at your local Sam’s Club or Costco."
(A) bag-in-box
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag-in-box
(B) job (n): "an example of a usually specified type : ITEM <the limousine was a long white job>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/job
(iii) There is no need to read the rest of the report.
spent

choi

(5) General Motors; Big expansion plans in China. (in the column Briefs)

full text: "The Chinese auto industry is ripe for consolidation, and General Motors, the top foreign makers in the country, is eager to help out. Mainland factories have excess production capacity of 10 million vehicles annually, according to LMC Automotive. GM and its Chinese partner SAIC Motor aim to acquire ailing automakers, according to four people who didn't want to be identified because the plans are private. GM established a target of increasing sales in China by about 75 percent by 2015, to 5 million vehicles. An acquisition may be the optimal route, since Chinese authorities last year discontinued offering incentives for new foreign-owned auto factories.