Free Republic

In the Netherlands, dairy farmer Martin Neppelenbroek is near the end of the line. New environmental regulations will require him to slash his livestock numbers by 95 percent. He thinks he will have to sell his family farm. “I can’t run a farm on 5 percent. For me, it’s over and done with,” he said in a July 7 interview with The Epoch Times. “In view of the regulations, I can’t sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. [But] the government wants to buy it. And that’s why they [have] those regulations, I think.” Neppelenbroek made the remarks...

'iPod tax' coming to Japan? In the United States, recording labels want a bigger slice of Apple Computer's success in digital music by seeking higher prices on downloaded songs. Japan's music industry has a different idea: putting a fee on iPods. The industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple's iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, which will be probably be 2 percent to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists...