Heading into the third year of a prolonged drought, the Allens are among the many California farmers forced to make dire choices that could leave as much as 800,000 acres, or about 7 percent of the state’s cropland, fallow. While some think that estimate may be inflated so early in the planting season, the consensus is that drier and drier seasons are on the horizon.
Mr. Bocanegra is leading an aggressive push, along with entertainment companies and Hollywood unions, to hand out as much as $2 billion in new tax breaks to increase movie and television production in California, which has lost business to states like New York with far more generous subsidies. Last year, for the first time, more studio movies were filmed in Louisiana than in California, according to the nonprofit FilmL.A.
A planned expansion of the Panama Canal may be halted because of a dispute between the building consortium and canal authorities over $1.6 billion in extra costs.
Spain has good reason for wanting to take action. It is facing a growing deficit — about $40 billion now — because it has never passed on the true cost of producing energy to its consumers, a problem that has ballooned with the economic crisis. If it does not do something, that deficit will only grow, experts say.
The sinuous Colorado River and its slew of man-made reservoirs from the Rockies to southern Arizona are being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years.
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Just before officials at the Port of Los Angeles unanimously approved a plan for a vast new railyard last month, the mayor of Long Beach was incensed. How dare they, he angrily asked at a public meeting, value the lives of residents on Los Angeles’s side of the border more than those who live in his city.