As part of its overall strategy to emerge from bankruptcy court and restructure the company, United Airlines is hoping to get $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees. This plan should be thwarted. United is not entitled to a form of taxpayer support that was meant to stabilize the airline industry in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. United's woes nowadays have little to do with that tragedy.

The fact that all of the old major airlines have lost money since the attacks is due to the economic slowdown, their loss of pricing power because of the Internet and competition from new low-fare carriers. ... Some of United's major competitors have been more adept at reinventing themselves ... It would be unfair for them to have to compete now with a partly subsidized airline. ...

The problem is not the cost of the perks themselves; it's what they are symptomatic of.

As buyers grumble about paying more for shrinking, distracted audiences, a big piece of American commercial culture seems endangered. In the age of the remote control, of HBO and endless cable choices, and of TiVo, the marriage of mass entertainment to "a word from our sponsor," appears to be in trouble.

Commercials aren't really interruptions to our entertainment but a major component of our common culture. As Madge the manicurist would say, we're soaking in it.

Even the dumbest commercials insinuated themselves deep into people's psyches.

The board at Shell knew it needed to do something, and fast.

A shocking revelation in January -- that the world's third largest oil company had overstated its proven petroleum reserves by 20% -- was pummeling its stock price and angering shareholders. Regulators on two continents had started investigations.

So in early March the board acted, ousting Philip Watts, who had been managing director of the Anglo-Dutch company for almost seven years and chairman since 2001, and replacing him with Jeroen van der Veer, president of Shell's Dutch sister company, Royal Dutch Petroleum.

A quick cure for all those headaches?

Hardly.

... and so the company was forced to ask itself an unpleasant question: How many times can you fire your CEO in a year?

Now that General Electric owns five theme parks, what's it going to do with them?

GE spent $14 billion to buy Vivendi Universal's armory of entertainment properties. Universal's theme park division and its 15,000-plus employees around the world came along for the ride, which won't be smooth.

Many Ghanaians can no longer afford the cost of clean drinking water, and according to the country's Ministry of Health 70% of all disease in the country is water related.

"The World Bank policy is aimed at creating markets for multinational corporations dealing water, and those corporations are not charities, they are in it for the profit."

"We must establish networks of communities in defence of the right to water. These networks must share information about these companies, because they are the same companies."

Multinational corporations, such as Bechtel, Vivendi, Saur, Suez Lyonnaise of France and the UK's Biwater, "have realized that the gold of today is water, and because the availability of fresh water is reducing due to climate change and other environmental problems, the value of water is increasing.

Whoever controls the water in the future will control the wealth.