The anticipated fall in volumes has increased demand for Kenyan coffee, pushing auction prices to as high as $200 for a 50kg bag of high quality coffee. According to Mr Wahome, heavy rains early in the year caused poor flowering since coffee requires periods of no moisture during the early stages of flowering. He said the most critical stage of flowering are the months of April and May when the crop requires a lot of rain for rapid growth of the young flowers. Changes in weather patterns...

It remains financially strong with plenty of cash and excellent longer-term growth prospects, but the current industrywide problems can't be ignored. Some of its more volatile holdings were hammered hard, an indication that an aggressive strategy of seeking value and holding on tightly can have pitfalls. The Home Improvement Research Institute predicts sales of home-repair and remodeling products will decline 1.3 percent this year and doesn't expect the housing market to improve until mid-2008.

Today's Top Stories Asia to bear the brunt of climate change London - Global warming could reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, where food shortages loom and more than half the continent's 4 billion people live along vulnerable coasts, a new report issued by Oxfam and Greenpeace warned Monday. Today's Top Stories Asia to bear the brunt of climate change London - Global warming could reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, where food shortages...

Owner of the world s biggest lumber company in the early 1900s, Long spent his estate on philanthropy, here and in the company town he created near Kelso, Wash. With millions of Midwesterners putting up homes of wood, he buys 250,000 acres of pine in Louisiana, picks it clean, converts it into 61 lumberyards, erects a Beaux-Arts skyscraper in downtown Kansas City and occupies the area s first million-dollar home (70-room Corinthian Hall, now home to the Kansas City Museum) Seeking his...

The roundtable on sustainable palm oil production in Kuala Lumpur this week is set to implement minimum environmental practice criteria aimed at producing a new green-friendly product and turning around the product's tarnished image, much as tuna producers did more than a decade ago. The roundtable on sustainable palm oil production in Kuala Lumpur this week is set to implement minimum environmental practice criteria aimed at producing a new green-friendly product and turning around the...