PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - April 30
April 30 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in the New York Times business pages on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
* Population growth, shrinking world grain stocks and a growing appetite for meat, particularly in the developing world, has collided with a shortage of fertilizer.
* U.S. President George W. Bush accused the Democratic-controlled Congress of being uncooperative on bills that would address pocketbook issues.
* The effort to make it easier to get loans over $417,000 has yielded frustration, with many saying the loans are not available or the rates are far higher than they expected.
* Fewer than 2,000 homeowners at risk of foreclosure have been helped by a Federal Housing Administration program that U.S. President George W. Bush promised would help homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgage payments, federal housing statistics show.
* Facing losses tied to a falling dollar and weakening American demand, some Chinese exporters are asking European customers to pay in euros. Others are trying to increase domestic sales.
* The ouster of The Wall Street Journal's top editor last week did not live up to conditions that the News Corp NWSa.N had agreed to when it bought Dow Jones & Co in December, a special oversight committee for the newspaper said Tuesday.
* Countrywide Financial Corp CFC.N said Tuesday that it lost $893 million in the first quarter as rising loan defaults forced it to increase its provision for loan losses and to book other credit-related charges.
* Citigroup Inc (C.N), the banking giant, said that it planned to sell $3 billion of common stock to bolster its capital levels.
* CBS Corp (CBS.N) said its television profit rose 15 percent, to $402 million, in part because of lower production costs during the strike by the Writers Guild of America.
* Lord & Taylor, the quintessentially American department store, is thinking about opening stores outside the country, possibly in Mexico and Canada, its chairman said Tuesday.
* The biotechnology giants Genentech Inc DNA.N and Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB.O) on Tuesday became the latest companies to fail at treating the immune system disease lupus.
