It Figures

$5.26 million

A hefty pay raise was given to State Farm Insurance’s chairman and CEO after the company posted a record profit last year. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ed Rust Jr. got a $5.26 million raise. He earned $11.66 million in 2006 with a base salary of $1.77 million and a results-based bonus of $9.89 million, the statement said. Rust made $6.4 million in 2005 and $5.5 million in 2004.

6.9

A powerful earthquake struck Japan on March 25, killing at least one person and injuring 170 others as it damaged buildings and triggered a small tsunami along the coast, officials said. The magnitude-6.9 quake struck at 9:42 a.m. (0042 GMT) off the north coast of Ishikawa prefecture (state), Japan’s Meteor-ological Agency said. The agency issued a tsunami warning urging people near the sea to move to higher land. A small tsunami measuring 10 centimeters (6 inches) hit the shore 36 minutes later, the agency said. The warning was lifted after about an hour.

104 pets

At least 471 cases of pet kidney failure have been reported in the 10 days since a nationwide recall of dog and cat food and about a fifth of those pets have died, a veterinarians’ information service said. The maker of the recalled pet food has confirmed the deaths of only 16 pets. Paul Pion, founder of the Veter-inary Infor-mation Net-work, which counts 30,000 veterinarians and veterinary students as members, said the number of reported kidney failure cases had already grown higher than the 471, but he said he wouldn’t have an updated tally for a few days. Of the reported cases, he said, 104 animals have died. The network’s survey results were earlier reported by the Los Angeles Times.

48 counties

Iowa is expected to begin receiving an estimated $37 million in federal disaster money to help state and local governments and some utility companies recover from the late February ice storms. A presidential disaster declaration covers 48 Iowa counties, most of them in eastern Iowa. The ice storms knocked out power to thousands of Iowa homes and businesses. Utility companies had to bring in crews from other states to help replace broken power poles and electric lines.