Andrea Morales for The New York Times The last time Congress approved legislation dealing with airport noise complaints was 30 years ago, when the biggest concern was older, inefficient planes. But the law, the Air Noise and Capacity Act of 1990, couldn’t anticipate an online world of overnight, and even same-day, delivery or the din it would bring to neighborhoods near the airports used by cargo planes. Cargo flights had already been rising rapidly in the last four years. In recent weeks, as...

Entrepreneur magazine is playing hardball to stop entrepreneurs from using the word entrepreneur. Entrepreneur Media Inc., the magazine's owner, waged a successful six-year legal battle to prevent a California publicist from calling his company EntrepreneurPR and from using the word in a quarterly periodical he once published, Entrepreneur Illustrated. It won a $1.4 million judgment against him and is seeking payment even though he says his business, which he long ago rechristened BizStarz,...

With Hurricane Ivan bearing down on Pensacola, Fla., last year, Kimberly and Ronnie Whitman moved the equipment and files of their landscaping business to a back room of their rented office. It was not enough. The storm ripped away a rear section of the building's roof, and the lashing rains damaged their computer, soaked their tax files and ruined $9,000 worth of seeds, fertilizer and pesticides. With mold and mildew spreading, they moved their business -- incorporated as R and R Irrigation...

MY father was an attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration. One weekend when I was about 12, my parents, sisters and I were invited to Camp David, when the president wasn’t there. Elliot Richardson, who held several cabinet positions, invited us. We rode around in golf carts, had a tour and I saw that President Nixon had a gold-colored toilet seat. I took a year off between high school and college and sold Rainbow vacuum cleaners door to door. I...

I was 9 years old when I left Iran. My family had a great life there. My family owned 15 factories in Iran that manufactured pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, detergents and consumables. We manufactured a local detergent called “Daryah” that competed against Tide. In 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came back to Iran after being in exile, school was canceled for the day. You can’t imagine a cooler thing as a kid. When the uprising and constant demonstrations against the shah began, there was...