my @xml = <FILE>; # slurp ..
close(FILE);
foreach( @xml){
  # Ugly hack to keep XML::Simple(?) from double encoding certain strings, 
  # see: perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=660162 and perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=215678
   s/&/&amp;/g;
}