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Orders for Japanese machinery rose at 10 times the pace economists expected in May, as demand increased for equipment used to make semiconductors and steel.
Equipment orders, which signal capital spending in the next three to six months, rose 10.4 percent from April when they climbed 5.5 percent, the Cabinet Office said today in […]

Luxury these days is a tale of two markets: consumers continue to snap up high-priced Louis Vuitton bags even as they balk at paying full price for Coach handbags. The same can be said of demand for works of art.
Recent auctions of high-end art on both sides of the Atlantic have been a huge […]

Animal welfare groups must be panting: Leona Helmsley reportedly directed that her fortune - up to $8 billion - be used for the care and welfare of dogs.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the bequest was included in a so-called mission statement for the estate of the real estate magnate, who died last […]

Oregon Republicans say Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski needs to adopt a proposal that might restore most of the federal funding that could disappear for timber-reliant Oregon counties.
Sen. Ted Ferrioli, a Republican from John Day, called on Kulongoski to support the Western Oregon Plan Revision Preferred Alternative 2, a Bureau of Land Management-related […]

Ireland's economy shrank for the first time in more than a decade in the quarter through March as a housing-market slump curbed investment and exports cooled.
Gross domestic product fell 1.5 percent from a year earlier, the first contraction since the mid-1990s, the Central Statistics Office said today in Dublin. Investment fell an annual […]