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The lawyer for Rupert Murdoch’s former British chief, Rebekah Brooks, says she is not guilty of any criminal offense, and police face serious questions about why she was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and bribery.
Lawyer Stephen Parkinson says Brooks was held and questioned for nine hours on Sunday, but detectives did not accuse her […]

Businesses requested more airplanes, autos, and oil drilling equipment in May, suggesting supply disruptions stemming from the Japan crisis are fading.
The Commerce Department says factory orders rose 0.8 percent in May. That followed a downwardly revised drop of 0.9 percent in April.
Much of the increase was driven by orders for aircraft, a volatile category, which […]

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Hopes for a solution to Greece’s debt problems are helping stocks eke out their first week of gains since April.
Germany softened its stance on conditions for giving Greece more loans on Friday. Traders are hoping that the move will prevent Greece from defaulting on its loans and triggering another financial crisis.
The Dow Jones industrial average […]

Fears that the global economic recovery has stalled pushed the Dow Jones industrial average below 12,000 for the first time since March and drove the stock market lower for the sixth straight week.
Friday’s drop extended the longest weekly losing streak for stocks since the fall of 2002.
Weak economic news has dampened hopes for a steady […]

A much-anticipated drug for advanced lung cancer from Pfizer Inc. appears to double survival over standard drugs against tumors with a certain genetic mutation, according to research presented Sunday.
The drug, called crizotinib, would be the first targeted treatment for the roughly 50,000 people who get this cancer each year worldwide. It might eventually produce annual […]

Southeast Asian nations backed Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as a possible choice to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund.
Shanmugaratnam “is certainly well qualified” and the IMF should consider all candidates for the role of managing director, including those from Asia or Latin America, Philippine Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said […]

A U.K. house-price gauge rose to the highest level in nine months in April as demand for homes stabilised, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.
The number of real-estate agents and surveyors saying prices fell exceeded those seeing gains by 21 percentage points, the most since July 2010, compared with 23 in March, the […]

Household wealth in the U.S. climbed by $2.1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2010 as share prices rose and families rebuilt finances tattered by the recession.
Net worth for households and non-profit groups increased at a 16.6 percent annual pace to $56.8 trillion after rising at a 9.1 percent rate in the previous three […]

Options traders are betting more than ever that crude oil is heading to $200 a barrel as some websites call for a “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia and anti- government protests spread in the Middle East and North Africa.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows open interest, or the number of outstanding contracts, for […]