Japan’s machinery orders rose for the first time in three months, a sign that companies may expect the world’s third largest economy to return to growth in 2013. Orders, an indicator of capital spending, climbed 2.6 percent in October from the previous month, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. The median estimate of 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 3 percent increase. Large orders can cause volatile results. Rising orders and production in October suggest the economy is la

President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner sought an elusive compromise Tuesday to prevent automatic economy-damaging tax increases and spending cuts at year's end, conferring by phone after a secretive exchange of proposals.Many economists say failure to reach a deal that would pull the U.S. economy back from the Jan. 1 ``fiscal cliff'' that would trigger a combination of tax increases and spending cuts could push the country back into economic recession.Details were sparse and evide

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has made the first arrests as part of a global investigation into the manipulation of interbank lending rates.The SFO said on Tuesday three British men, aged 33, 41 and 47, had been taken to a London police station for interviews. They had all been living in Britain.Sources had said that regulators and prosecutors in the U.S. and Europe were closing in on individual traders they suspected of colluding to rig key benchmark lending rates such as Libor (London interba

SYDNEY (AP) ― The city of Mildura is not at the end of a dirt road in the Australian bush, in tire-choking desert sand far from food and water. Unfortunately, Apple’s much-maligned mapping application thinks it is.More than two months after Apple’s CEO apologized for errors in its Maps service, Australian police say the app is “potentially life threatening” because of the bad directions it has given to the southern city. On Tuesday, a police official said Apple had “sort of half-fixed” the probl