Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer's plan for closing Minnesota's yawning budget gap starts with making the deficit bigger.Emmer outlined a proposal Monday for a bundle of business tax cuts that, on paper, would add at least $626 million to a budget hole that state finance officials say...

Italy's Finmeccanica SpA said Monday it has obtained an order worth ?490 million ($630 million) to supply Praetorian Defensive Aids Sub-Systems for Eurofighters Typhoon aircraft.The company said in a statement Monday that delivery of the first batch of the DASS systems is expected by mid-2012...

Hallmark Cards Inc., a $4 billion empire built on a demand for printed sentimentality, enters its second century facing a weak economy and what could be an even greater challenge: a generation that has grown up posting its sentiments online.Hallmark has thrived since Joyce Clyde Hall peddled...

The state of Nebraska has settled a lawsuit that accused workers at the Beatrice State Developmental Center of waiting five days to report an accident in which the legs of a resident were broken in a fall.Gage County District Court documents say Judge Paul Korslund last week approved the...

Federal regulators have backed off a plan to remove a Shire PLC low blood-pressure treatment from the market after warning in August that the drug has not been proven effective.Food and Drug Administration representative Sandy Walsh said in an emailed statement that the agency will continue to...

While the private sector bore the brunt of the economic downturn, union leaders are turning their attention to the public sector this Labour Day as deficit-obsessed governments put the squeeze on their workers."I think there is the potential for quite a bit of confrontation in the public...

Suzuki Motor Corp. is planning a third vehicle plant in India to keep up with burgeoning sales, the Japanese small-car maker said Monday.The plant will be up and running, perhaps as early as 2013, at the same site as its plant in the northern town of Manesar with a yearly production capacity of...

A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled this week at a south Kansas City project to build a privately developed plant where non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons will be built.The facility being built for Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies will employ 2,100 people and replaces the...

It's not just companies and products that need solid branding. Sometimes entire regions need a "hook." One area of the state is hoping to get just that, and it is looking for immediate results.Southwest Mississippi suffers from an identity crisis that hinders economic development in the region,...

Fifty years in business is a tremendous accomplishment, according to Chem-Trend Limited Partnership President and CEO Devanir Moraes.The company, established in Howell in 1960, is commemorated its golden anniversary in August."To be as successful as we've been through all these years and be the...

A light aircraft carrying skydivers crashed in flames near a popular tourist spot in New Zealand's Southern Alps, killing nine people including four foreign tourists, police said.The plane caught fire after takeoff Saturday from an airstrip at Fox Glacier on the country's South Island, said Ian...

Former rugby players from Uruguay who survived more than two months of isolation in the snow-covered Andes met on Saturday with some of the relatives of 33 trapped miners and urged them to stay strong."They will be out soon," said Jose Inciarte, one of the four plane crash survivors visiting...

Nine people are believed to have died when a light aircraft belonging to a skydiving company crashed on New Zealand's South Island on Saturday.A spokesman for local ambulance services, Ian Henderson, says nine people were thought to be aboard the plane that burst into flames after takeoff...

The security company Blackwater Worldwide formed a network of 30 shell companies and subsidiaries to try to get millions of dollars in government business after the company faced strong criticism for reckless conduct in Iraq, The New York Times reported Friday.The newspaper said that it was...

A federal appeals court has thrown out a jury verdict and a $926 million award to thousands of Colorado homeowners in a lawsuit involving plutonium contamination from a now-defunct nuclear weapons plant.A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Friday that...