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LONDON/TOKYO – Japan’s Toshiba Corp. has agreed to buy Westinghouse, the U.S. power plant arm of British Nuclear Fuels, for $5.4 billion to bolster its position in the world’s resurgent nuclear power industry. Japan’s second-biggest electronics maker said on Monday it expected several minority investors to join the deal but …

BOSTON – Plenty of people believe that mutual funds are such a simplistic investment that an educated chimp could pick a good one. But that doesn’t mean you want to monkey around with that chimp’s advice. “Sammy, the chatting chimp” claims to provide “astute accounting advice” in his column in …

DUBLIN, Ohio – President Bush, in a state with key races in this year’s midterm elections, countered critics on Wednesday who say health savings accounts don’t help the poor or the uninsured. Enrollment in health savings accounts has tripled during the past 10 months, the president said at the headquarters …

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitians began celebrating in the street Thursday as word quickly spread that Rene Preval, a former president who is hugely popular among the poor, was declared the winner of the presidential election overnight. Leslie Manigat, also a former president who came in second with about 12 percent …

HOUSTON – Andrea Yates left jail early Thursday for a state mental hospital where she will await her second capital murder trial for the drowning deaths of her young children. Yates’ attorney posted her $200,000 bond, releasing her from incarceration for the first time since the five children were drowned …

Tax cuts, new cash to health care programs, blueprints for new roads and schools — states have jumped into 2006 with ambitious plans to spend the money pouring into their coffers, a windfall that’s just in time for governors and legislators as they start re-election campaigns. The spending spree is …

LOS ANGELES – A prominent attorney who represented billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian pleaded not guilty Tuesday in connection with a Hollywood wiretapping scandal. Terry Christensen, 65, of Beverly Hills is among 13 people facing federal charges in an alleged wiretapping scheme involving Hollywood celebrities and executives. Christensen appeared in court …

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration on Monday accused Belarus‘ authoritarian government of involvement in the murders of a pro-democracy businessman and an independent journalist. To underscore U.S. disapproval of the ex-Soviet republic’s behavior, Bush and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met with the victims’ widows, Svyatlana Zavadskaya and Irina Krasovskaya. …

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A judge Tuesday denied punitive damage claims against three U.S. companies in a landmark lead paint case that had been expected to trigger a flurry of similar claims against the industry. The three former lead paint makers — Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings LLC …

NEW YORK – When he was a boy, Hiram Stewart took a bus to Virginia, put a puppy in a paper bag and cradled it all the way home to New Orleans. For more than three decades, he’s cared for dogs in the Big Easy. Usually champion dogs, the kind …