Business Notes

A shoe washing up onshore is usually a bad omen, but beachcombers from Oregon to Canada haven't been seeing it that way. During the past several weeks, they have been reaping an unusual windfall: thousands of new Nike athletic shoes. The sea-soaked but still footworthy shoes had been missing for almost a year, ever since a ferocious storm washed an estimated 40,000 pairs off the deck of a containership bound from South Korea to Seattle. Nike, based in Beaverton, Ore., is bemusedly taking a position of finders keepers. Some seashore scavengers have collected dozens of shoes and are planning a swap meet later this month to assemble matched pairs.