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WASHINGTON (AP) — People who’ve started applying for health insurance but aren’t able to finish before the March 31 enrollment deadline will get extra time, the Obama administration has announced. “We are experiencing a surge in demand and are making sure that we will be ready to help consumers who may be in line by the deadline to complete enrollment, either online or over the phone,” Health and Human Services spokesman Aaron Albright said Tuesday. The White House is scrambling to meet a goal of 6 million signed up through new online markets that offer subsidized private health insurance to...

Walgreen Co. on Tuesday said it plans to shutter 76 unprofitable drugstores by August as part of a plan to save $40 million to $50 million per year beginning in fiscal 2015. The drugstore chain, the nation's largest, declined to specify the locations of the stores slated to close aside from saying they're "spread across the country." Walgreen, based in Deerfield, IL, said it will confirm the closures in the coming months after it notifies employees. Most stores that will close either have had other Walgreen locations open in the same area or have seen real estate values decline since...

(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, pointing to some underlying strength in the labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 320,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the week ended March 8 were unrevised. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits rising to 325,000 in the week ended March 15. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 3,500 to...

In her first Federal Open Market Committee meeting as head of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen made good on her promise of continuity, again cutting back the central bank’s asset purchases. On Wednesday, the FOMC announced a third $10 billion reduction in quantitative easing, reducing its monthly bond purchases to $55 billion and keeping with Fed watchers’ tapering exceptions. The Fed will cut monthly mortgage bond purchases to $25 billion from $30 billion. Treasury purchases will go from $35 billion to $30 billion.

The NSA has not infected millions of computers with malware, it said in a statement on Thursday. It could though, it seems, as the agency made no attempt to deny the existence of an automated malware delivery system which appears in documents leaked by Edward Snowden this week. According to the documents, the system, codenamed Turbine, is meant to “allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually.” A statement published to the NSA’s official website on Thursday addresses the allegations, saying...

If a 9.0 earthquake were to strike along California's sparsely populated North Coast, it would have a catastrophic ripple effect. A giant tsunami created by the quake would wash away coastal towns, destroy U.S. 101 and cause $70 billion in damage over a large swath of the Pacific coast. More than 100 bridges would be lost, power lines toppled and coastal towns isolated. Residents would have as few as 15 minutes notice to flee to higher ground, and as many as 10,000 would perish. For years, scientists believed the largest earthquake the area could produce was magnitude 7.5. But scientists...

(Reuters) - Target Corp's security software detected potentially malicious activity during last year's massive data breach, but its staff decided not to take immediate action, the No. 3. U.S. retailer said on Thursday. "With the benefit of hindsight, we are investigating whether if different judgments had been made the outcome may have been different," company spokeswoman Molly Snyder said in a statement. The disclosure came after it was reported on Thursday that Target's security team in Bangalore had received alerts from a FireEye Inc security system on November 30 after the attack was launched and sent them to Target headquarters...

U.S. stocks declined on Thursday, after the S&P 500 came less than four points from its record close, as worries mounted about China's economy. Reuters cited banking and industry sources in reporting increasing concerns about the financial health of bloated industries in China have caused many banks to reduce lending in these sectors up to 20 percent. "Since the beginning of March, the action has been poor all around. We're in a bit of a vacuum, and will probably have to wait until earnings season to get a boost," said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Influential District of Columbia businessman Jeffrey Thompson was charged Monday with conspiring to violate federal and local campaign finance laws by funding off-the-books campaign activity for candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton and district Mayor Vincent Gray. Thompson, the multimillionaire former owner of a well-connected accounting firm, was charged in a criminal information, a charging document that can only be filed with the defendant's consent and typically signals a guilty plea. A court appearance was scheduled for Monday afternoon. According to the document, Thompson funded illicit campaign activity for Clinton, Gray and seven other candidates for local office...

Asian shares were a lackluster sight on Monday, with major indexes across the region registering steep declines. Chinese shares in particular suffered a hefty loss of nearly 3 percent. Investors switched to 'risk-off' mode following disappointing Chinese export data over the weekend. The latest Japanese gross domestic product (GDP) figures further dented trading sentiment across the region. Commenting on Monday's sluggish tone in Asian equities, Kingsley Jones, Founder and CIO of Jevons Global, told CNBC's Cash Flow, "I think a lot of that (weakness) has to do with the Chinese data released over the weekend. Those weak export numbers got...

SPRINGFIELD—The daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama’s former minister, was convicted by a federal jury Friday of laundering thousands of dollars from a $1.25 million state grant for a Chicago-based job-training program. Jeri Wright said she would "definitely" appeal the verdict in U.S. District Court, which found her guilty of 11 counts that included money laundering, lying to federal agents and lying to a grand jury. "I didn't do anything," Wright, 48, of Hazel Crest, said as she left the Springfield courtroom.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 175,000 workers were added to nonfarm payrolls in December, well above Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 149,000. 162,000 of those hires were to private payrolls, above expectations for a 145,000 rise in the ranks of private-sector workers. The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 6.7% from 6.6%. Labor force participation was unchanged at 63.0%. 610,000 were unable to work due to inclement weather in February, above the historical February average of 317,000.

Russia said it had successfully test-fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile on Tuesday, with tensions high over its seizure of control in the Crimea and its threat to send more forces to its neighbour Ukraine. The Strategic Rocket Forces launched an RS-12M Topol missile from the southerly Astrakhan region near the Caspian Sea and the dummy warhead hit its target at a proving ground in Kazakhstan, the state-run news agency RIA cited Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Yegorov as saying.

DETROIT – March will be one of the most crucial months for the U.S. auto industry in years. Sales were slower than expected in January and February, and the number of unsold cars on dealer lots grew. Some automakers had to resort to juicy discounts to lure reluctant buyers. Most industry executives, dealers and analysts blame the historic cold temperatures and snowfall, and expect warmer weather to restore consumers’ enthusiasm for car buying. Most still expect annual sales to exceed 16.1 million, which would be the highest level since 2006. But a continuation of the trends could signal more fundamental...

(Reuters) - Retailer RadioShack Corp reported a wider quarterly loss on Tuesday and said it will close up to 1,100 U.S. stores after a huge drop in sales over the holidays, sending its stock down nearly 24 percent. The planned closures would leave the Fort Worth, Texas-based chain with over 4,000 stores, including over 900 dealer franchise locations, its chief executive officer said. Sales totaled $935.4 million in the quarter covering the all-important holiday season, down 20.1 percent from $1.17 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts, on average, looked for sales of $1.12 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Sales...

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not. Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level...

So far in 2014, initial unemployment claims have been largely stuck, though we were supposed to see some progress this morning. According to the new figures from the Labor Department, we didn’t: The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped by 14,000 to 348,000 last week to match a five-week high, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to total 335,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The average of new claims over the past month, a more reliable gauge than the volatile weekly number, was unchanged at 338,250.

The weather may have improved across much of the United States last week, but retail sales did not. Following the release of January’s retail sales figure from the Department of Commerce on February 14, the concern was that the frigid weather experienced by much of the country that month depressed consumer spending. Retail sales totaled $427.8 billion last month, a decline of 0.4 percent, while December’s sales figure was downwardly revised from 0.2 percent gain to a 0.1 percent drop, making January the second consecutive month of negative growth. But while many economists have cited the poor weather as the...

(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, suggesting the labor market continues to steadily improve despite severe weather that could hold back hiring again this month. Cold temperatures continue to inflict pain on the economy, with other reports on Thursday showing a surprise drop in factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region this month and a spike in electricity and heating fuel prices in January. "This has been a terrible winter. Weather has definitely been a factor in keeping things slow," said Alan MacEachin, an economist at Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna,...

A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck off Barbados on Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake was 126 miles (203 km) northeast of Bridgetown at a depth of 20 miles.