Month: March 2014

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was running a mild fever and will stay in the hospital overnight on Tuesday after treatment for a benign enlarged prostate, a Treasury spokesperson said. "After his successful outpatient procedure today, Secretary Lew's doctor recommended he stay overnight for observation due to a low-grade fever," Treasury spokeswoman Natalie Wyeth Earnest said in a statement. In an earlier statement, she said the surgical procedure had gone well and that Lew expected to resume his normal work schedule next week. …

By Fayen Wong and Matthew Miller BEIJING (Reuters) – Some of China's struggling firms are finally getting the reception that regulators have been hoping for — a cold shoulder from banks in the form of smaller and costlier loans. Interviews with 15 that agreed to discuss their funding showed that more discriminate lending, long a missing ingredient of China's economic transformation, has become a reality. Up against a cooling Chinese economy and signs that authorities will not step in every time a loan goes bad, banks are becoming more hard-nosed and selective about whom they lend to. There are signs that even state-owned firms, in the past fawned over by lenders for their government connections, have to contend with higher rates, lower lending limits and more onerous checks by banks.

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 announced Tuesday.

By Carey Gillam KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – Missouri officials were preparing on Tuesday to execute a man convicted of abducting, raping and strangling a teenage girl who was working as a gas station attendant. Jeffrey Ferguson, 59, was twice convicted for killing 17-year-old Kelli Hall, who he kidnapped with an accomplice as she ended her evening shift at a metropolitan St. Louis service station on February 9, 1989. Ferguson is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. local time on Wednesday at a state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He would be the third man executed in Missouri this year.

The Obama administration will grant an extension to people who say they are unable to enroll in the new healthcare program by next Monday's deadline, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, quoting federal officials. The Post said people who started to apply for Obamacare coverage through the HealthCare.gov website but cannot finish by Monday would have until about the middle of April to seek an extension. Sources close to the Obama administration told Reuters last week that it would soon issue new Obamacare guidelines allowing people to enroll in health coverage after the March 31 deadline, but only under certain circumstances. The sources said the new federal guidelines for consumers in the 36 states served by the federal health insurance marketplace and its HealthCare.gov website, would allow people to enroll after March 31 if they had tried earlier and were prevented by system problems including technical glitches.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is granting more time for people to apply for health care if they started the process but were unable to complete it before the March 31 deadline.

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday upheld a 2011 Kansas law that would stop federal family planning money the state receives from flowing to two Planned Parenthood clinics. The ruling overturned a Kansas federal judge’s preliminary injunction that stopped the state from eliminating the federal funding to family planning clinics Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri operates in Wichita and Hays. No abortion services are provided at the health centers and Planned Parenthood has said they would lose more than $330,000 in funding, their eligibility for a low-cost drug-purchasing program and it likely would lead to the Hays clinic closing. Planned Parenthood said it was reviewing its options after the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and remained committed to Kansas women and their families.

Fashion designer L'Wren Scott, the long-time girlfriend of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, was remembered at a funeral in Los Angeles on Tuesday, a week after she committed suicide in New York, a spokeswoman for Jagger said. It was attended by close friends and family, spokeswoman Fran Curtis said in a statement. "The service with blessings and prayers … included memories and words of tribute from Mick Jagger, her brother Randy Bambrough, Justinian Kfoury, Ira M. Hammons-Glass and Adam Glassman," Curtis said.