FLORIDA

Department-Store operator Macy's Inc. said today it is closing 11 stores in nine U.S. states amid lower than expected profits and declining sales.

Everyone caught up in the scandal of accused Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff wants to know where the money is.

WASHINGTON - A Muslim family that was ordered off an AirTran Airways flight on New Year's Day received an apology and refund on Friday from the airline, which said its decision to bar the passengers was necessary.

The economy is in a bad place and people are casting about, sometimes desperately, for ways to ease the crunch. I know this because of the contents of my e-mail inbox, which grows more outlandish all the time.

WellCare Health Plans Inc. said on Thursday it cut 208 jobs or about 5 percent of its work force after completing a comprehensive review of its business, the company reported.

General Electric Co. chief executive Jeffrey Immelt says the company is considering spinning off its appliances unit instead of selling it.

California and Florida are driving losses in Bank of America's global-consumer and small business banking segment, said the president of the unit on Tuesday.

Coffeehouse giant Starbucks Corp on Wednesday reported a 28 percent drop in quarterly profit, and forecast its first annual earnings drop since 2000.

Crude oil supplies were down 3.2 million barrels last week to 316.0 million barrels. 600,000 barrels of crude were also added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.The USDA's estimate for 2007 2008 U...

Since Wednesday, March 12, natural gas spot prices eased at virtually all markets in the Lower 48 States. Prices at the Henry Hub fell 58 cents per million Btu (MMBtu), or about 6 percent, to $9.11 per MMBtu.

The weak dollar is bringing western art abroad

Countdown began on Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida toward Tuesday's launch of the Space Endeavour, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight.

U.S. stocks dropped to an 18-month low on Tuesday , after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged banks to write down more mortgage debts. Financial shares led indexes to fall while oil and gold dropped from previous records.

Fidel Castro's withdrawal from power in Cuba could have sparked a crisis for its communist leaders, but detailed planning and water-tight secrecy ensured a stable succession. When Raul Castro was installed as Cuba's first new leader in half a century on Sunday, taking over from his ailing brother, hardly a ripple was felt in the country of 11 million people, and nobody was cheering in the streets of the anti-Castro exile stronghold of Miami.

Web search company Google Inc is testing in the United States an online storage bank where individuals can store and access their medical records, the company said on Thursday. Just last week, Google said it was teaming up with the Cleveland Clinic, a leading academic medical center, to test an exchange of medical data that Google says will put the patient in charge of his own records.

Many parts of southern Florida were blacked out on Tuesday afternoon, leaving two to three million residents without electricity.

U.S. home foreclosures for January increased 57 percent from a year earlier, but the pace at least temporarily subsided in response to private and government efforts to help homeowners, RealtyTrac said.

The distressed housing market should benefit from bargain prices but tighter lending will curtail the chance of a boom.

Atlantis space shuttle was launched on Thursday from its seaside Florida launch pad, at about 2:45 p.m., making the mission successful after a two failed attempts last year in December and uncertainty of the weather before the launch that would have halted the mission for the third time.

The Atlantis space shuttle is set for launching later today after NASA announced it had finished all the preparations for the mission to deliver Europe's first permanent space laboratory to the International Space Station.

President Bush, standing before Congress one last time, urged the nation Monday night to persevere against gnawing fears of recession and stay patient with the long, grinding war in Iraq. He pressed Congress to quickly pass a plan to rescue the economy. We can all see that growth is slowing, Bush said in a blunt acknowledgment of rising food and gas prices, increasing unemployment and turmoil in the housing and financial markets.