Business

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The unemployment rate may be about to rise again....

BEIJING (AP) -- Most Asian stock markets climbed Friday as investors took heart from a slight improvement in U.S. economic indicators amid lingering worries over the pace of the global economic recovery....

BUXTON, N.C. (AP) -- Hurricane Earl's powerful gusts and driving rains are churning over the Outer Banks of North Carolina and starting to be felt in southeastern Virginia....

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- U.S. Agriculture Department employees worked full-time at two Iowa egg farms at the center of a salmonella outbreak and massive recall, but two former workers said they ignored complaints about conditions at one site....

BEIJING (AP) -- China has ordered local leaders to cool a surge in politically sensitive food prices by raising vegetable production amid rising tensions in poor countries over surging food costs....

BANGKOK (AP) -- Oil prices lingered near $75 a barrel Friday in Asia, largely holding onto a big gain the day before as investors put a positive spin on U.S. economic reports and Asian stock markets rose....

CHICAGO (AP) -- With less than two weeks before Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn awards a lucrative, first-of-its-kind contract for the private management of the state's $2 billion-a-year lottery, some are criticizing the selection process as too secretive and questioning whether it favors one powerful bidder....

LONDON (AP) -- BP says it has so far spent $8 billion responding to the disastrous oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico....

Dairy farmer Anthony Marco was compressing a long row of chopped hay beneath his tractor two weeks ago, preparing it as winter feed for his cows, when the 4-ton machine suddenly toppled over as he drove it along the pile's steep sides....

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Stark differences exist between the oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico and the blast that led to the massive BP spill. Mostly notably, no one was killed and no crude was gushing into the water, but the distinctions don't end there....