CHICAGO (AP) -- Only six insurance carriers have told the state of Illinois they want to sell a combined 165 health policies on the state's online insurance marketplace under the nation's new health care law numbers far lower than expected, raising concerns the trend will hold true across the country.

Fewer health plans could mean less competition and possibly higher premium prices. Officials in President Barack Obama's home state had anticipated some 260 health plans would be offered by 16 different insurance carriers, based on a survey the Illinois Department of Insurance conducted last fall.

The Illinois numbers are an early indicator that insurance companies are backing away from full participation in the online marketplaces, said Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive turned industry consultant.

"I'm hearing that from other carriers in other parts of the country as well," Laszewski said. "They are terribly fearful that if there's a poor launch (of the marketplaces) they're going to get blamed for a mess."

The carriers may participate in the marketplaces in their core customer states, bypassing other states in the first year, he said.

Insurers are concerned, in part, that people who have expensive medical conditions will sign up immediately for coverage through the exchanges, while healthier customers will wait. That could leave an insurer, at least initially, without enough premium revenue to handle the medical bills it receives. They're also concerned about how fees and coverage restrictions mandated by the law will affect the profitability of their plans.

But Gov. Pat Quinn expressed optimism in a statement released Wednesday, saying he's "very encouraged" multiple plans are being offered.

Mike Claffey, a Quinn spokesman on health care, said the prediction of higher numbers "included multiple subsidiaries of several different insurers" and plans "the federal government later ruled out for states not operating their own (marketplaces). The Department of Insurance is confident that the number of plans filed will allow for robust competition between insurers and broad choice for consumers across the State."

The national health law requires most Americans to have health insurance beginning Jan. 1. Many people who are now uninsured will buy health insurance through the government online marketplace because they'll be able to get tax credits to help pay for it. The online marketplaces one in every state are scheduled to be up and running by Oct. 1.

Fewer health plans on the exchanges could affect the cost of premiums people pay for coverage. Proponents of the Affordable Care Act say the online marketplaces will help hold down premium hikes because insurers will be competing against each other as customers compare several policies side by side to find the best match.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Aetna Inc. have told analysts that their involvement in the health insurance marketplaces across the country will depend on whether they're financially viable for the companies. On a conference call with investor analysts Tuesday, Aetna officials said they might pull their products from the online marketplaces at the last minute.

"We are entering these exchanges very carefully," Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini told analysts Tuesday during a conference call to discuss earnings. UnitedHealth is the nation's largest health insurer, and Aetna is the third largest, based on enrollment.

In Illinois, one factor that could help competition on the health insurance marketplace is the nonprofit Land of Lincoln Health. The health law created a category of insurance carriers called Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, or "co-ops." Land of Lincoln Health, the only co-op in Illinois to receive federal approval, received a $160 million federal loan to begin operations.

Dan Yunker, Land of Lincoln Health CEO, said Wednesday the organization hopes its premium prices will be the lowest on the marketplace. The company has submitted multiple health plans to the state.

Prices will be kept low, Yunker said, because consumers will govern the co-op, and "our executives are never going to take huge big paychecks."

While other carriers wouldn't say how many plans they submitted in Illinois, Chicago-based Health Care Service Corp. offered 35 plans to Illinois officials, said spokesman Greg Thompson. HCSC operates the Blue Cross Blue Shield health plan in Illinois.

"HCSC has filed its Qualified Health Plan (QHP) applications in each of the states in which it operates," Thompson said. "Our filings reflect our commitment to expanding access to care in our states and our intention to offer an array of competitively priced products and services to our existing and potential customers on and off the health insurance exchanges."

The 165 health plans submitted will be reviewed by the Illinois insurance department to see if they meet requirements set out in the national health law. The department will recommend whether or not the plan should be certified as a "qualified health plan" to federal Health and Human Services on or before July 31. The federal agency will make the final determination by Aug. 31.

"I am very encouraged that we have seen multiple plans being offered on the Illinois Health Insurance Marketplace," Quinn said in a statement. "This means that people and families that have been struggling to obtain health coverage will have many options to choose from when we begin the open enrollment process beginning in October of this year."

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AP Business Writer Tom Murphy contributed to this report from Indianapolis.

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AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Art experts are hoping strong interest from Asian buyers and a buoyant market, sparked by a record-breaking sale of contemporary art earlier this month, will boost two Latin American auctions in New York this week.

A bronze sculpture of a dancing couple by Colombian Fernando Botero and paintings by Mexican Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Chilean Roberto Matta and Brazilian Candido Portinari are expected to be the highlights of the sales at Christie's and Sotheby's.

Earlier this month the auction houses had blockbuster sales of Impressionist and contemporary art. Christie's contemporary art sale on May 15 hauled in $495 million - the highest of any art auction ever.

"Obviously the contemporary art sale was on a historical scale," said Virgilio Garza, Christie's Latin American art chief. "So we hope we continue with the level of energy that the market has."

Christie's estimates $24 million to $34 million in total Latin American sales on Wednesday and Thursday. If the upper limit is reached, it will top the peak of the auction house's sale of the region's art, set at $33.7 million in May 2008, months before the Wall Street crash.

Sotheby's expects about $20.7 million to $28.7 million in Latin American art sales on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We saw $1.5 billion in Impressionist and contemporary art sold in barely two weeks in New York (this month)," said Axel Stein, Latin American art chief at Sotheby's. "That doesn't mean necessarily that manna will a rain on us directly, but it almost assures we won't have just normal or negative sales."

Top-priced works at each auction house include paintings by the late Ramos Martinez, whose art was collected by Hollywood luminaries after he moved to Los Angeles to find expert medical care for his daughter. Christie's see his circa 1930 work "Mujeres con Frutas" (Women with Fruit) fetching $1 million to $1.5 million.

Sotheby's has a pre-sale estimate of up to $1 million for his "La India de Floripondios," (Indian Woman with Daturas). In the painting with its trumpet-shaped flowers, Ramos Martinez evokes French painter Paul Cezanne's use of circles, cylinders and cones to create a composition, according to Stein.

The artist reserves flowing lines in the work for the woman's smooth brown face, framed by braided black hair.

Overall, both auction houses expect Asian demand to be a driver of the sales, following the May 23-26 Art Basel Hong Kong art fair where the Swiss Galerie Gmurzynska said it sold $3.5 million worth of Boteros, including $1.3 million for the 2012 painting "Quarteto," which went to a collector form Malaysia.

Christie's is offering Botero's 2000 bronze "Dancers," which could fetch up to $1 million. It portrays a heavily muscled nude man and woman, her left hand on his right shoulder.

Sotheby's single highest-priced lot is Matta's circa 1939 oil on canvas "Morphologie Psycologique," (Psychological Morphology). Among its innovative techniques is drip painting, prefiguring a technique used by American Jackson Pollock, who was a student of Matta's in New York in the 1940s.

Portinari's 1941 oil on canvas "Meninos Soltando Pipas" (Children Releasing Kites)," is expected to be the top-priced Brazilian art work. Christie's estimates it will sell for up to $1.2 million.

The painting was done during a stage of Portinari's career, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, that showed children playing leap frog or chasing kites and balloons, according to Christie's.

(Reporting by Walker Simon; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)

Exxon's annual meeting used to draw dozens of protesters from environmental and human-rights groups, but there was only a lone demonstrator outside as the meeting began Wednesday in an ornate symphony hall.

A retirement fund for New York state employees is proposing that Exxon ban bias based on sexual orientation. The Exxon board opposes the measure, saying that the company already prohibits all types of discrimination and doesn't need to add language regarding gays.

Last year, shareholders rejected a similar anti-bias measure and another on climate change.

On Wednesday, shareholders will vote on another resolution proposed by a religious group from Caldwell, N.J., to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Exxon products and operations.

Exxon is tapping tar-sands oil in Canada and using hydraulic fracturing to boost U.S. production of natural gas. Some environmentalists oppose both practices and say that Exxon should invest more to develop wind, solar and geothermal energy. The company has made forays into alternative energy sources but argues that the world will be dependent on oil for decades.

"Exxon Mobil's goal is to be the premier petrochemical and petroleum company in the world," CEO Rex Tillerson said as he discussed the company's activities.

Exxon Mobil Corp. is coming off its second-biggest profit ever, having earned $44.9 billion in 2012.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank kept its main interest rate on hold at a record low 0.5 percent on Thursday, saying that improved economic data in May confirmed its forecast of a gradual recovery from prolonged recession later this year.

ECB President Mario Draghi told a news conference the bank's easy monetary policy "should continue to support prospects for an economic recovery later in the year" and it would remain "accommodative" for as long as necessary.

He also said the bank was still looking at ways to boost lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and revitalizing the market for asset-backed securities but any action was "not for the short-term".

The ECB slightly lowered its economic outlook for the euro area this year, saying output would decline by 0.6 percent in 2013 but grow by 1.1 percent next year. ECB staff forecast inflation of 1.4 percent this year and 1.3 percent in 2014 -- below the bank's target of below but close to 2.0 percent.

Draghi said the rate-setting governing council discussed at its monthly meeting the possibility of cutting the rate at which banks deposit money with the central bank to below zero.

The ECB was technically ready to do so but would keep this and other unconventional options "on the shelf" for now, he said.

Asked if the decision was unanimous, Draghi said there was a consensus that "there wasn't any direction change that would grant immediate action". In the past, he has used the term consensus to signal a large majority rather than unanimity.

"This can be seen as a reaction to the slight improvement in the purchasing managers indices (PMIs), which seem to signal that the worst is over in the euro zone," said David Kohl, chief economist for Germany at Julius Baer.

A firm majority of 81 economists polled by Reuters before Thursday's rate decision did not expect the ECB to cut its main refinancing rate or its deposit rate this month or in the near future.

Draghi did not rule out further policy action if needed.

Purchasing managers index surveys on Wednesday showed euro zone business activity shrank in May, but at a slightly slower pace. Downturns have eased in France, Italy and Spain, and Germany is stabilizing, the data showed.

Inflation, which fell to 1.2 percent in April, rose back to 1.4 percent in May, while Eurostat confirmed the bloc's economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the first quarter of the year.

"If data were to disappoint going forward, then a refi rate cut becomes an option," ABN Amro economist Nick Kounis said.

European shares extended falls and peripheral bond yields rose as Draghi spoke, after he cautioned against getting too optimistic about current market conditions.

DOOR AJAR

Draghi kept up pressure on euro zone governments to maintain the pace of deficit and debt reduction, saying that countries should be given more time to correct excessive deficits only in exceptional circumstances.

His comments sounded critical of the European Commission's decision last week to propose more time for five countries to cut their budget shortfall to the EU limit of 3 percent of GDP, including a two-year extension for France.

At last month's post-rate decision news conference, Draghi said the central bank would look at negative deposit rates "with an open mind and we stand ready to act if needed".

But that might be ammunition the ECB wants to keep unused unless the economy enters a downward spiral.

"It's not never-ever, but probably a lot would have to happen for it to happen," ABN Amro's Kounis said.

Other options could include moves to boost lending to SMEs, the economy's backbone, although plans have not been finalized and Draghi said he saw the European Investment Bank - the EU's soft-lending arm - taking the lead.

Varying borrowing costs in different parts of the common currency area have developed into a major headache for the ECB, with firms and consumers in the debt-ridden south having to pay much higher interest rates than their counterparts in the north.

After months of hinting at action, the ECB has lately sought to temper expectations, warning against expecting a bazooka.

ECB Vice-President Vitor Constancio said last week that one should not "overblow" options the ECB has to repair the market for asset-backed securities, which could help access to funding when bank lending channels are blocked.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said on Friday he expected a joint proposal with the European Investment Bank to improve SME financing this month, although the ECB seems content to be a junior partner in any such scheme.

(Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Republicans were so concerned about the party's dismal courtship of Latino voters in the 2012 election — Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Latino vote — that theya need to do better in the future, or face irrelevance.

Yet a new Pew Researchsuggests the shifting electoral landscape may not be as perilous as previously thought. Though Latinos continued to increase their overall share of the electorate in 2012, they still lagged significantly behind other demographics in their rate of voter participation.

While a record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the 2012 presidential election, 12.1 million eligible Latino voters didn't bother to cast ballots, also a record-high.

While the number of eligible Latino voters grew 19 percent since 2008, from 19.5 million to 23.3 million, voter participation rose at a slower rate of 15 percent. In the end, less than half of all eligible Latino voters cast ballots — far less than the 66.6 percent and 64.1 percent turnout rates for black and white voters, respectively.

In fact, Latino voter participation actually decreased from the last presidential election.

To look at it another way, while Latinos made up 17.2 percent of the nation's population in 2012, they comprised just 8.4 percent of all voters.

"The Hispanic vote is like a raw prospect in the NBA Draft," . "The potential is quite clearly there but the record of accomplishment doesn’t come close to matching that potential."

As , an uptick in the Latino voting rate could have profoundly changed the 2012 election results. Given President Obama's huge edge with that demographic, a surge of Latino voters would have made battleground states into cakewalks, and possibly added more states to the president's win column.

If the percentage of Hispanics who cast ballots had grown to match the percentage of whites who voted, the presidential map would have changed dramatically. Those higher rates would have meant more than 1 million additional votes in California and Texas; Arizona, which voted for Romney by a 208,000-vote margin, would have added an additional 217,000 Hispanic voters. And in key battleground states such as Colorado and Nevada, close races could have turned into runaway wins for Obama. A greater emphasis on Hispanic turnout in Wisconsin, where just 44 percent of Hispanics voted and where Obama won by seven points, would have given the president a much more comfortable victory there. []

Back in November, Pew's Mark Lopezto one possible reason for the declining Latino voter rate, noting that nearly half of all Latino voters live in two states: California and Texas. Neither state, he explained, was at all competitive this year, especially given the lack of a Democratic primary to boost engagement.

However, a separate Pew report noted that Latinos are the nation's youngest ethnic group, and could therefore become far more of an active bloc down the road.

"Their median age is 27 years — and just 18 years among native-born Hispanics — compared with 42 years for that of white non-Hispanics," Lopez and his colleagues . "In the coming decades, their share of the age-eligible electorate will rise markedly through generational replacement alone."

Even if the Latino voter participation rate continues to lag, the Latino share of the overall electorate will likely keep rising. In that respect, Republicans may want to take another shot at their big rebranding effort, which hassome

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Tens of thousands of people gathered Tuesday evening at a large park in the former British colony. They turned the park into a sea of flickering light as they held candles aloft to remember those killed when their protests in central Beijing were crushed by the Chinese military on June 4, 1989. Commemorations of the crackdown are suppressed everywhere else in China.

The vigil was cut short by a brief but heavy tropical downpour that sent some scurrying for the exits. But many remained, huddling with their candles under umbrellas. Organizers estimated a crowd of 150,000 while police put the number at 54,000, local media reported.

"We need to let everyone know" about what happened, said Alex Lai, a 26-year-old accountant who has been attending the vigil for 10 years. "Because if you don't hold this event then the memory will quickly be forgotten."

Organizers and crowd members called for Beijing to reverse its verdict on the protests, which Communist Party leaders have condemned as a counterrevolutionary riot.

In Beijing, there was no sign of large-scale protest, but some people answered a call by activists to wear black to work in remembrance. As in previous years, many pro-democracy activists themselves were not allowed to leave their homes to mark the anniversary. On the country's lively social media, searches for words including "commemorate" and "6_4" were banned, and the candle emoticon was removed.

In Hong Kong, the event has taken on a life of its own, with residents of the now-semiautonomous Chinese region expressing unhappiness that their administrators are still hand-picked by Beijing despite promises of more democracy.

"There are more people who want to use this vigil regarding June 4 as a way to protest against Beijing's heavy-handed intervention in Hong Kong affairs," said Willy Lam, a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

When Hong Kongers poured into the streets in 1989, their sympathy with the protesters in Beijing had more to do with fears about impending Chinese rule then eight years away. Now it's about current problems that include corruption, a leader viewed by many as inept and tin-eared, and a yawning wealth gap that has stifled the aspirations of the city's large middle-class.

And "of course it also expresses the anger of people over the Chinese government messing with our democratic reform," said pro-democracy legislator Lee Cheuk-yan.

Mike Yip, a sales consultant attending the vigil, said people were dissatisfied with the lack of reform.

"Everybody understands we can't change anything in the short term but we hope that slowly there will be changes," he said.

When Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997, it was allowed to keep its own political system and Western-style civil liberties such as freedom of speech until 2047.

Residents can vote for some of their legislators, while others are chosen by business and other special interest groups. They've never been able to choose their leader, who during British colonial rule was dispatched from London. Since China retook control, the leader, now known as chief executive, has been chosen by a committee of mostly pro-Beijing elites.

Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kongers to elect their leader by 2017 and elect all legislators in 2020 but no roadmap has been laid out.

The lack of progress has led Hong Kong University Professor Benny Tai to propose a protest movement in which supporters would occupy the city's financial district in 2014 in a last-ditch attempt to press their demands for a genuine chief executive election.

Hong Kongers' yearning for democracy is illustrated by their frustrations with current Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who has been hit by a series of controversies since taking office less than a year ago.

Leung's already poor approval rating plummeted further over the past few months, according to opinion polls by Hong Kong University researchers. Last week, a senior mainland official took the unusual step of denying there was a plan to replace him.

"One huge problem with C.Y. Leung is that he's a yes-man; he's regarded as a stooge of Beijing," Lam said.

Last year, protests forced Leung to back down from plans to require Chinese patriotism classes in schools, which some parents feared was a form of brainwashing. In January, he survived an impeachment attempt.

Leung took office with promises to provide more affordable housing but residents haven't had much relief from high rents and home prices in Hong Kong, where tens of thousands live in cubicles, metal cages or other substandard housing even though it's one of Asia's richest cities.

His latest troubles revolve around a scandal involving a member of his Cabinet, Barry Cheung, a businessman and key supporter of his bid for Hong Kong's top job. Cheung was forced to resign from all his public positions after police launched an investigation into him and his Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange, which had to return its trading license last month, two years after it opened. Six people have also been arrested in connection with the investigation.

A spate of corruption scandals has raised worries about the integrity of public officials in Hong Kong, an Asian financial center that likes to boast of clean government and strong rule of law. In May, the city's corruption watchdog launched a criminal investigation of its former chief over complaints of excessive spending on gifts and meals on visits with mainland Chinese officials.

Last year, the Independent Commission Against Corruption also investigated Leung's predecessor over allegations he received favors from wealthy friends. Separately, a former chief secretary, the second highest ranking official, has been charged in a corruption case along with a pair of billionaire developers.

Tensions have also been growing over the unwelcome side-effects of increasing numbers of mainland visitors. Last year about 35 million visited Hong Kong, a cramped city of 7.1 million. Locals have taken to deriding their mainland cousins as "locusts" for their reputation for buying up luxury goods, apartments and even baby formula.

To calm rising anger over shortages of formula coveted by mainland parents after China's tainted milk scandal the government in March prohibited visitors from leaving the city with more than two cans. Some 1,525 people have since been arrested for smuggling.

Following Tuesday's vigil, some plan to march to the Chinese central government's liaison office where, radical lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung said, they will demand the Communist Party end one-party rule, pay homage to the Tiananmen victims and release all political prisoners.

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Online:

Vigil organizer: http://www.alliance.org.hk

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Follow Kelvin Chan on Twitter at twitter.com/chanman

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed claims against KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in a lawsuit holding it liable for injuries a New York man says he sustained while helping to stop the so-called "underwear bomber" from blowing up a plane in 2009.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the federal court in New York lacked jurisdiction to rule on KLM, in part because the company is based in the Netherlands.

Theophilus Maranga said he suffered physical and emotional injuries, including injuries to his ribs and a fear of flying, in trying to overpower Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the flight, according to a lawsuit filed in November.

But under the Warsaw Convention, which regulates liability for international carriage of persons, Maranga's claims against KLM may only be asserted in the Netherlands, or Ghana, where the tickets were purchased, McMahon wrote.

The ruling does not affect the lawsuit's claims against Delta Airlines.

Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam on Christmas Day with a bomb stashed in his underwear, causing a fire but no explosion.

Maranga's lawsuit accused Delta, which bought Northwest in 2008, and KLM, which had a commercial agreement with Northwest, of negligently selling tickets to the Nigerian man and allowing him to board the plane despite signals that he had a criminal motivation, according to the lawsuit.

McMahon also dismissed claims against Abdulmutallab, who was also named as a defendant in the case, because the court lacks personal jurisdiction over him.

Lawyers for Maranga, KLM and Delta, as well as representatives for KLM and Delta, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. KLM is part of Air France-KLM SA.

Abdulmutallab has said he wanted to blow up the plane, which carried 290 people, in revenge for the killing of innocent Muslims by the United States.

He was sentenced last year to life in prison after pleading guilty to all eight counts of a federal indictment, including conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.

(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Chris Reese)

Penn's J/P Haitian Relief Organization will accept the top three men and two women finishers in a rare half-marathon that will wind through the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Sunday.

Ron Baldwin, executive director of J/P HRO, said the decision to sponsor Haitian runners in the world's largest marathon was inspired in part by an Associated Press story. The January report featured a Haitian distance runner named Astrel Clovis who faces numerous obstacles as he runs through the hilly streets of Port-au-Prince three years after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated the capital.

"It's an inspiring story," Baldwin said of Clovis. "After the earthquake, he's running. He's self-training, and has no support. We decided 'let's give that guy a chance.' And it grew from there to build a whole team."

Clovis has a good shot at making the cut for New York. He is a favorite among the more than 50 registered runners participating in Sunday's government-organized race. He finished second in a marathon in neighboring Dominican Republic in December with a time of 2 hours and 42 minutes.

"This is my dream to participate in a marathon, out in the world," Clovis said by phone. "I'm very excited to represent Haiti in the New York marathon, if I qualify."

J/P HRO has secured 10 spots for the marathon, five for the Haitian runners and another five for celebrities and philanthropists who will participate to raise funds for the group.

"What prompted this was just the impulse to give the runners an opportunity that they wouldn't have otherwise," Baldwin said.

Penn founded J/P HRO shortly after the 2010 earthquake, and has since become an ambassador-at-large for Haiti. His charity has relocated most of the displaced people from a camp on a golf course in Port-au-Prince one of many such camps in the capital and demolished the National Palace, which collapsed in the temblor.

J/P HRO will secure sponsors to cover airfare, visa fees and lodging for the runners. The group will also support the Haiti team as it trains with the Haitian Amateur Athletics Federation for the marathon.

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Trenton Daniel can be followed at http://twitter.com/trentondaniel

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