Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.

The Charlotte, North Carolina, bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.

The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.

Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands.

Newly-unsealed court documents detail some of the early travels of James "Whitey" Bulger and his longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig following Bulger's 1995 indictment.

In an affidavit dated April 25, 1997, then-FBI Special Agent Charles Gianturco writes that Bulger and Greig spent time in New York on Long Island and in Grand Isle, La., in 1995 and 1996.

According to the affidavit, Bulger and Greig checked into a hotel under the names "Mr. and Mrs. Tom Baxter" in the fall of 1995, and that Bulger had also used that name when he befriended a man in neighboring Selden told him he was a merchant seaman.

The criminal complaint against Grieg was unsealed Thursday in Boston following the arrests of Bulger and Grieg in Santa Monica, Calif. It charges Greig with harboring and concealing Bulger.

The Supreme Court has ruled against the estate of Anna Nicole Smith in its quest to capture some of the $1.6 billion estate left behind by her late Texas billionaire husband.

The high court on Thursday ruled that a bankruptcy court's decision to give the now-deceased Playmate $475 million from the estate of oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall was decided incorrectly.

Smith and Marshall were wed in 1994, and he died the next year.

His will left his estate to his son, E. Pierce Marshall, and nothing to Smith. A California bankruptcy court awarded Smith part of the estate, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal said that a bankruptcy court could not make a decision on an issue outside of bankruptcy law.

A $188 million class-action verdict against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sam's Club over payment to employees for rest breaks and off-the-clock work was upheld Friday by a Pennsylvania appeals court.

A three-judge Superior Court panel said there was sufficient evidence at trial to conclude there had been a breach of contract, unjust enrichment and violations of state labor laws.

The judges also ruled in a 211-page opinion that the presiding Philadelphia judge erred in determining some of the plaintiffs' legal fees, and sent that part of the case back for recalculation.

The 2006 trial, which lasted 32 days, resulted in a finding that Wal-Mart did not pay employees for all the work they performed and did not let them take their paid, mandatory rest breaks, the judges wrote. The court awarded $46 million in attorneys' fees.

Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said the retail giant believes the court decision was wrong in a number of respects and looks forward to additional review in the courts.

Southwest Virginia landowners have reached a $3.4 million tentative settlement in a class-action lawsuit over coalbed methane rights.

The Bristol Herald Courier reports Wednesday's settlement would be split among 1,850 landowners.

The federal lawsuit alleged that Chesapeake Energy Corp. subsidiary Chesapeake Appalachia underpaid royalties to landowners for decades.

The settlement will be made final at a hearing Oct. 4.

Other similar class-action lawsuits are pending in federal court in southwest Virginia involving CNX Gas Co. and EQT Production Co.

The Supreme Court has refused to get involved in a long-running dispute on the continued existence of the Yankton Sioux Tribe and the extent of its lands in South Dakota.

The justices on Monday let stand several rulings involving the tribe, including an appeals court decision saying the reservation covers more than 30,000 acres, which is mostly land the federal government holds in trust for the tribe and individual tribal members.

The high court also rejected an appeal from the tribe to block the transfer of two federal recreation areas along the Missouri River to the state of South Dakota.

The cases are Daugaard v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-929; Southern Missouri Recycling v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-931; Hein v. Yankton Sioux Tribe, 10-932; and Yankton Sioux Tribe v. Daugaard, 10-1058.