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For about a month, Kmart says, its stores' checkout registers were "compromised by malicious software that stole customer credit and debit card information."

The company, owned by Sears, says it removed the malware from its system after it was discovered Thursday. It announced the exposure late Friday, saying that no personal data or PIN numbers were lost.

While some important customer information seems to have been protected, the breach could still allow criminals to make counterfeit versions of the exposed credit cards.

The company announced the problem on its website, along with recommendations that "If customers see any sign of suspicious activity, they should immediately contact their card issuer." The company also says customers can get more information at its website and over the phone at 888-488-5978.

The number of customers in question hasn't been announced; the vulnerability did not affect online shoppers, the company says.

Saying the breach likely began in early September, Sears announced that to protect anyone "who shopped with a credit or debit card in our Kmart stores during the month of September through yesterday (Oct. 9, 2014), Kmart will be offering free credit monitoring protection."

The data breach affected only "track 2" data, reports security expert Brian Krebs, citing a Sears spokesman who says the information "did not include customer names, email address, physical address, Social Security numbers, PINs or any other sensitive information."

With Friday's announcement, the retailer joins Target, Neiman Marcus and Home Depot on the list of large companies whose customers' data was accessed illegally in the past year.

credit cards

Kmart

hacking

In 1997, Cylvia Hayes, now Oregon's first lady, received about $5,000 to marry an Ethiopian man who wanted a green card. At a tearful news conference in Portland, Ore., Hayes said Thursday that she had made a "serious mistake" in what was a "difficult and unstable period" in her life.

"I want to be clear today — I was associating with the wrong people," she said in a statement read at the news conference. "I was struggling to put myself through college and was offered money in exchange for marrying a young person who had a chance to get a college degree himself if he were able to remain in the United States."

The hastily called news conference followed a story in the Willamette Week. The newspaper reported:

"In 1997, King County, Wash., marriage records show, Hayes married a teenage Ethiopian immigrant 11 years younger than she. It's not clear why Hayes entered into the marriage and why she has kept it secret. However, public records raise questions about whether the marriage was legitimate or whether it was a way to help the young man with his immigration status."

News stories have identified the man as Abraham B. Abraham. He was 18 at the time. Hayes was 29. The story noted that they filed for divorce in 2001. Hayes said that she and Abraham met only a handful of times and never lived together. She said they have not had any contact since the divorce was finalized.

Hayes called the marriage "wrong then and it is wrong now," adding, "I am here today to accept the consequences, some of which will be life changing."

Hayes and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, aren't married, but have been together for 10 years. The governor's office refers to Hayes as first lady.

In her statement Thursday, Hayes said she did not tell Kitzhaber about the marriage until the story broke.

"This is the most painful part for me. John Kitzhaber deserved to know the history of the person he was forming a relationship with. The fact that I did not disclose this to him meant that he has learned about this in the most public and unpleasant way," she said. "This is my greatest sorrow in this difficult situation."

So-called green card marriages are illegal under federal law. But the Oregonian quotes local immigration official Philip Hornik as saying an investigation is more likely when there are "fresh tracks." Here's more:

"The statute of limitation for criminal penalties is five years from the marriage date, meaning Hayes' deadline passed in 2002. There's no limitation on civil penalties, however. Hayes is likely safe from legal repercussions, yet immigration officials have the power to revoke a given status from immigrants who benefit from such deals."

That could affect Abraham, who news reports say later earned a degree in math from Greensboro College in North Carolina and now lives in the Washington, D.C., area.

Political pundits interviewed by the Oregonian said they doubted the story would hurt Kitzhaber, who is seeking a fourth term against state Rep. Dennis Richardson, a Republican.

Gov. John Kitzhaber

Cylvia Hayes

Oregon

For South Dakotans who have enjoyed a relatively low-key campaign season so far, your peace and quiet is about to end.

Both the Senate arm of the national Democratic Party and a crowd-sourced, anti-superPAC superPAC are preparing to flood the airwaves with ads backing Democratic candidate Rick Weiland and attacking former Republican Gov. Mike Rounds.

South Dakota was supposed to be one of three easy pickups for Republicans in their bid to take control of the Senate — which means it's just a matter of time before Republicans and their outside group allies respond in kind.

The flurry of activity comes after new polling that shows Rounds' big lead in the race has shrunk, with both Weiland and former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler within striking distance. Democratic Party leaders would be happy with either Weiland, a onetime aide to former Majority Leader Tom Daschle, or Pressler, who both in 2008 and 2012 endorsed President Obama.

South Dakota has been a generally reliable Republican state in recent years, but Rounds has been dragged down by investigations into a state agency's use of a visa program that gives green cards to wealthy foreigners who invest in United States businesses. Rounds promoted the plan as governor, but a major beneficiary went bankrupt amid allegations of corruption and self-dealing.

A spokeswoman at the National Republican Senatorial Committee said Rounds is in good shape and that it's a sign of Democrats' desperation that they are throwing money at a race in a state like South Dakota.

Both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Mayday PAC have said they will spend $1 million in South Dakota, although the Democratic money will also be used for voter turnout.

The state is about as inexpensive a media market as they come. An ad buy designed so that the typical viewer will see it 10 times in a week costs about $250,000 in South Dakota – a fraction of what it costs in states with big TV markets.

And while states like North Carolina and Colorado have seen tens of thousands of television ads so far this election, South Dakota had only seen about 12,000 through this week, at a total cost of $2 million, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

If those hoping to defeat Rounds spend as much as they say, and those hoping to elect him match that, South Dakotans could easily be subjected to twice that number of ads in the final three weeks of the campaign.

2014 Senate race: South Dakota

2014 Senate races

South Dakota

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

President Obama is holding a town hall meeting Thursday in California with a group he wants to mobilize for the midterm elections: millennial entrepreneurs. Millennials — young people ages 18-34 — are a key part of the Democratic coalition.

In just a few years, millennials will become the biggest demographic bulge in the electorate. For a very long time, young people's partisan preferences looked pretty much like everyone else's — they divided their votes between the two parties. After 2004 that changed, and they swung very heavily to the Democrats. But they're not the Obama-adoring college students of 2008 anymore. They're the generation hard-hit by the economy.

"Democrats have an advantage with them at this moment, but the one presidential candidate they really have voted for overwhelmingly is Barack Obama," says Peter Levine, who studies young people's civic participation at Tufts University. "And he's not gonna be available anymore. ... I think the Democrats have a job to shift the allegiance to the party. Quite a tough job ... Republicans should make an active play for them."

Join The Conversation

Use the hashtag #newboom to join the conversation on social media.

So projections that millennials are once and forever enthusiastic Democrats will be put to the test of the next few cycles. To find out more about their views, we asked six millennials to join us at La Colombe cafe in the Shaw neighborhood in Washington, D.C., to talk politics. They discussed political gridlock, economic issues and social issues like gay marriage and reproductive rights. Listen to their full conversation, and view excerpts below:

Listen to the Full Conversation36:44

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Listen to the Full Conversation

Arturo Chang

i i

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

I have issues mostly with the two-party system. ... I wouldn't blame the Republicans for the gridlock we see; I blame that more as a systematic issue as a result of our type of government, you know, the way it's structured it's prone to create gridlock. But I think the issue I see is that [the Republican Party is] not even willing to touch the social issues that we are all talking about here. ... I expect gridlock. The problem for me is partisanship in Washington, which, when you have an extremely partisan Washington and working within a system that is prone to gridlock, you're going to have a government that doesn't get anything done. ... The problem is that Washington just does not reflect the true American, the way America feels. You know, research shows America is not as partisan as we say they are.

Shaza Loutfi

i i

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

I would say that it's very difficult to find something that really aligns with what you believe. In a perfect world, I would say I am an independent, but in the system that we have currently where the two parties dominate, we have to choose a side. And in that case I would definitely say Democrat. I think there is this association with the Republicans of it being dominated by white males and the business scene, whereas the Democrats seem more inclusive, and that speaks to me.

As an Arab-American, when you talk about privacy and when we look at what's happened in recent years right after 9/11 — we've seen the wiretapping of Arabs, all of their information being taken and used in different ways — it's an abuse of power. And so when I think about that and I think about Republicans trying to use the privacy issue to get more voters, it is interesting to me. Because, as you know, Arabs used to vote Republican and they used to be very conservative and they would mesh with them on that. And so now it's interesting to see that maybe they're going to get the Arab vote back. Although I don't really agree with the Republican Party, it is an issue that I support and it is something I do think they're on the right track with.

Alexa Graziolli

i i

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Most of us here probably have college loans, and I think Social Security, I think it's good to have a safety net, you work towards it, and I think it's about helping your elders and things like that. I want to pay in for it for my mom; I want my kids to pay in for it. So I do think that government is a helpful thing.

I think these [social] issues are so important to us too because growing up we were exposed to them more. So as far as ... gay rights, when my mom was growing up that may have been the secret in the family you didn't really talk about it. But growing up, you know, I knew my uncle was gay and that didn't matter to me because I'm 5 — I don't know the difference so I think that's why it's so important. As you get older you realize that there are people that are against it and you're kind of like, "Why? It hasn't caused me any harm; it doesn't cause you any harm." So I think that's why we're so focused on issues like that.

Stephen Crouch

i i

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Obviously the government is a tool that we have to have in our society — it gives us laws, it gives us rules — but I would also like to point out there's a lot of bureaucracy involved. There's a lot of government bailouts that are happening, and this is money that we're paying into the kitty that we'll probably never see in our generation. We have politicians that make, you know, exorbitant amounts of money and ... these are [our] taxes ... we're buying their Lexuses, we're buying their McMansions, and obviously I feel like that's a system that's just not working for working-class people.

I kind of feel like politicians at this point of time, they rely on being very beige. They don't have any kind of stance either way, and that's how these guys are getting kind of pushed into politics. I mean, you look at Obama — he had no vote either way until he went into the presidency. It's like, politicians are almost negatively impacted for having an opinion. You know, like Rand Paul probably doesn't have much a chance at ... being the president because he voices an opinion which, you know, in all honestly is a breath of fresh air.

Jessica Ramser

i i

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

Rachel Lushinsky/NPR

My dad is a labor worker and I saw unemployment help us so much growing up. And, yeah, I do fear that. Especially, you know, thankful for the loans that the government is giving me, but where is that going to take me in the next two years? You know, am I guaranteed a job anymore? No, and I am scared for my economic future.

[My dad] has gone through just periods of unemployment. The labor union is tough — sometimes there's jobs, sometimes there's not; it depends on the weather. There's so many union workers out there. Currently he is working now, but [he has] gone through periods of unemployment, which, you know, there's a couple months you're fine and a couple months you're not. So definitely living that paycheck to paycheck, I have felt firsthand with my family.

I think that as millennials we have a voice, and a strong voice. And within the next couple years, especially as we get into our careers and prominent roles, you'll see that throughout the United States and in policy.

Ginger Gibson

I came out of college and ... the economy crashed ... I walked into my office every day not knowing if they were gonna close the doors and turn us away. I mean, they were hemorrhaging employees, and I watched people who would have not gotten by had it not been for unemployment. ... I think that's going to, probably forever, change my perspective on government assistance like that, just because I saw how bad it was and how desperately people needed it.

I think we pay attention way more than we get credit for. I think that there's this misperception of millennials as being selfish, as being unengaged, as not working hard, as being difficult. I think that's wrong. I think anybody who's grown up in my years and years after me that has to deal with this economy knows that's wrong, we've worked really hard. And we pay attention. Sometimes we pay more attention than older generations. And we're going to keep paying attention. And I think that our viewpoints are not locked in, we're not going to be monolithic from the start, but I think that we are going to pay a lot more attention moving forward.