Latest USA Headlines
All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Arctic Has Warmest Winter with Sea Ice at Record Lows: Weather Data
Mar 9 2018 // Winter at the top of the world wimped out this year. The Arctic just finished its warmest winter on record. And sea ice hit record lows for this time of year, with plenty of open water where ocean water normally freezes...
Cigna to Buy Pharmacy Benefits Manager Express Scripts for $52 Billion
Mar 8 2018 // U.S. health insurer Cigna Corp. struck a $52-billion deal to buy pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) Express Scripts Holding Co on Thursday, looking for new ways to hold onto their profits as the industry faces greater...
La Niña Has 55% Chance of Waning During March-May, Says National Weather Service
Mar 8 2018 // The current La Niña phase of the climate cycle will most likely transition during the March-May season to ENSO-neutral conditions, a U.S. government weather forecaster said on Thursday, a development that brings...
Rewrite of Senate Banking Bill Tough for Wall Street Banks
Mar 8 2018 // Wall Street banks don’t have much to celebrate in what’s probably the final version of a bill easing financial rules that is headed for a U.S. Senate vote. Late Wednesday, Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo, an...
S&P Places AXA on CreditWatch Negative over Its Plans to Buy XL Group for $15.3B
Mar 7 2018 // S&P Global Ratings placed France’s AXA on CreditWatch with negative implications over its planned $15.3 billion purchase of XL Group Ltd. The ratings agency said it is worried about what the mega-deal could do to...
For U.S. Doctors, Being Sued Is Common Ailment
Mar 7 2018 // Getting sued is not an uncommon event for physicians. More than a third of physicians (34 percent) have had a claim filed against them at some point in their careers. Also, according to research from the American Medical...
Tax Law Will Benefit U.S. P/C Insurers, Says Moody’s
Mar 7 2018 // The impact of the new U.S. tax law is credit positive for U.S.-based insurance companies, which will boost profitability for many of these firms, particularly those that have been paying high effective tax rates. The Trump...
How Cyber FICO Ratings Could Benefit Insurance Underwriting
Mar 7 2018 // Nearly 30 years ago the Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) first introduced its metric for measuring creditworthiness. Since then, the FICO Score has become a default metric used by countless market participants to facilitate...
Drugmakers Scale Back Marketing of Opioids
Mar 6 2018 // Purdue Pharma LP’s decision to stop promoting its opioid drugs to doctors is being hailed as the first result of a judge’s push for concrete solutions to a nationwide epidemic, even though the company says the...
Kobe Steel CEO to Resign Over Data Fraud Scandal as Report Finds More Cases
Mar 6 2018 // Kobe Steel Ltd said on Tuesday its CEO will step down to take responsibility for a widespread data fraud scandal, although doubts remain over a corporate culture mired in malfeasance and the possibility of future...
How AXA Wooed and Won XL Group in $15.3B Takeover Deal
Mar 6 2018 // AXA SA’s pursuit of its biggest ever takeover really got serious at a romantic hotel on the shores of Lake Zurich. That’s where top executives of the French behemoth and XL Group Ltd., fresh from the annual...
Automakers, Tech Firms Urge Congress to Speed Up Autonomous Vehicles
Mar 6 2018 // Major automakers on Monday joined forces with tech companies and a variety of interest groups to urge the U.S. Senate to take up, before the end of May, a stalled bill aimed at speeding the deployment and testing of...
Company Wants Appeals Court to Lift Halt in Louisiana Oil Pipeline Work
Mar 5 2018 // A company building a crude oil pipeline in Louisiana has asked a federal appeals court to lift a judge’s order that temporarily halts pipeline construction work in a swamp. Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC asked the 5th...
Trump Administration Wants Time to Think About Joining Opioid Lawsuits
Mar 5 2018 // The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge overseeing hundreds of lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors to give it 30 days to decide whether to participate in the litigation. The department made...
U.S. Supreme Rules Against Insurer’s Appeal Challenging Profits in Rate Setting
Mar 5 2018 // The U.S. Supreme Court in late February declined to hear Mercury Insurance Co.’s appeal to overturn a February 2017 California Court of Appeal ruling that held Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones’ 2013 order...
Law Enforcement Officers 3 Times More Likely to Be Injured Than Other Workers
Mar 5 2018 // An estimated 669,100 law enforcement officers were treated in emergency departments across the nation for nonfatal injuries between 2003 and 2014, according to a new study. Researchers at the National Institute for...
5 Strategies for Success in Small Business Market
Mar 5 2018 // The small business market is big. The U.S. small commercial market represents about one-third of the total commercial lines market and generates between $99 billion and $103 billion in direct written premium, according to...
How 2017’s Disasters Will Help People Start Viewing Mitigation as an Investment
Mar 5 2018 // Although clear challenges can come with the increasing cost and frequency of global natural disasters, there could also be untapped opportunity for insurers to tackle coverage gaps, according to industry...
Monsanto’s Suit over Arkansas’ Dicamba Ban Dismissed
Mar 5 2018 // An Arkansas judge has dismissed a Monsanto Co. lawsuit aiming to stop the state from blocking the use of a controversial farm chemical the company makes, dealing a blow to its attempts to increase sales of genetically...
Surplus Line Premium Increased by 6.4% Nationwide in 2017
Mar 5 2018 // All 15 surplus lines service offices across the United States experienced increases in excess and surplus (E&S) lines insurance premium in 2017, the Surplus Lines Stamping Office of Texas (SLTX) reports. U.S. surplus...
