Latest USA Headlines
All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Businesses Appeal U.S. Judge’s Ruling Upholding Broker Fiduciary Rule
Feb 28 2017 // The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appealed a Texas federal judge’s ruling upholding a Labor Department’s regulation aimed at putting retirement savers’ interest first on Friday, the latest salvo in the...
Border Adjustment Would Sock Florida with Hugely Higher Insurance Rates
Feb 27 2017 // In recent years, Congress repeatedly has considered legislation that would have adversely and profoundly impacted disaster-prone states like Florida. Luckily, we were spared passage, over and over again. Unfortunately, a...
Trump Administration Reviewing Obama’s Autonomous Vehicle Guidance
Feb 27 2017 // U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said on Sunday she is reviewing self-driving vehicle guidance issued by the Obama administration and urged companies to explain the benefits of automated vehicles to a skeptical...
Staying Alive: Cutting U.S. Highway Death Rate to Zero
Feb 27 2017 // In the near future, the U.S. should be able to prevent thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of deaths on the roads and highways. The Department of Transportation has proposed a Road to Zero — the elimination of...
What the Wall Street Journal Gets Wrong about Farming in 2017
Feb 24 2017 // With the Farm Bill up for reauthorization in 2018 and legislative debate poised to heat up later this year, there’s been a lot of talk about the plight of the American farmer. A recent Wall Street Journal piece...
AIG Among ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Insurers Trying to Assess Path Forward Under Trump
Feb 24 2017 // Insurance giant American International Group sees “considerable uncertainty” about U.S. regulations that deem non-bank financial institutions as being too big to fail, given the recent change in White House...
How Supreme Court Just Made Things Easier for Patent Infringers
Feb 23 2017 // The Supreme Court made it easier on Wednesday for U.S. manufacturers to infringe patents held by competitors by manufacturing all but one of the infringing components abroad. The practical consequences could be...
Europe’s Windstorm Egon to Cost Insurers an Estimated US$223.3M: PERILS
Feb 23 2017 // The initial estimate of the insured property market loss for extra-tropical cyclone Egon, which hit France and Germany in January, is €212 million (US$223.3 million), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based...
Federal Appeals Court Rules Florida Doctors Can Ask Patients About Guns
Feb 23 2017 // A federal appeals court has ruled that Florida doctors can talk to patients about gun safety, declaring a law aimed at restricting such discussions a violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. The 11th...
US-Reports and Canadian Reports Merger Creates Colorado Risk Solutions Firm
Feb 22 2017 // H.W. Kaufman Financial Group has combined US-Reports and Canadian Reports, rebranding both companies under the name Afirm, which is based in Fort Collins, Colo. The merger will continue their global presence and allow a...
U.S. Keeps on Motoring, Sets Record of 3.2 Trillion Miles in 2016
Feb 22 2017 // Motorists drove a record 3.22 trillion miles (5.2 trillion km) on U.S. roads last year, a 2.8 percent rise from 2015 and the fifth consecutive year of year-over-year increases, according to the U.S. Department of...
Insured Losses from New South Wales’ Bushfires & Hailstorms Pass US$53.7M
Feb 22 2017 // Combined losses from the two New South Wales catastrophes of bushfires and hailstorms, have passed A$70 million (US$53.7 million), according to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA). As of Feb. 20, insured losses for...
10 U.S.-Designated Autonomous Vehicle Testing Sites
Feb 21 2017 // The U.S. Department of Transportation recently designated 10 “proving grounds” to encourage safe testing of automated vehicle technologies. “The designated proving grounds will collectively form a...
Sirius XM Wins Dismissal of Turtles Copyright Lawsuit in New York
Feb 21 2017 // Sirius XM Holdings Inc. on Thursday won the dismissal of a New York copyright lawsuit over the satellite radio company’s playing of older songs by the 1960s band The Turtles and other artists, reducing the size of a...
Snoozing While Cruising Argues for Full Autonomy in Vehicles
Feb 21 2017 // As Ford Motor Co. has been developing self-driving cars, the U.S. automaker has started noticing a problem during test drives: Engineers monitoring the robot rides are dozing off. Company researchers have tried to roust...
17 Million U.S. Homes Worth $4.9 Trillion Are in Environmental Hazard Zones
Feb 20 2017 // Millions of homes and condominiums across the country are in high danger zones for environmental hazards. According to the Environmental Hazards Housing Risk Index, produced by ATTOM Data Solutions, 17.3 million single...
People
Feb 20 2017 // U.S. Risk, a global property/casualty wholesaler and managing general agency based in Dallas, named Wayne H. Carter III as president of U.S. Risk Underwriters Inc., its programs group. Carter assumes senior level...
U.S. Estimates Hurricane Matthew Damage to Recreational Boats at $110M
Feb 20 2017 // Hurricane Matthew, which threatened four coastal states as it corkscrewed through the Atlantic in early October, caused an estimated $110 million in damage to recreational boats, according to Boat Owners Association of The...
Business Moves
Feb 20 2017 // Markel, SureTec Markel Corp. has agreed to acquire surety firm SureTec for approximately $250 million, inclusive of a three-year earn out. SureTec is one of the largest privately owned surety companies in the U.S....
Wisconsin Farmer Sentenced for Federal Crop Insurance Fraud
Feb 17 2017 // John W. Vaudreuil, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, announced that Mark E. Johnson, 50, a farmer in Dresser, Wis., was sentenced on Feb. 13, 2017, in a federal crop insurance fraud case. During...
