Latest USA Headlines
All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
West Virginia Court Rules Negligent Mine Inspectors Can Be Sued
Feb 7 2013 // Private and federal mine safety inspectors can be held liable and sued when a negligent inspection results in the wrongful death of a coal miner, the state Supreme Court ruled in handing a victory to the widows of two men...
RBS Fined $612 Million for Libor Rate Rigging
Feb 7 2013 // Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $612 million to U.S. and British authorities to settle allegations it manipulated benchmark interest rates, and regulators warned there is more to come in the global investigation. RBS...
Government’s Case Against S&P: Ratings Stopped Making Sense
Feb 6 2013 // Barely two weeks after the big subprime lender New Century Financial Corp. went bankrupt, a top Standard & Poor’s executive assured Congress that her employer could be counted on to sound the alarm for the next...
BP Balks at Oil Spill Price Tag Sought by States
Feb 6 2013 // BP Plc has tallied up claims made by states and local governments on the U.S. Gulf Coast for economic and property damages from the Macondo oil spill, and come up with a figure of $34 billion, which it deems...
Lockton Re Hires New Execs to Strengthen Global Reinsurance Capabilities
Feb 6 2013 // Privately-owned Lockton and its specialist reinsurance division, Lockton Re, announced the strengthening of its global brokerage and client relationship capabilities, with a number of senior level hires both in London and...
U.S. Hits S&P with $5 Billion Fraud Lawsuit Over Mortgage Securities Ratings
Feb 5 2013 // The U.S. government is seeking $5 billion in its civil lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s, accusing the ratings service of defrauding investors, in one of the most ambitious cases yet from the Justice Department...
BP, States May Still Be Far Apart Over Oil Spill Deal
Feb 4 2013 // It is a question that has lawyers and many others on the U.S. Gulf coast buzzing: Will BP strike a massive deal to settle the remaining claims over the Gulf of Mexico well blowout? BP could be nearing a settlement of...
S&P Expects Government Lawsuit Over Its Pre-Crisis Credit Ratings
Feb 4 2013 // Standard & Poor’s said it expects to be the target of a U.S. Department of Justice civil lawsuit over its mortgage bond ratings, the first federal enforcement action against a credit rating agency over alleged...
Obama Offers Compromise on Birth Control Insurance Coverage
Feb 4 2013 // The Obama administration on Friday sought to settle a dispute with religious leaders over whether employees at faith-affiliated universities, hospitals and other institutions should have access to health insurance coverage...
Study: Manufacturing Driving Growth in Ohio
Feb 4 2013 // Manufacturing is again driving Ohio’s economic expansion, with more than half of the state’s counties dependent on the sector, according to a newspaper analysis. The Dayton Daily News reports that more than...
Plains States Remain in Severe Drought; Spring Crops in Jeopardy
Feb 1 2013 // The unrelenting drought gripping key farming states in the U.S. Plains shows no signs of abating, and it will take a deluge of snow or rain to restore critical moisture to farmland before spring planting of new crops, a...
Only 11 States Have Moved on Obamacare Health Regulations
Feb 1 2013 // Only 11 of the 50 U.S. states have moved to implement new consumer safeguards under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, raising questions about how major health insurance reforms will be enforced, a report...
U.S. Commercial Insurance Prices to Firm in 2013: Marsh
Jan 30 2013 // Rates for commercial lines insurance will continue to rise in 2013 thanks to above average losses, low investment returns and receding reserve releases. However, according to a new report published by Marsh, traditional...
Public Adjuster Firm Upset with Florida Blogger’s Questioning of Name
Jan 30 2013 // A public adjusting firm is threatening to sue a Florida blogger who claims the adjusting firm is using a name that makes it sound like it is a government agency in soliciting business from homeowners insured by the...
Hearing Reviews West Virginia Gas Pipeline Explosion
Jan 30 2013 // To Sue Bonham, it was as if the world were coming to an end: A wall of flame had suddenly engulfed her West Virginia neighborhood. Amid a deafening roar, objects began crashing through her ceiling. Her home began melting...
ACE Limited Forecasts 2013 Profit below Estimates; Shares Drop
Jan 30 2013 // Insurer ACE Limited reported a 24 percent fall in quarterly operating profit, hurt by losses related to Superstorm Sandy, and forecast a full-year profit below analysts’ estimates. After-tax catastrophe losses...
Judge Approves BP Gulf Oil Spill Settlement
Jan 29 2013 // A U.S. judge has accepted an agreement by BP Plc to plead guilty for its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and pay $4.0 billion in penalties for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a court official said on...
Less Than 50% of Small Businesses Offer Employee Benefits: LIMRA
Jan 29 2013 // Only 47 percent of small businesses (2-99 employees) in the United States offer benefits to their employees, the lowest level in two decades of research by the life insurance industry research organization LIMRA. According...
SEC Immune from Investors’ Suit Over Madoff, Says Appeals Court
Jan 29 2013 // Investors who said they lost money in Bernard Madoff’s fraud may not pursue a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for missing the swindler’s Ponzi scheme, a federal appeals court said on...
Fraud Concerns Linger Over Illinois Driver License Law
Jan 29 2013 // As Illinois becomes the fourth and most populous U.S. state to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, nagging concerns remain about whether there are enough safeguards to avoid the identity fraud and other...
