Latest USA Headlines
All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.
BP Wins Ruling Keeping Prior Accidents Out of Gulf Spill Trial
Feb 20 2012 // BP Plc won a court order to keep references to some previous accidents out of the trial to assess blame for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the oil company’s second victory in as many days to bar potentially...
BP Keeps Prior Accidents Out of Gulf Oil Spill Trial
Feb 20 2012 // BP Plc won a court order to keep references to some previous accidents out of its trial to assess blame for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It was the oil company’s second victory barring potentially damaging...
P/C Industry Disputes Consumer Group’s Claims It’s Avoiding Risk
Feb 17 2012 // Traditionally risk-takers, property/casualty insurance companies have become more like risk-avoiders when it comes to weather-related claims, leaving consumers and taxpayers to pay much higher costs, according to a new...
Obama Budget Bolsters Intellectual Property Enforcement
Feb 17 2012 // The Obama administration has proposed hiring more prosecutors to pursue intellectual property crimes in the new budget as the entertainment industry pressures the U.S. Justice Department to crack down on copyright...
Citigroup Mortgage Insurance Whistleblower: ‘I Have No Regrets’
Feb 17 2012 // It wasn’t Sherry Hunt’s original intent to go public on the shoddy quality control at a mortgage unit at Citigroup Inc., her employer since 2004. But by March 2011, as it became apparent to her that the...
U.S. Seeks Ways to Reduce Excessive Medical Testing
Feb 17 2012 // A leading group of U.S. doctors is trying to tackle the costly problem of excessive medical testing, hoping to avoid more government intervention in how they practice. The American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest...
China’s Trademark System Baffles Foreign Firms
Feb 16 2012 // China’s trademark system is a minefield of murky rules and opportunistic “trademark squatters” that even the world’s biggest companies and their highly-paid lawyers find hard to navigate, as Apple...
Underage Drinkers Run Up $750 Million a Year in Hospital Costs
Feb 16 2012 // Hospitalization for underage drinking is common in the United States, and it comes with a price tag — the estimated total cost for these hospitalizations is about $755 million per year. A Mayo Clinic study also found...
BofA Mortgage Securities Case Still Winding Its Way Through Courts
Feb 16 2012 // Legal wrangling over the proposed $8.5 billion settlement of some of Bank of America Corp.’s mortgage-backed securities liability could drag through the courts for years, a top appeals court judge said during...
Citigroup to Pay $158M in Whistleblower Fraud Claim Over Insurance for Mortgages
Feb 16 2012 // Citigroup Inc. has agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle U.S. civil claims that it defrauded the government into insuring thousands of risky home loans made by its CitiMortgage unit. Wednesday’s settlement resolves...
Ironshore Brings Lloyd’s Political Risk Coverage to U.S. Market
Feb 15 2012 // Ironshore Insurance Services has received extension of class approval from Lloyd’s to underwrite insurance coverage for the Pembroke Syndicate 4000 Political Risk and War and Terrorism unit. Pembroke’s...
Safety, Security at Bio Labs Open to Interpretation, Not Matter of Law
Feb 15 2012 // To reach his office in Galveston National Laboratory, where scientists study deadly pathogens such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses, director James Le Duc swipes his key card at the building’s single entrance, which...
China Agrees to Open Up Auto Insurance Market
Feb 14 2012 // U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that China had agreed to an important financial sector reform by opening up its massive auto insurance market to foreign competition. Biden said that during a meeting with U.S....
New York Leads 11 States in Suing EPA Over Soot Rules
Feb 14 2012 // New York and 10 other states filed a lawsuit last Friday designed to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue new regulations on soot pollution. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the lawsuit...
A Valentine’s Kiss Warning: Lead Poisoning!
Feb 14 2012 // If you’re going to be on either end of a kiss this Valentine’s Day, you might want to consider smooching bare-lipped. Most lipstick contains lead. Lead has been banned in paint since 1978 because of its...
BP Wins Dismissal of Part of Investor Lawsuit Over Gulf Oil Spill
Feb 13 2012 // A U.S. federal judge dismissed a large part of a nationwide lawsuit accusing BP Plc and top executives of fraud for misleading shareholders before and after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill about the oil company’s...
SEC, Ex-Bear Stearns Managers Settle
Feb 13 2012 // Two former Bear Stearns fund managers agreed to pay more than $1 million combined to resolve a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over allegations they lied about the health of two mortgage-laden hedge funds...
Obama Budget Seeks Higher Taxes on Big Business
Feb 13 2012 // President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposal, released on Monday, calls for raising hundreds of billions of dollars from U.S.-based global companies, while ending cherished deductions and tax breaks for oil...
MF Global Judge to Examine Insurance Payments for Former Executives
Feb 10 2012 // The U.S. judge overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy plans a closer review before deciding whether any of an estimated $190 million of insurance coverage for former company executives should instead go to...
5 Big Banks, States Agree on $25 Billion Home Mortgage Deal
Feb 9 2012 // Five big U.S. banks accused of abusive mortgage practices have agreed to a $25 billion government settlement that may help roughly one million borrowers but is no magic bullet for the ailing housing...
