Hotel Equities Group, a hotel management company, violated federal law when it failed to provide pregnancy accommodations to one employee and religious accommodations to another at an Illinois property, he U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit. According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, in 2023, a pregnant front desk clerk at the company’s Hilton-branded hotel in Oak Lawn, Illinois requested the ability to sit at the front desk rather than stand due to medical needs related to her pregnancy. Although a coworker initially provided her with a suitable chair, company management later took it away, replaced it with…
Author: Awais
Chris Womack is one of a dwindling number of Texas ranchers who can remember fighting the New World screwworm, a once-vanquished pest threatening to make an unwanted encore in the US after its recent return to northern Mexico. “You never forget the smell,” Womack, 60, said of his first encounter with a calf being devoured by screwworm maggots. It was one of many he and his father would treat in the early 1970s as an outbreak of the parasite — which can kill cattle in less than two weeks — devastated Texas ranchers. More than 50 years later, Womack and…
There are a host of innovations making the market more effective than ever
Last month’s sprawling winter storm from Texas to New England was one of the first multi-grid tests in the US for big batteries. They passed. Texas in particular benefited from energy storage, which helped cushion the state’s grid during the storm. Texas has nearly 17 gigawatts of installed battery capacity now, up from less than 0.5 gigawatts in 2021, according to data from Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state grid operator, and Wood Mackenzie. The state is expected to hit 25 gigawatts in 2029, per an annual assessment released last month by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. “The…
The New Hampshire Insurance Department (NHID) reported that for calendar year 2025 it collected $185.62 million for the state’s General Fund and recovered $3.34 million for consumers. Insurance Commissioner DJ Bettencourt said the numbers show the department is “delivering real value for taxpayers while holding the insurance market to the highest standards of accountability and compliance.” Some highlights from 2025 reported by NHID include: The $185.62 million for the General Fund included $159.02 million from premium taxes and $26.60 million from fees and fines. The Consumer Services Unit handled a total of 6,536 cases, excluding external health reviews, and responded…
Argenta Private Capital Limited (APCL) and Helios Underwriting PLC have launched a 2026 round of Starter Homes investment vehicles, which provide a capital-efficient pathway for investors to access returns within the Lloyd’s insurance and reinsurance market.This marks the third collaboration between APCL, an FCA-regulated adviser to Lloyd’s investors, and listed firm Helios, following successful rounds in 2024 and 2025. The 2026 iteration builds on this momentum with a range of vehicles specifically designed to meet evolving investor demand. By eliminating the need to own underlying capacity, the firm’s explained that the Starter Homes provide a more accessible entry point to…
Great American Insurance Group has selected AI travel insurance platform Faye to enter the travel insurance marketplace. This marks Great American’s first expansion into travel insurance. The companies said that with limited modernization and customer frustration surrounding claims experiences, the category presents a significant opportunity for carriers and managing general agents to transform how travelers are protected. “Following the pandemic, we recognized a need for an insurance carrier that supports travel MGAs and brokers rather than competing with them,” said Chris Banocy, divisional senior vice president of Great American Embedded Solutions. “Faye’s modern approach and rapid growth made them a…
A California appeals court on Monday overturned a sex abuse conviction against a former University of California, Los Angeles, gynecologist and ordered the case to be retried. A three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled Dr. James Heaps was denied a fair trial because the judge did not share with his defense counsel a note by the court’s foreman pointing out concerns that one juror lacked sufficient English to carry out their duties. Related: UCLA to Pay Nearly $700M in Doctor Abuse Lawsuits Heaps’ attorney, Leonard Levine, said he and his team were not aware of the…
Fourth-quarter 2025 net income at The Hanover Insurance Group was $198.5 million, up about 18% over $167.9 million recorded for the same period in 2024. The Worcester, Massachusetts-based insurer’s Q4 combined ratio remained relatively flat at 89.0 versus 89.2 the prior year. Catastrophe losses during Q4 were $27 million, almost all attributable to commercial lines business where catastrophe losses during Q4 were $26.9 million compared with $8.4 million for Q4 2024. The personal lines business logged catastrophe losses of $9.3 million compared with $13.6 million. In specialty lines, The Hanover reported a benefit of $1.2 million versus a loss of…
The Superior Court ruled in favor of the insurers in May 2022, finding breach of contract and fraud. Lindberg filed multiple appeals, petitioning the Supreme Court of North Carolina for discretionary review in 2023, but the state high court denied that request in October 2025, returning the matter to the Superior Court for final awards.
European countries are taking their broadest swipe yet at social media, with a growing number weighing bans of the services for minors and setting the stage for a new showdown with some of the biggest US companies. The policy was first implemented in Australia, encompassing Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram and Facebook, Snap Inc., Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Google’s YouTube. Now it’s catching on in Europe, threatening to cut off access to millions of young users from services regulators call harmful and addictive — and the critical advertising dollars that come with them. It took a pointedly political, ideological and…
Political violence insurance premiums in Democratic Republic of Congo jumped as much as tenfold last year due to unrest in the east, boosting insurers but lifting costs for copper-cobalt miners, insurance executives told Reuters. Rwandan-backed AFC/M23 rebels overran eastern Congo’s Goma town in January 2025, part of an advance that saw the group seize more territory than ever before. The violence forced widespread business closures, left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. Congo’s No. 2 insurer, SFA, gets a quarter of its business from mining and insures about half of the country’s operators. Valery Safarian, adviser to the board…
He was a surgical oncologist at a hospital in a Southern city, a 78-year-old whose colleagues had begun noticing troubling behavior in the operating room. During procedures, he seemed “hesitant, not sure of how to go on to the next step without being prompted” by assistants, said Mark Katlic, director of the Aging Surgeon Program at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. The chief of surgery, concerned about the doctor’s cognition, “would not sign off on his credentials to practice surgery unless he went through an evaluation,” Katlic said. Since 2015, when Sinai inaugurated a screening program for surgeons 75 and older,…
China will ban ‘hidden’ car door handles from 2027, becoming the first country to phase out a design pioneered by Tesla and adopted by Chinese competitors including Xiaomi. The hidden handle design, which functions through a key fob or mobile phone or by manually pressing it, has drawn scrutiny in both the United States and China over potential safety risks. Last year, the U.S. auto safety agency opened a defect probe into Tesla Model 3 sedan’s emergency door release controls. Tesla, which did not comment on the investigation at the time, did not immediately respond to a request for comment…