Wildfire season has returned to Canada’s oil sands region, with seven active blazes in the area on Sunday raising risks for communities, workers, companies and investors. Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer, and the bulk of its production is clustered in northern Alberta’s boreal forest. Wildfires, which have always occurred in this environment but are more common now due to climate change, have become a perennial threat to Canadian oil output. So far this year, there have been no significant disruptions to Canadian oil company operations due to wildfire. But on Sunday, there were about seven active blazes burning…
Author: Awais
When Christine Wood received a $12,000 bill from Bristol Hospital, she thought it must be a mistake. It was more than she and her husband made in a month combined. “I’m freaking out,” said Wood, who lives in a 1,700-square-foot home in Terryville, a village just outside Bristol, Connecticut. “I don’t understand it.” Wood, 52, had weight loss surgery at Bristol Hospital in 2022, hoping it would help with her sleep apnea and the pain in her knees and back. Before scheduling the procedure, she checked with her insurer, she said, and was told the surgery would cost $5,000 out-of-pocket.…
A global food crunch due to extreme weather would boost prices more in the euro area than in Group of Seven economies, according to Oxford Economics. A “severe” shock to food prices from climate events could raise food prices in countries sharing the currency by 1.6 percentage points a year, the economic adviser said in a report. That would translate into an increase in headline inflation of as much as 0.6 percentage point, economists Robert Marks and Ronan Hegarty said in the study published Thursday. Natural disasters and heat waves could cause more harvest failures, damage infrastructure and disrupt supply…
Israel expanded its ground assault in Lebanon with its broadest incursion into the country in a quarter-century as Hezbollah — Iran’s most powerful regional ally — stepped up attacks on Israel’s north. According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah fired more than 300 “projectiles” at its soldiers in Lebanon and at northern Israel over the weekend. The latest escalation has shattered a brittle ceasefire declared after the Tehran-backed group attacked Israel in response to its war on Iran, which it launched with the US on Feb. 28. As part of a military operation that started several days ago, the Israeli Defense…
AI insurance platform Corgi said on May 28 it raised $106 million in a funding round led by investment firm TCV that valued it at $2.6 billion. The funding round underscores strong investor appetite for startups using artificial intelligence to modernize the financial services sector. Related: Tech Update: Corgi Fills AI Risk Gaps; Gallagher Touts AI-Human Sales Blueprint; Cogitate AI and Vital Protect Medical Practices Here are some details: The Series B1 round also included participation from Prime Capital, Kindred Ventures and other investors. The latest round comes just three weeks after San Francisco-based Corgi announced a $160 million Series…
The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. has raised the target size for its fourth catastrophe bond sponsorship by 50%, with now up $150 million of US-wide multi-peril reinsurance protection being sought from the Commonwealth Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) transaction, Artemis has learned.The Hanover returned to the cat bond market around the middle of May with an initial target to secure at least $100 million of fully-collateralized catastrophe reinsurance from its fourth visit to the catastrophe bond market. Previously, The Hanover secured fully-collateralized named storm reinsurance across just US northeast states with its first two cat bonds in 2022 and 2023. The…
In San Francisco’s latest real estate boom, renters are paying cash up front, multimillion-dollar houses are selling auction-style and AI company stock can buy a sprawling hilltop estate. It’s a reflection of the new wave of wealth from the artificial intelligence industry, leaving even well-paid newcomers scrambling for a place to live. For Jenni Lee, a Chicago tech worker seeking to join her boyfriend in the Bay Area, finding an apartment has at times felt more difficult than getting a job. She has spent six months searching for a San Francisco rental, flying in for tours and repeatedly losing out…
A years-long dispute over a portfolio of commercial properties in Southern California that sparked credit concerns at several banks last year has led to a roughly $1.34 billion arbitration award. Real estate owner Mohammad Honarkar was “fraudulently induced” into doing business with financier Mahender Makhijani, who breached part of their agreements when arranging financing for hotels, apartment complexes and other commercial real estate, the arbitrator, a retired state judge, concluded in a filing dated this month. An attorney representing Makhijani didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. In separate lawsuits, banks including Western Alliance Bancorp and Zions Bancorp NA…
As the 2026 hurricane season blows in today and a state-funded wind-mitigation program remains as popular as ever, a Florida entrepreneur named John Smith wants a word. The My Safe Florida Home program, providing matching grants for window and door protections, is ripping off taxpayers and is installing hurricane shutters that can’t be easily removed in case of a fire inside the home, Smith said in recent interviews and court filings. “People are dying because of the shutters. That’s what is so incredible,” Smith said. Smith, of Winter Park, is founder and president of StormStoppers, which employs a lightweight, lower-cost,…
Hackers are still trying to trick people to exploit an organization’s systems, but more breaches now with software vulnerabilities Stolen passwords, or credential abuse, are no longer the top way hackers breach systems, according to Verizon’s latest annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). Exploitation of software vulnerabilities now accounts for 31% of security incidents analyzed by Verizon. Credential abuse is now down to 13% of incidents. Verizon said “vulnerability management is an incredibly important risk mitigation process that needs to exist in virtually every organization, but the headwinds facing organizations implementing it have been discouraging, to say the least.” “Put…
Hail volatility and aging roofs are driving higher residential replacement severity, a new study by data analytics and technology provider Verisk finds. Roof losses didn’t slow despite a 20 percent decline in overall claims volume in 2025. Data showed that the average U.S. residential replacement costs jumped 33% and repair costs climbed 25% in 2025, compared to the prior four-year average. Average residential roof replacement costs reached $17,631 in 2025, with repair costs averaging $4,699. Residential roof replacement cost value (RCV) declined to $23 billion in 2025, compared to an average of $24.4 billion from 2021 to 2024, the study…
The US Securities and Exchange Commission wants to formally kill rules it’s now calling a “dramatic overreach” of its own authority that would have required public companies to report greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks to their operations. The 2024 rules, which never went into effect, were “unsound as a matter of policy,” the SEC said May 29 in a proposal that would officially dismantle the Biden-era regulations. “We need to stick to our knitting,” Chairman Paul Atkins said on Fox Business Friday morning. “Let the Environmental Protection Agency do their job and we stick to our job.” Comments on…
A bus crashed into vehicles slowing for a work zone on Interstate 95 in Virginia early Friday, killing five people and injuring dozens, including the driver, authorities said. The crash happened at about 2:35 a.m. on southbound I-95 in Stafford County, near Quantico. All five of the people who died were in vehicles hit by the bus, and 44 people were taken to hospitals, including three in critical condition, police said. “The preliminary investigation indicates that traffic was slowing southbound for an upcoming work zone,” state police said in a news release. “A bus failed to slow for traffic and…
Having sold out of our initial allocation of Super Early Bird tickets faster than anticipated we added more, so there is still time to register for our next catastrophe bond and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market conference, Artemis London 2026, at the best possible price. Register to attend here.We return to London on September 1st, for another full-day of in-depth discussion and debate about the ILS market, as well as valuable networking. We always try to keep conference prices reasonable for our community, so we increased the Super Early Bird ticket allocation after selling out quickly. These are still limited in…