A huge fire and explosion at a lumber mill in Maine on May 15 that took the life of a 27-year-old firefighter and injured a dozen others is believed to have been accidental, according to an initial investigation by state and federal officials. The state fire marshal’s office said that based on information gained from an on-scene investigation at Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, investigators believe the fire originated in the base of the silo in the area of the unloader mechanism. Before the smoldering fire could be contained, a “rapid ignition of suspended particulate material resulted in an explosion within…
Author: Awais
Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, will invest $600 million to expand its Rocket Park campus in Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to a statement from Governor Ron DeSantis. The planned 830,000-square-foot manufacturing facility will increase the volume and mass that can be delivered into orbit. The governor’s office said the project will leverage Florida’s Spaceport Improvement Program, a state infrastructure funding initiative for aerospace development. The increased investment on Florida’s “Space Coast” will create 500 aerospace jobs with an average salary of $98,000. “Project Horizon is the latest and most ambitious chapter in Blue Origin’s decade-long…
Climate change is linked to a 10% global increase in antibiotic-resistance genes in Salmonella, according to new research that suggests warming temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could accelerate the spread of hard-to-treat infections. The study — conducted by researchers from multiple institutes including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Cambridge — analyzed more than 480,000 Salmonella genomes collected from 139 countries between 1940 and 2023. Published this week in The Lancet Planetary Health, it found that temperature and precipitation levels are significantly associated with increases in antimicrobial-resistance genes, or ARGs, worldwide. While salmonella is one of the…
Mercury General Corporation (Mercury Insurance), the California headquartered insurer, is back in the catastrophe bond market seeking additional fire reinsurance protection, with an initial $100 million target for its second 144A cat bond sponsorship of a Luca Re Ltd. (Series 2026-1) issuance, Artemis has learned.Mercury Insurance sponsored its first 144A catastrophe bond last year, securing $150 million in California fire reinsurance protection from the capital markets with its debut Luca Re 2025-1 deal. Mercury was already familiar with private cat bonds, having previously sponsored four private catastrophe bonds under the Randolph Re name, with a partial recovery made from the…
Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz gained modest momentum over the past 24 hours as at least two non-Iranian supertankers exited the Persian Gulf, the latest mini-flurry in energy flows transiting the vital waterway.The Singapore-linked Eagle Veracruz and Greek-owned Nissos Keros were both seen having crossed Hormuz early on Tuesday, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. In total, five ships were seen crossing Hormuz in either direction, the data show. It’s the first time in a week that four million barrels of unsanctioned crude have been seen crossing the waterway, with ships leaving in bunches and then lower…
UKMTO said the vessel, identified as the Olympic Life, and its crew were safe, although the tanker reported some bunker fuel had been discharged into the sea. It said the cause of the incident was unknown. According to MarineTraffic vessel-tracking data, the Greek-owned Very Large Crude Carrier was sailing past Muscat at around 0700 GMT, heading out of the Gulf of Oman, and was not carrying cargo. The ship’s technical manager, Springfield Shipping, said the vessel was struck by an unidentified object at about 0920 GMT, but remained stable and operational. “An initial assessment indicated that there was damage to…
Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. On the Road To Find Out Your article “Efforts To Understand the Nation’s Drugged Driving Problem Stall Under Trump” (May 19) missed the mark. There is a real lack of data on drug-impaired driving across the country, but it’s not due to federal policy. The fact is, science has not yet found a simple, accurate way to measure if someone is too high to drive. And many local police departments just lack the resources to test…
Allstate has returned some principal from one of its outstanding aggregate catastrophe bonds to investors, while extending the maturity on the remaining amount, having ended the last annual aggregate risk period that its cat bonds were subject to with total pre-tax reported catastrophe losses just shy of $4 billion.Allstate had a heavier catastrophe loss burden in March 2026, reporting $925 million of pre-tax cat losses for the month. Which took the first-quarter of 2026 to $1.24 billion of losses pre-tax and as a result the total across the annual aggregate risk period that the insurer’s aggregate cat bonds were exposed…
Ride-share drivers for app-based companies such as Uber and Lyft have unionized in Massachusetts, forming what state officials and labor leaders said was the first officially recognized organization in the U.S. to represent such gig workers. The newly formed App Drivers Union received certification from the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations on Friday to represent nearly 70,000 ride-share drivers operating as independent contractors in the state. “It changes the game for ride-share workers across this country,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, said at a rally with drivers and labor activists in Boston on Tuesday. The certification occurred after voters…
Tony Hart Crest Insurance Group named Tony Hart vice president, employee benefits in the firm’s Henderson, Nevada office. Hart has nearly 20 years of employee benefits brokerage and consulting experience and specializes in cost containment, pharmacy management, population health and alternative funding education. Crest is headquartered in Tucson, Nevada. The brokerage provides property/casualty, life, health and employee benefits services throughout the West. Topics Employee Benefits Was this article valuable? Yes No Here are more articles you may enjoy. Interested in Employee Benefits? Get automatic alerts for this topic.
New York-based insurance broker USI Insurance Services has gone to court to halt a former employee it alleges has poached a few customers for his own newly-formed agency. USI claims that Billy J. MacNair is violating employment and severance agreements by using confidential information and soliciting his former clients for his own Pennsylvania-based MacNair Enterprises LLC in direct competition with USI. According to the complaint filed in federal district court for Connecticut, MacNair worked for USI in its Norwalk, Connecticut office from September 18, 2023, to January 29, 2026, during which time he gained access to USI’s confidential information while…
The US Supreme Court refused to let Florida file an unusual lawsuit that accused California and Washington of making it too easy for undocumented immigrants to get commercial driver’s licenses. Giving no explanation, the justices on Tuesday rejected Florida’s bid to sue its fellow states directly in the Supreme Court, as states can do under some circumstances to protect their sovereign interests. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, saying they would have granted Florida’s motion to file the complaint. Florida argued unsuccessfully that California and Washington were failing to verify the immigration status of license applicants and require them…
Severity, not frequency, is driving the rise in claims costs today. While the number of claims has generally declined, the average cost per claim has soared. From 1994 to 2008, claim frequency declined and lawsuits tracked that trend, falling from roughly 5,800 to around 4,000 motor vehicle tort civil case filings in federal courts (Figure 1). That makes intuitive sense. Fewer accidents, fewer claims, fewer lawsuits. From 2008 to 2014, both claim frequency and lawsuit filings were relatively stable. Again, the relationship held. But then something changed. From 2014 to 2023, claim frequency continued to fall—accidents were still declining—yet lawsuit…
We have now sourced additional details about the recent $1.5 billion of catastrophe bond’s sponsored by US insurer State Farm. We’ve learned that the entire meaningful reinsurance limit provided by these newly issued notes is designed to provide the insurer with multi-year and multi-peril annual aggregate protection.We broke the news last week that State Farm had secured a significant $1.5 billion of reinsurance limit from its latest venture into the catastrophe bond market with a Merna Re 2026-1 issuance. However, at the time we got the issuing entity’s name slightly wrong, originally citing it to be Merna Re Enterprise Ltd.,…