President Donald Trump said he would marshal hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars behind his bid to revitalize the coal industry in America, steering funds to build new power plants, sustain existing operations and construct an export terminal in California. The announcement — which includes some $500 million made available under the Cold War-era Defense Production Act — marks Trump’s latest move to bolster mining and coal-fired electricity over the objections of environmentalists who say it warms the planet and worsens air quality. Bloomberg News reported earlier on the expected move. “Today, we’re taking historic action to bring down…
Author: Awais
The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of Yemen, declared a ban on Israeli ships in the Red Sea, threatening a key bypass route to the Strait of Hormuz. “We declare a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation,” the group said Monday in a statement. “We consider all enemy movements to be legitimate military targets for our armed forces.” The move comes as the Iran war drags into a fourth month and hostilities flare across the region, threatening to derail a fragile truce and complicate negotiations toward a peace deal. The conflict has led to the…
Israel and Iran exchanged missile strikes on Monday despite President Donald Trump’s calls for both sides to stop fighting and give peace talks a chance. Iran launched a fresh wave of attacks just hours after firing ballistic missiles at Israel on Sunday. Israel responded with strikes on military targets in western and central Iran, while Iranian state media reported multiple explosions in the capital, Tehran. Israel also struck Iran’s Karun petrochemical company in Mahshahr in a fresh offensive early Monday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Iran’s offensive is a rare example of Tehran coming to Hezbollah’s defense and the…
Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York state Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid in dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid in dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.” Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland,…
UCITS catastrophe bond funds delivered an average return of 0.36% through the month of May, taking the year-to-date 2026 return through May 29th to 2.28%, while rolling twelve month performance declined slightly to 10.18%, according to the latest data from the Plenum CAT Bond UCITS Fund Indices.Through the period of May 1st to May 29th 2026, UCITS catastrophe bond funds as a group saw returns averaging 0.36% across all the strategies in this format. Positive returns and premium accrual continue in the catastrophe bond market, as again there were no major natural catastrophe loss events impacting the investment instruments over…
Karen Read has filed a lawsuit against the Massachusetts State Police and the town of Canton, alleging misconduct and negligence in the investigation that led to her prosecution in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend. The lawsuit filed last Thursday in Bristol County Superior Court argues that Read’s acquittal last June revealed “an embedded culture of bigotry, misogyny, systemic failures, and institutional rot at the very core of both organizations.” It alleges that the town and the police department were negligent in the hiring, training and supervision of officers and seeks damages for legal fees, lost income, emotional…
A California mortgage servicer is paying $4.6 million to settle allegations it violated mortgage servicing and debt collection laws during the pandemic. The settlement between Select Portfolio Servicing, a large sub-prime mortgage servicer, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, includes enforcement of California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights, a set of laws that provide protections to homeowners who are facing foreclosure. Related: California Suing Former 23andMe Firm for 2023 Data Breach The settlement is subject to court approval. The deal means SPS must pay $1.6 million in civil penalties and $3 million in consumer relief, and must make changes to ensure…
A longtime Atlanta-area insurance agent has been indicted and arrested after allegedly keeping premium payments and issuing fake certificates of insurance. Charles Curtis Poteet IV, of Duluth, Georgia, was indicted in late May by a Gwinnett County grand jury, and was recently found and arrested in Texas, according to court records and local news reports. Atlanta News First reported that authorities began investigating after the news outlet reported complaints from business owners in 2023. Three people said that Poteet had collected premiums for a number of commercial policies, but had never secured coverage, the news site reported. Court records indicate…
The top lawyers for several states are drafting a legal challenge to Paramount Skydance Corp.’s $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., laying the groundwork for an antitrust suit over the Hollywood mega-deal. After investigating for months whether the transaction would harm competition, senior officials in about 10 states have begun drafting a complaint and discussing logistics for filing a potential lawsuit as soon as this month to stop the merger, according to people familiar with the matter. California, which is home to the entertainment industry, has been leading the effort. No final decisions have been made about…
When Mitesh Parikh, a headhunter at UK recruiter Selby Jennings, started looking for an ILS modeler for a large US hedge fund this year, the pool of qualified candidates was disconcertingly small. “It was a tough search,” says Parikh, who specializes in roles focused on risk. ILS — which stands for insurance-linked securities — is “a relatively new and emerging area among hedge funds,” he said. “And they’re all looking for the same talent.” Experts in ILS have traditionally focused on things like modeling the probability that a hurricane might hit an urban area, and how that would feed into…
Merck & Co. says it will settle a spate of lawsuits that blame the drugmaker’s blockbuster Gardasil cancer vaccine for causing autoimmune ailments that affect young women’s hearts and reproductive systems for an amount that is “not material” to the pharma firm. Gardasil prevents human papillomavirus, or HPV infections. Under the accord, Merck would pay more than $50 million to settle more than 200 cases, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal would also resolve a closely watched case set for trial next month in state court in Los Angeles. Merck, based in Rahway, New Jersey, said in…
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a recent study that suggests ultraprocessed foods are linked to increased dementia risk on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on June 3. Gounder also discussed the Ebola outbreak in central Africa and the impact of U.S. health funding cuts on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on June 3. On June 2, Gounder joined CBS News’ CBS Mornings to discuss a study that found women taking GLP-1 drugs had a lower rate of breast cancer diagnoses. She also discussed President Donald Trump’s new medical report and creatine supplements on CBS News…
A new assessment by Moody’s shows that the United States faces a widening gap between growing flood risk and the take-up of flood insurance, potentially exposing the country to more than $375 billion in aggregated uninsured flood losses from a 1-in-100-year event.A recent report published by the firm, authored by Jennifer Chang, Senior Vice-President for Sustainable Finance Credit at Moody’s Ratings, and Firas Saleh, Director of North American Flood Models at Moody’s, evaluates residential flood exposure across the US, and finds significant gaps between insured and uninsured losses at county level under different flooding scenarios. The agency argues that flood…
More than 1 million children have lost insurance since President Donald Trump took office in 2025. Another million could lose it amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and new Medicaid eligibility rules. On WAMU’s Health Hub on June 3, KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner explained how fear and confusion complicate access to health coverage. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Last year’s big cuts to federal healthcare programs in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act created an affordability crunch for many Americans. They’ve ushered in higher health insurance premiums and confusion about who’s covered under new Medicaid…