Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent winces at the allure of easy money — whether it’s lottery tickets, buy now, pay later loans or the promise of a crypto windfall — warning that the get-rich-quick mindset often leads Americans farther from financial stability, not closer to it. “There are a lot of young people, mostly young men, going to blue-collar construction jobs, playing the lottery. It drives me crazy,” Bessent said in an interview, giving an example of why he has prioritized meeting with community bankers, retirees and schoolchildren to talk about how to budget, save and manage debt. “The best thing…
Author: Awais
Delta Dental Insurance Co. (DDIC) and Delta Dental of New York, Inc. (DDNY) will pay a $2.25 million penalty for violations of New York’s cybersecurity regulation, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) reported. Acting DFS Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow said that an investigation determined that the companies’ “inadequate incident response policies and procedures” allowed threat actors to obtain unauthorized access to New Yorkers’ personal information including names, addresses, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account information, and patient health information. The investigation found that the cybersecurity program used by the companies did not comply with DFS’s cybersecurity regulation, which requires…
Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and xAI have agreed to give the US government early access to their artificial intelligence models to assess the systems’ capabilities and help improve their security before the technology is released to the public. With the agreements, the AI developers join OpenAI and Anthropic PBC in allowing pre-release reviews of their models by the US Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, according to a statement from the agency on Tuesday. OpenAI and Anthropic have renegotiated their existing partnerships with the center to better align with priorities in President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan,…
Microplastics in the atmosphere are heating the planet, magnifying climate change impacts, according to new research. Scientists in China and the US found that tiny, colored plastic particles absorb sunlight as winds blow them around the world, trapping heat and contributing to temperature rise, according to the peer-reviewed paper published Monday Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. “The plastic problem is not just in our blue oceans, it is also in the invisible skies above us,” Hongbo Fu, a co-author of the study and an atmospheric scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai, said at a press conference. “Climate models…
New Zealand infant formula maker a2 Milk Co. is recalling batches of product sold in the US after detecting a toxin linked to vomiting and diarrhea, marking its first brush with a contamination scare that has rattled the global industry. Three batches of a2 Platinum USA-label formula have been recalled after manufacturer Synlait Milk Ltd. identified cereulide, a2 said. The recall, which began on May 1, impacts just the US and not the company’s most lucrative market in China. No confirmed incidents of infant illness or harm have been reported, it said. The global baby formula market has been buffeted…
Middle East conflict reshapes underwriting The Middle East conflict emerged as the single most disruptive force in the report. Aon said escalating tensions were weighing on underwriting appetite, capacity deployment, and pricing across multiple lines, including marine, aviation, property, cyber, political violence, and trade credit. Disruption to key trade routes, including the Strait of Hormuz, intensified supply-chain risk, drove energy pricing volatility, and triggered both active claims and precautionary notifications.
Company results soften as operating conditions shift across core markets
LOS ANGELES — At Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, patients on gurneys line the hallways of the emergency department waiting for care, and overflow mental health patients are consigned to outdoor tents. The 152-bed hospital, which sits on a sprawling medical campus close to the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood of Watts, is struggling for financial stability. Its patients are poorer and sicker than average, many of them are uninsured, and three-quarters of MLK’s patient care revenue comes from Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the Medicaid program, which pays low rates. For hospitals statewide, by comparison, less than one-third…
Australian Ethical Investment Ltd., a pension fund with about A$14 billion ($10 billion) under management, is pressuring QBE Insurance Group Ltd. over the potential threat extreme weather poses to future profitability. The fund, which holds about A$65 million of QBE shares, has requested additional information from the Sydney-based insurer over its exposure to climate-related risks, and called for further annual assessments on the issue. Investors need QBE to make clear how much of the “current insurance book is not viable from a climate perspective,” the pension fund’s ethical stewardship lead Amanda Richman said in an interview. Australian Ethical and share…
A legal claim from one of the world’s largest oil traders is throwing a spotlight on an arcane but critical corner of global finance — the multibillion-dollar freight market and the 282-year-old City of London institution that sits at the heart of it. Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. is suing the Baltic Exchange, Bloomberg reported on Thursday [April 30], alleging that it has suffered losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of distortions in a key benchmark for the cost of shipping oil from the Middle East to China. The case is the latest example of how…
Hundreds of vessels were seen clustering near Dubai on Tuesday, as more ships moved away from a still-empty Strait of Hormuz in response to Iran’s efforts to widen its area of control. A weeks-long ceasefire between the US and Iran has begun to look increasingly fragile, with the two sides exchanging fire as Washington said it had opened a passage through the waterway and CBS reported two American destroyers had crossed into the Persian Gulf. Since Monday, nearly 60 vessels across different types sailed into an area off Dubai monitored by Bloomberg News — an unusually large number even for…
The fragile truce in the Middle East was in jeopardy on Tuesday after the U.S. and Iran launched new attacks as they wrestled for control of the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military said on Monday it destroyed six Iranian small boats, as well as cruise missiles and drones, after President Donald Trump sent the navy to escort stranded tankers through the strait in a campaign he called “Project Freedom.” Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said in a social media post on Tuesday that the security of shipping and energy transit had been threatened by breaches of the four-week-old…
Catastrophe bond market yields rose again through the month of April 2026, as seasonal spread widening effects lifted total returns to almost 9.3%, reducing the year-on year decline in cat bond market coupon to 11% by May 1st, the latest data from Plenum Investments shows.Cat bond risk spreads began moving slowly higher in February, with the trend continuing in March and accelerating slightly during April. Cat bond market yield coupons have been steadily rising through 2026 due to relatively slow-paced spread widening, having stood at around 8.80% at the end of December 2025, then rising to 8.87% by the end…
Oregon regulators ordered a health sharing company to stop selling coverage to residents, saying the company’s membership plans were functioning as unlicensed insurance. ClearShare Health was ordered to stop selling coverage by the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, which began reviewing ClearShare in January. The DFR reportedly found that the company’s membership plans function as insurance contracts because ClearShare pays specific and ascertainable medical expenses once members meet their annual maximum. These annual maximums operate as insurance deductibles, according to DFR. ClearShare Health’s affiliates include Clearwater Benefits LLC, Clearwater Benefits Administrators LLC and Clearwater Benefits Holdings LLC. The division also…