California regulators apologized to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk this week as they settled a lawsuit that claimed a state agency showed political bias against the rocket company and its chief executive. As part of the settlement, the California Coastal Commission acknowledged its members made “improper” statements about Musk’s political beliefs at a 2024 hearing on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch program. “The commission agrees that it may not consider irrelevant factors in performing its function and specifically agrees that it will not take into account the perceived political beliefs, political speech or labor practices of SpaceX or its officers in considering…
Author: Awais
The Mena Insurance deal lands amid a broader run of geographic expansion for Inszone. In April, the firm entered the Pacific Northwest through Arnold & Smith Insurance Agency, Inc., a 55-year-old Washington-based agency with offices in Belfair and Shelton, adding a book spanning manufactured homes, waterfront properties and construction-focused commercial accounts.
The Cornhusker State is the first to roll out work requirements under the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” well in advance of the law’s 2027 deadline. Between 20,000 and 40,000 people are expected to lose Medicaid as a result.
Reflecting the property protection philosophy that has driven the company for nearly two centuries, commercial property insurer FM has earned a Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest display of fire sprinklers. A total of 1,007 sprinklers line the wall of the FM Research Campus lobby in West Glocester, Rhode Island, with models spanning from the 19th century to the present. The facility is about 20 miles northwest of FM’s headquarters in Johnston. “You are officially amazing and the recipient of a brand-new Guinness World Records title,” said Guinness World Records Adjudicator Thomas Bradford, who counted every device in…
The Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation celebrated more than $670,000 in IICF Community Grants awarded across the region to 78 nonprofit partners at its 11th annual IICF Western Division Horizon Award Gala. The event was held drew insurance leaders from across the Western U.S., along with IICF’s nonprofit partners, to celebrate their efforts to help local communities. The IICF Western Division also bestowed its Golden Horizon Award on Loren Nickel, director, business risk and insurance at Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google. The IICF Golden Horizon Award honors those within the insurance community who have demonstrated philanthropic leadership. Nickel’s risk and…
A new KFF survey of state Medicaid officials and focus groups in eight states captures the different choices states are making about how to implement Medicaid work requirements, with seven states planning for a more restrictive approach to verifying work or exemption status or to implement work requirements early. These implementation plans are taking shape as states encounter time, cost, and other constraints as well as uncertainty about how to define and verify certain exemptions due to delayed federal guidance. The 2025 reconciliation law requires adults in the 43 states (including DC) covered through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid…
The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California has submitted a September 1, 2026, pure premium rate filing to the California Insurance Commissioner proposing advisory pure premium rates that will be on average 10.4% above the average approved September 1, 2025 advisory pure premium rates. The WCRIB’s proposed advisory pure premium rates are based on insurer losses and loss adjustment expenses incurred during accident years 2025 and prior. According to the WCIRB, drivers of the change include increased frequency of cumulative trauma claims as well as higher medical costs and allocated loss adjustment expenses. Once the CDI schedules a public…
Adoption of advanced technology and artificial intelligence are serving to expand addressable markets for the insurance and reinsurance industry, with digital infrastructure one example where data analytics are expected to help Aon access institutional sources of capital for its clients, CEO Greg Case explained today.During Aon’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call today, Greg Case highlighted how his firm has embraced artificial intelligence (AI) within the business and also the risk capital opportunity presented by the digital infrastructure and data centre build-out. Importantly, he explained that the adoption of AI and advanced technology helps Aon unlock more and more diverse sources of…
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” Someone in America dies by suicide every 11 minutes. It’s that common. But that doesn’t make it normal. Humans have evolved over centuries to survive. So when people try to kill themselves, something has gone wrong. Typically, the assumption is that something happened in the person’s mind — a mental illness. That’s led prevention efforts to typically focus on connecting people with treatment in moments of crisis. But that’s changing. There’s a growing movement asking a different question: What went wrong in the world around that…
A New Jersey jury has awarded $5.2 million to a Watchung man who suffered spinal injuries after being hit in an accident in a Costco parking lot in 2017. The jury rejected the claim by the other driver and his insurer that the injury was caused by the man lifting his 12-pound dog, not by the accident. On October 22, 2017, Marc Ferrara was in his car waiting in line for gas at the Costco in North Plainfield. When he opened his door to exit his car to check on his child in the back seat, he was struck by…
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed its version of a five-year farm bill after stripping a provision opposed by the “Make America Healthy Again” movement that would have blocked some lawsuits against pesticide makers. The House passage shows progress for the long-stalled, sweeping legislation, which funds agricultural and food aid programs, but it will still need to pass the Senate before it can advance to President Donald Trump’s desk. Historically bipartisan, the farm bill has faced hurdles since the prior bill expired in 2023, as Republicans and Democrats in both chambers battle over its provisions, which range from…
An arraignment has been rescheduled for a former sheriff’s detective in Tennessee who is charged with setting fire to his own vehicle and filing a fraudulent insurance claim. Daniel Lee Garrett, 44, who until recently was with the Scott County Sheriff’s Office, was indicted and arrested in April after a 16-month investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, according to the Bureau and recent court filings. Garrett’s vehicle caught fire in December 2024 in Scott County, northwest of Knoxville, the Bureau said in a bulletin. A month later, TBI began investigating and determined that the fire was intentionally set by…
Commodity trader Mercuria is suing the Baltic Exchange, the world’s top provider of benchmark shipping indices, over losses it said were caused by oil tanker pricing data that did not account for the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a court filing showed. The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which began on February 28, has left hundreds of ships and 20,000 seafarers stranded inside the Gulf and unable to sail through the vital chokepoints with only a few ships willing to make the voyages daily. In a court filing dated April 30 and submitted through England’s high court, Swiss-headquartered Mercuria…
Net income came in at $38 million, or $0.39 per diluted share, compared with $21.5 million, or $0.21, a year earlier. Net operating income, a non-GAAP measure, totaled $101 million, or $1.05 per diluted share, up from $0.79. Revenue rose 8.5% year on year to $1.03 billion, beating estimates by 3.2%.