National News

GM’s Cruise Prepares to Resume Robotaxi Testing After Halt

General Motors Co.’s Cruise autonomous driving unit is nearing the resumption of robotaxi testing in the coming weeks, with Houston and Dallas emerging as potential locations, following the grounding of its fleet last year, according to people with knowledge of …

Warren Buffett Says Berkshire ‘Built to Last’ Though Eye-Popping Gains Are Over

Warren Buffett on Saturday moved to reassure investors that his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway would serve them well over the long term, even as he mourned the recent passing of his longtime second-in-command Charlie Munger. In his widely-read annual letter to …

GEICO’s ‘Eye-Popping’ 2023 Insurance Profits, Falling Employee Counts

Even though Berkshire Hathaway’s latest annual report featured Warren Buffett’s forecast that the days of “eye-popping performance” for the giant conglomerate are over, readers focused on property/casualty insurance saw numbers that jumped off the pages. Among them were: A 2023 …

Agents, Brokers Achieve Record Annual Growth in 2023

The independent insurance agent and broker channel posted an organic growth rate of 10.3% in 2023 — the highest annual level achieved since Reagan Consulting launched its quarterly growth and profitability study in 2008. According to a Reagan, at 22.8, …

Universities Settle Financial-Aid Antitrust Lawsuit for $166M

Dartmouth, Northwestern, Rice and Vanderbilt universities have agreed to pay a combined $166 million to resolve claims that they favored wealthy student applicants, pushing total settlements in a federal antitrust lawsuit over college financial aid practices to $284 million. Lawyers …

UnitedHealth Blamed ‘Nation-State’ Threat in Hack That Disrupted Pharmacy Orders

A cyberattack against a division of UnitedHealth Group Inc. has caused a nationwide outage of a computer network that’s used to transmit data between health-care providers and insurance companies, rendering some pharmacies unable to process prescriptions, according to the company …

SEC Drops Some Emissions Disclosure Requirements From Draft Climate Rules

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has removed some of its most ambitious greenhouse gas emission disclosure requirements from corporate climate risk rules it is preparing to adopt, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The SEC has …

Fitch: Homeowners Insurers’ Results to Improve In 2024

U.S. homeowners’ insurance is in position to improve in 2024, according Fitch Ratings. The rating agency said premium revenue growth, tied to recent substantial price increases and more diligent underwriting to manage risk concentrations and aggregations, points to improvement in …

3 Emerging Risks: AI-Driven Civil Unrest, Heavy EVs, Solar Panel Safety

Technology is poised to take over traditional markets and is rapidly creating new ones. For example, this trend is evidenced by the adoption of electric vehicles, demand for solar energy, and the blistering pace of generative AI adoption. Yet these …

AT&T Restores Service After Hours of Outage

AT&T said late on Thursday an outage that disrupted calls and text messages for thousands of U.S. users and prompted federal investigations was not caused by a cyberattack. The carrier had restored wireless service for all affected customers, several hours …

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