George Joseph, who founded Mercury General Corp. nearly 65 years ago, has died at age 104, the company announced this week. Joseph served as chairman from the company’s founding and led Mercury as CEO for 45 years, ending his time …

A lip-licking alligator, a smiling moose and a hat-wearing bear are among the many cartoon animals to have found themselves in the crosshairs of Buc-ee’s, the popular Texas convenience store chain that has a penchant for protecting its buck-toothed beaver. …

A wildfire that exploded in size in a matter of hours ripped through wide swaths of ranchland in rural Texas, burning structures at a youth camp while forcing evacuations and closing schools Tuesday. The fire, which began early Monday afternoon, …

Carnival Cruise Line, long the subject of lawsuits accusing its crew members of unwanted sexual advances on passengers, has won a new trial in a case in which a Florida jury awarded $10.3 million to a young woman who said …

Researchers have developed a new approach to boosting self-driving vehicle algorithms that could significantly reduce the time and cost required to prepare automated vehicles for real-world deployment, according to the University of Michigan. Rather than relying on the vast amounts …

International advertising and marketing firm Dentsu International Americas, LLC, violated federal law when it refused to hire a pregnant woman for a Minneapolis-based position promoting alcoholic beverage brands, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced. …

The Permian Basin is on track to become the largest US natural gas-producing region by the end of the decade, making the world’s most productive oil shale field also the nation’s leader in gas output, according to Citigroup Inc. analysts. …

This edition of International People Moves details appointments at Guy Carpenter and QBE. A summary of these new hires follows here. Marsh Promotes Ward as CEO of Pacific, Guy Carpenter Insurance and reinsurance broker Marsh announced the appointment of Justin …

The Villages Health System in central Florida, part of the world’s largest retirement community, has agreed to pay almost $542 million to settle civil claims stemming from its disclosure that it submitted false diagnosis codes to boost payments from the …

More than three-fourths (78%) of U.S. insurers expect modest revenue growth during the next 12 months, and about half (49%) plan to increase staff. However, it seems many companies are “hiring to backfill key positions and bring in new talent, …

The Hawaii Insurance Division issued a memo to insurers this week stating it expects them to handle claims from Tropical Storm and Hurricane Lala “promptly, fairly,” and in accordance with state law insurance contracts. The memo on Wednesday from Insurance …

Severe droughts across Europe this summer led to huge wildfires, disrupted transport on critical routes, threatened power plants and hit corporate earnings across the continent. The credit markets are mostly unmoved. The extreme weather is a reminder of the growing …

Russian-speaking hackers used SpaceX’s coding assistant, Cursor, to help break in to a Belgian chemical company and at least six other firms earlier this year, according to data reviewed by Reuters and a report issued on Thursday by the startup …

Scientists are pointing to a glacier collapse and rock landslide as the cause of a devastating flash flood that killed at least 350 people and left many more missing near Nepal’s border with China, a mountainous region that’s increasingly imperiled …

Global insurance broker Marsh announced the launch of Stratus, a property insurance exchange designed to address the complex operational risks of large digital infrastructure projects as they move from construction into operation. Such projects include data centers and associated critical …

The US Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, including New York City, face another round of thunderstorms, increasing flood risks and transportation woes, with even the slight chance of a tornado. Flood watches will cover New York’s five boroughs, as well as stretching …

Insurers are aiming for a bigger slice of the market for significant risk transfers this year as banks step up their use of the hedging instruments. Firms expect to participate in about 50% more SRTs than in 2025, according to …

AI agents created by OpenAI broke into the company’s own systems during internal tests and in some cases tried to conceal their behavior, the company said in a report published Wednesday. The findings are likely to sharpen concerns about increasingly …

Cyber insurers have spent years defining what constitutes a hack and when coverage should pay out, but the rapid emergence of AI agents is raising new questions, forcing insurers to review their policies. Leading AI developers OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta …

Uber Technologies Inc. is rolling out a new safety feature that lets parents or guardians view a video livestream of their teenager’s ride. The feature uses the selfie camera on the driver’s phone and notifies an authorized guardian if a …