Latest USA Headlines

All the headlines from our USA Topic Page, ordered by recency.

Arctic Nations Meet to Chart Future of World’s Final Frontier

May 10 2011 // Leaders of Arctic nations will gather in Greenland this week to chart future cooperation as global warming sets off a race for oil, mineral, fishing and shipping opportunities in the world’s fragile final...

Brit Insurance Launches Package Policy for U.S. Higher Education Sector

May 10 2011 // Brit Insurance, the international general insurance and reinsurance group, has launched a new package policy designed specifically for the needs of the U.S. higher education community. This product will be distributed...

Ratings Roundup: Aviva/Delta Lloyd, Montana Re (cat bonds), Montpelier Re (notes), Arab Orient

May 9 2011 // A.M. Best Europe – Rating Services Limited has commented that the ratings for the UK’s Aviva plc and its subsidiary companies remain unchanged as a result of Aviva’s announcement to sell a portion of its...

AIG Reports $1.5B Net Income Loss in Q1

May 6 2011 // American International Group posted a loss from continuing operations in the first quarter as it recorded a charge of more than $3 billion related to its recapitalization and termination of its credit facility from the...

‘Exceptional Drought’ Expands in Texas, Oklahoma

May 6 2011 // The severe drought ravaging Texas and other parts of the U.S. Southwest is getting worse, weather experts said Thursday, and little respite is in sight for farmers, ranchers and others whose livelihoods and properties are...

Insurers Fight Over Flood Policies Dropped by State Farm

May 6 2011 // Major U.S. insurers jostled on Capitol Hill this week over control of 800,000 former State Farm flood insurance policies as lawmakers tried to advance reform of the nation’s flood insurance system.The conflict began...

Systemic Firms Will Not Be ‘Too Big to Fail,’ Says FDIC’s Bair

May 6 2011 // Financial firms that the U.S. government deems as “systemic” will not be “too big to fail,” bank regulator Sheila Bair said Thursday.Bair, pushing back against critics who say the systemic...

U.S. Supreme Court Refuses Arkansas Poultry Company Appeal

May 5 2011 // The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal by an Arkansas-based company that was ordered to pay $14.5 million to Oklahoma poultry farmers.The court declined without comment to hear the appeal by Fort Smith-based...

BP to Pay $85 Million to Settle Alaska Oil Spill Case

May 5 2011 // BP has agreed to pay a $25 million civil penalty, as well as spend $60 million on enhanced safety measures, to settle a federal probe of a pipeline oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope in 2006, the U.S. government...

Los Angeles Sues Deutsche Bank Over Foreclosure Blight

May 5 2011 // The city of Los Angeles has sued Deutsche Bank, claiming the global financial institution is one of the biggest “slumlords” in the second-largest U.S. city.Due to widespread foreclosures, Deutsche Bank...

Insurers Fight Over Flood Insurance Policies Dropped by State Farm

May 5 2011 // Major U.S. insurers jostled on Capitol Hill this week over control of 800,000 former State Farm flood insurance policies as lawmakers tried to advance reform of the nation’s flood insurance system.The conflict began...

Sony Hires Investigators to Clean Up After Breach

May 4 2011 // Sony has hired outside investigators to help clean its networks and catch the people behind a massive breach that exposed the personal data of more than 100 million video game users.The Japanese electronics giant has...

Palmer to Join Citadel Risk Board

May 4 2011 // The Board of Citadel Risk Services US and UK announced the appointment of Mike Palmer to the Board of Citadel Risk alongside Tony Weller (Chief Executive), Art Coleman (President of US based Citadel Risk Management, Inc....

U.S. Sues Deutsche Bank Over Mortgage Fraud

May 3 2011 // The United States sued Deutsche Bank AG for more than $1 billion, accusing the German bank of defrauding the government by repeatedly lying to obtain federal insurance guarantees on mortgage debt.The lawsuit filed Tuesday...

RMS Expert Explains Role of ‘Social Network’ in Tracking Down Bin Laden

May 3 2011 // The arcane world of spies, informers, terrorists and the people who have to deal with them remains largely a mystery to most ordinary citizens. But when those efforts produce spectacular results, as in the tracking down...

AIR Worldwide Cat Models Now Cover Industrial and Renewable Energy

May 3 2011 // Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) today announced that its Catastrophe Risk Engineering (CRE) models now cover industrial and renewable energy facilities worldwide. Their expansion is “aimed at helping...

Special Report: As Pirate Attacks Increase, Ship Owners Take Arms

May 3 2011 // Upstairs in a public house in the town of Poole on the English south coast, 18 men are preparing to take on the pirates of the Indian Ocean.Around antique polished wooden tables scattered with laminated charts, handouts...

Marsh: Captive Owners Bolstered Capital Positions During Downturn

May 2 2011 // Over the last few years organizations took action to strengthen the financial position of their captive insurance company operations, while those forming new captives were more likely to start up captives in U.S. onshore...

World on Alert after U.S. Kills bin Laden

May 2 2011 // Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. assault on his Pakistani compound Monday. He was then quickly buried at sea, in a dramatic end to the long manhunt for the al Qaeda leader who had become the most powerful symbol of...

Ratings Recap: SCOR (US), Majestic

May 2 2011 // A.M. Best Co. has affirmed the financial strength rating of ‘A’ (Excellent) and issuer credit ratings of “a” of the life and non-life North American operating subsidiaries of France’s SCOR SE...