Monthly Archives: <span>February 2016</span>

Aon Offers Insurers Thunderstorm Model With 7.5M Different Scenarios

Impact Forecasting, Aon Benfield’s catastrophe model development team, has launched its U.S. severe thunderstorm (STS) scenario model to help insurers more accurately estimate annual losses based on historical data. Aon Benfield is the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of …

Robot Cars Succumb to Snow Blindness as Driving Lanes Disappear

In Jokkmokk, a tiny hamlet just north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, where temperatures can dip to 50 below, Volvo Cars’ self-driving XC90 sport-utility vehicle met its match: frozen flakes that caked on radar sensors essential to reading the …

Prescription Sleep Meds Linked to Auto Collisions in Older Adults, Women

A recent study by University of Alabama at Birmingham student assistant John Booth, III, and UAB Department of Epidemiology Professor and Vice Chair Gerald McGwin, Ph.D., published in Sleep Medicine linked the use of prescription sleep medicines containing zolpidem among …

Business News

RLI Executive Products Group Creates New Cyber Liability Unit RLI Insurance Company and its Executive Products Group announced the creation of a new business unit to offer Cyber Liability Insurance. The Cyber Liability Insurance unit will offer protection for exposures …

Spanish Art Dealer to be Extradited to U.S. in Big Art Fraud Case

Spain’s National Court ruled Tuesday that a businessman accused of being part of a group that commissioned and sold $33 million in high-priced fake art passed off as famed expressionist works can be extradited to the United States to face …

Searching for El Nino, Heat Wave Sparks Drought Concerns

Where did El Nino go? Winter has suddenly switched off the rain and flipped on heat up to 95 degrees in California, raising jitters that the strong El Nino might not be the drought-buster the crispy state had hoped. “Forget …

Takata Engineer Refused to Testify in Airbag Failure Lawsuit

A Takata Corp. engineer involved in testing the company’s airbags invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination in declining to testify in a lawsuit brought by a woman left paralyzed in a 2014 accident. Lawyers for accident victims claim Takata withheld …

Oversight of New York Homeless Shelters Faulted by Auditors

Auditors have reported finding unchecked squalor including rodents, vermin, mold and fire hazards in New York homeless shelters, faulting inadequate state oversight. In a report released Tuesday, the comptroller’s office said its auditors visited 20 certified and 19 uncertified shelters …

Alaska Tsunami Researcher Urges Education and Preparedness

If you’re enjoying a lovely day on the beach, there’s something you should do if the ground shakes, the water retreats or the ocean make a strange noise. “Run,” said Elena Suleimani, because those are signs that a tsunami is …

New Smartphone App Detects Ground Shaking, Could Create Global Seismic Network

University of California, Berkeley, scientists are releasing a free Android app that taps a smartphone’s ability to record ground shaking from an earthquake, with the goal of creating a worldwide seismic detection network that could eventually warn users of impending …