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Long Trend of Declining Workplace Accident Rate Stalls in 2018

The workplace injury rate for private-sector workers has been dropping year after year for decades. But 2018 was not one of those years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that the incidence rate of nonfatal injuries and …

Thousands Face Life-Threatening Floods From Aging Dams

On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house. Just a little over a …

How One Startup is Trying to Help Car Dealers Weather Hailstorms

Nick Pacifico has been working at his family’s Cadillac dealership in Denver since 2003. He’s never seen insurance costs this bad. “Getting coverage is nearly impossible,” said Pacifico, vice president at Rickenbaugh Automotive Group. Two years ago he paid about …

Tyson Foods Earnings Miss Forecasts as Slaughterhouse Fire Hurts Beef Sales

Tyson Foods Inc fell short of Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue and profit on Tuesday after a fire at a Kansas slaughterhouse hurt sales volumes in its beef business, the company’s biggest segment. Shares of the maker of Ball …

PG&E Is Offering $13.5 Billion in Compensation to Wildfire Victims

Bankrupt utility giant PG&E Corp. is trying to offer $13.5 billion in compensation to the victims of wildfires sparked by its power lines as part of a restructuring plan, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The company’s shares …

PG&E Faces Strict Probation Judge After Massive Kincade Fire

For the first time since a fire last month scorched 77,758 acres of northern California, PG&E Corp. returns to the courtroom of the judge whose personal crusade is to “reduce to zero” the number of wildfires caused by the utility’s …

Ransomware Attack At Mexico’s Pemex Halts Work, Threatens To Cripple Computers

MEXICO CITY — A ransomware attack hit computer servers and halted administrative work on Monday at Mexican state oil firm Pemex, according to employees and internal emails, in hackers’ latest bid to wring ransom from a major company. Hackers have …

Official’s Call to Ground Southwest Jets Prompts Clash

A Federal Aviation Administration official wrote a memo last month saying that Southwest Airlines Co. should ground 49 of its airliners because repairs were performed that didn’t meet legal standards. There is “a high likelihood of a violation of a …

Work Comp Insurers Find Doctors Willing to Bend When Asked to Curb Opioid Use

Workers’ compensation insurers are reporting dramatic reductions in opioid use by injured workers. In some cases, all it took was asking doctors to stop renewing prescriptions. A peer-reviewed study by Mitchell International and Utah’s WCF Mutual Insurance Co. found that …

California City Didn’t Burn but Fire Brought New Way of Life

CHICO, Calif. — Amber Blood got to Chico on Nov. 8, 2018, wearing pink slacks and her favorite white peacoat. It was all she had left. Blood was among tens of thousands forced to flee as a wildfire roared through …

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