Texting while driving, smoking in public and cooking with artery-clogging trans fats will be that much harder under a bevy of state laws set to take effect around the country on Friday. Faced with huge budget shortfalls and little extra money ... [full story]

Five years after a tsunami devastated Indonesia and the Southeast Asia Region many homeowners in the United States still remain without proper insurance coverage in the event of a natural catastrophe, the Insurance Information Institute notes. The New York-base I.I.I. noted ... [full story]

AUSTIN – Texas has slipped to No. 2 in average homeowners' insurance premiums, a new national study has found. It's not that rates are decreasing. The study found Texans paid nearly 3 percent more in 2007, the most recent year ... [full story]

Washington -- The Obama administration launched a new Web site today and advertising campaign to prod motorists into avoiding "distracted driving." Tuesday morning, the Transportation Department unveiled distraction.gov, a Web site that collects facts about the dangers of not paying attention ... [full story]

This weekend in the Wall Street Journal ,Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) co-authored an op-ed arguing that the health-reform bill passed by the Senate and House may be unconstitutional. The main argument: The "individual mandate" for health insurance is unconstitutional because there ... [full story]

American International Group Inc. (AIG) will use shares of AIG common stock in the compensation packages of some of its top employees rather than stock units reflecting a "basket" of AIG companies, as it previously planned. In November, pay czar ... [full story]

When its legislature convenes this year, Kansas will consider banning motorists from sending text messages. South Carolina will, too, and debate whether to prohibit drivers from using phones altogether, or requiring them to use hands-free devices when they call. New ... [full story]

We made it! This exceedingly volatile, outrageously expensive and mercilessly cruel first decade of the new millennium careened to a chaotic close and somehow, incredibly, the property and casualty insurance industry crossed the finish line more or less intact. The odds ... [full story]

Shaping health care and financial services regulatory reform legislation to the interests of their members, while keeping on top of a host of additional federal lawmaking efforts essential to the business, will keep property and casualty insurance lobbyists extremely busy ... [full story]

Reinsurance rates across most lines of property-catastrophe business declined for Jan. 1, 2010 renewals, according to a study released today by reinsurance brokerage Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC. The firm, in a report titled “Rates Retreat as Capital Rebounds: Global Reinsurance ... [full story]