Author: completebodyneeds

A twice-convicted felon who helped orchestrate a scheme to inflate the value of a small New Jersey delicatessen to more than $100 million was ordered to spend 21 months behind bars. James Patten, 67, was sentenced Tuesday by US District Judge Christine P. O’Hearn in Camden, New Jersey, more than two years after he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy in the case. Patten and two others were charged in September 2022 with artificially inflating the price of two companies through manipulative trading, including Hometown International Inc. That company’s only asset was “Your Hometown Deli” in Paulsboro, New Jersey,…

The US Food and Drug Administration said it’s investigating yet another outbreak of the diarrhea-causing cyclospora parasite, with 72 cases tied to an unknown source. The latest infections disclosed by the agency on July 22 add to the surge of cases centered in the Midwest. Those were linked to Taylor Farms lettuce, and the company has recalled those products. The FDA already was investigating several other ongoing cyclospora outbreaks. The outbreaks are roiling consumers and spooking investors. While the FDA said the latest outbreak hasn’t been linked to an identifiable product, shares of Sweetgreen Inc. fell more than 13% at…

The US Food and Drug Administration had apologized, Taylor Farms said in a post on X. An agency lab test linking its produce to the country’s worst cyclosporiasis outbreak in decades was a false positive. Not only that, but the government still hadn’t produced a laboratory result connecting the company’s lettuce to the outbreak. The statement, issued Sunday, was a remarkable bid to give the impression that regulators — who had said significant evidence linked Taylor Farms iceberg lettuce to the public health crisis — had made key scientific errors. By July 21, the X post was deleted. That was…

Grange Insurance Names Conte Chief Distribution Officer Krista Conte Grange Insurance, based in Columbus, Ohio, named Krista Conte chief distribution officer. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Conte most recently served as executive vice president of insurance and distribution at AAA Club Alliance. In that role, she led the club’s insurance operations, overseeing agents in both personal and commercial lines. Conte was responsible for developing agency talent, building sales strategies, and optimizing systems. Before joining AAA, Conte served as head of distribution at Farmers Insurance, overseeing distribution strategies across multiple channels for personal lines, life insurance, retirement products…

Insurers can drive improvements in climate resilience by rewarding companies that invest to protect their businesses, rather than simply penalizing risky assets with higher premiums, according to a senior executive at Aon Plc. “Our role as an intermediary is to push insurance partners out of their comfort zone, making sure that the right reward is there for clients who do invest in resilience,” Jennifer Richards, chief executive officer for Asia Pacific at Aon, said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit in Singapore. “We have enough stick. We have got to get the carrot working.” Read more: Carlyle Rethinks Portfolio…

OpenAI said its advanced artificial intelligence models inadvertently hacked Hugging Face Inc. in an “unprecedented” incident that prompted fresh calls for curbs on the technology. The ChatGPT-maker said in a blog post Tuesday that the models broke into Hugging Face’s system, which hosts AI models and datasets, during an evaluation of their cyber capabilities. The models, which included GPT-5.6 Sol and another even more capable model that hasn’t been released, were operating with lower guardrails so that they could be tested, the startup said. The incident raises questions about the ability of advanced AI models to carry out cyberattacks even…

At the height of the Florida property insurance crisis in the early 2020s, one statistic seemed to galvanize the movement for reforming the state’s insurance claims litigation statutes: Floridians had produced about 9% of all homeowners’ claims in the U.S. in 2020, but more than 79% of the HO claims lawsuits. That eye-popping ratio, compiled by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation and based on data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and carriers’ reporting, was repeated in legislative hearings and news articles across the state. By the end of 2025, three years after legislative reforms were adopted, that…

Second quarter 2026 net income at insurer Chubb was down 3.8% compared to the same period in 2025 to about $2.85 billion, with property/casualty underwriting income up 18.8% to about $1.9 billion. Pretax net catastrophe losses were $475 million compared to Q21 2025 losses of $630 million. The P/C business ended Q2 2026 with a combined ratio of 83.8 compared with 85.6 the year prior. Consolidated net premiums written (NPW) increased 3.6% to about $14.7 billion. P/C net premiums were up 3% to about $12.8 billion. NPW decreased 2.3% in North America commercial. Without large account and E&S property, NPW…

As California’s wildfire insurance crisis drives homeowners to the state’s insurer of last resort, wealthy areas such as Beverly Hills, Malibu and Bel Air make up an increasingly large portion of the liability exposure — a dynamic that experts fear could bankrupt the program and undermine the private market. Nine zip codes out of more than 1,700 in the state account for about 7% of the FAIR Plan’s liability exposure, or $44 billion as of September 2025, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the latest available data. That’s a 135% increase in monetary exposure since 2022 for the insurer…

Alphabet Inc. has more than quadrupled its office space in Miami this year shortly after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought homes in the area. Google’s parent company signed a lease this spring to expand to about 45,000 square feet (4,180 square meters), adding to its existing 10,000 square-foot satellite office located at 1450 Brickell Avenue in the city’s financial district, according to two people familiar with the matter. The expansion was partially driven by the co-founders recent residential real estate purchases, the people said, who asked not to be identified citing private negotiations. The pair, whose combined wealth…