Author: completebodyneeds

Two brothers caught in a sting operation orchestrated by North Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance and state regulators have been sentenced to restitution and community service after pleading guilty to deliberately damaging roofs in North Carolina. Brett William Bentley, 28, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was ordered to pay some $27,678 in restitution to Farm Bureau, the NC Department of Insurance said in a bulletin. His brother, Robert Allen Bentley, 36, pleaded guilty to a felony charge. A judge in Wake County sentenced him to 24 months’ probation, 50 hours of community service, and a $50 fine. He could…

Insurance continued to be the biggest generator of complaints to the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation, according to the division, which reported it recovered $3.88 million through the first six months of 2026. Insurance produced the majority of complaints filed with more than 1,000 complaints in each of the first two quarters. Credit unions (120 complaints) and mortgage servicers (87) were other areas regulated by the division high on the list. Consumer finance (40), banking (25) and securities (47) were other big industries on the list. A few examples of cases in which DFR advocates worked on so far this…

Prominent New jersey insurance, development and civic leader George Norcross III has filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against the Philadelphia Inquirer and one of its editors for allegedly helping to orchestrate a bogus criminal case against him that was unanimously thrown out of court. Norcross claims he spent nearly two years “under the cloud of a politically motivated investigation” undertaken by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin and facilitated by the Inquirer and its justice system editor Nancy Phillips. Norcross alleges that Phillips supplied law enforcement with false and fabricated notes from a 2019 interview with a…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Friday pushing to implement guardrails on artificial intelligence in the state that’s the epicenter of the technology’s boom. Newsom is ordering a working group to provide a guide in two months with measures to boost California’s AI safety and security laws, according to a statement from the governor’s office on Friday. The group should consider steps such as having companies develop a “kill switch” for frontier models and requiring independent third parties to draft safety plans for AI companies, according to the statement. Related: New York Attorney General Urges AI Whistleblowers…

The New World screwworm resurfaced in New Mexico just as a major gateway for Mexican cattle imports is poised to open in the state. The parasite, which infests the wounds of livestock, was confirmed Thursday in a horse in New Mexico’s Grant County, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier that same day, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins had announced plans to reopen the country’s largest port for Mexican cattle — situated roughly 150 miles from the new case. The decision to open the port in Santa Teresa is part of the U.S.’s effort to amp up a trade that…

New changes to FEMA’s flood maps means that thousands more residential properties are now located within the high-risk Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA), according to a Cotality alert. Within more than 100 communities across 12 states, homeowners must comply with the mandate to secure flood insurance within 45 days, or face disruptions. Top five communities/counties in terms of properties mapped into the SFHA Location # of properties Escambia Country, Florida 2,344 Pender County, North Carolina 678 Chattanooga, Tennessee 635 Ithaca, New York 428 Metheun, Massachusetts 428 Data source: Cotality, 2026 The change can be abrupt, such as in this case,…

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post on Saturday that he plans to appoint a new artificial intelligence adviser, known as an “AI czar,” and create an “AI force,” though he did not provide details about either initiative or how they would be implemented. Fears are growing in Washington among lawmakers about the risks posed by AI technology on humans and property. Earlier this month, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said that “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Trump has repeatedly downplayed concerns about AI and…

Google’s Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked other companies during a test of its cybersecurity capabilities, the first known example of the company’s AI systems autonomously committing such an act. The hacks occurred in May during a cybersecurity test conducted by Irregular, an independent company that conducts cybersecurity evaluations. During a standard testing evaluation, Gemini found public information online and guessed credentials to access three websites it thought were within the scope of its test, Heather Adkins, Google’s vice president of security engineering, said in a statement. “We ensured the three entities were made aware, and we worked with…

Some software-as-service vendors are holding insurance companies on a tight leash, charging them huge annual fees for upgrades and for the privilege of accessing their own data, according to an insurance executive and a tech company owner who spoke at an Insurance Nerds webinar last week. “We started our company very reasonably, from a cost perspective, but then we started to see those costs go up and we felt like we were being held hostage, not necessarily by the vendor, but by the situation,” said John Lucker, executive vice president of Universal Shield Insurance Group, based in Dublin, Ohio. “The…

National Former AIG CEO and executive chair Peter Zaffino left the board effective September 15 to join Palantir Technologies Inc. as global head of financial services. Zaffino had just transitioned to the position of executive chair on June 1. Prior …