
-
Closing eagle gives McCarthy lead at rainy PGA Genesis
-
What are Trump's reciprocal tariffs and who may be hit?
-
Trump offers top-end jets, trade deal to India in Modi bromance
-
Kanye West and wife Bianca Censori split: reports
-
Crypto kingpin Alexander Vinnik handed over to Russia: US official
-
Porto draw with Roma as Fenerbahce win in Europa League play-offs
-
Stocks mostly up on Ukraine peace hopes, shrugging off latest US tariff talk
-
India's Modi builds bromance with Trump and Musk despite trade war
-
RFK Jr, vaccine critic turned US health secretary, hints at overhaul
-
Argentina's Schwartzman retires from professional tennis
-
Swinton lashes out as she receives Berlin festival award
-
India's Modi meets Trump, Musk as tariff pressure
-
Argentina records lowest monthly inflation in 4.5 years
-
Trump eyes summit with Xi-Putin, shaking up world order
-
Ingebrigtsen breaks indoor mile world record in France
-
International community vows support for Syria transition
-
Los Angeles girds for floods, landslides as rain pounds fire zones
-
Chelsea to take no action against Kerr after court acquittal
-
Trump unveils 'reciprocal tariffs' plan targeting friends and foes
-
Zelensky says Putin 'peace' comments not to be trusted
-
Fenerbahce, Real Sociedad earn wins in Europa League play-offs
-
Medvedev into first quarter-final of 2025 in Marseille
-
Afghan arrested after car ramming 'attack' wounds 30 in Germany
-
Conservation efforts can shift nature loss to more vulnerable regions: study
-
Ecuador's wild west shows limits of Noboa's 'iron fist'
-
Estonians plead guilty to US charges in $577 mn crypto scheme
-
WWF legal challenge against Norway deep-sea mining fails
-
Former Olympic champion Grospiron to take top 2030 Games post
-
Lebanon says refuses Israeli demand to stay in five southern locations
-
Trump launches 'reciprocal tariffs' targeting allies and adversaries
-
Vaccine critic RFK Jr. confirmed as US health secretary
-
Injury forces Olympic champion Hodgkinson out of 800m record bid in own race
-
Swiatek tops Rybakina to reach Doha semi-finals
-
PGA Tour chief Monahan pleased with how LIV talks progressing
-
Conflict puts question mark over Rwanda's world cycling championships
-
France's Macron urges 'representative' governance in Syria
-
Reindeer tensions stalk Swedish rally
-
LPGA adopts new pace of play policy with faster time deadlines
-
Mexico threatens to sue Google over 'Gulf of America' name change
-
Swedish video game maker wants industry to stop chasing money
-
Jets moving on without Rodgers
-
Afghan arrested after car ramming 'attack' wounds 28 in Germany
-
US State Dept walks back purported $400 mn Tesla contract
-
Ubisoft revenue drops after game flops, 'Assassin's Creed' delays
-
Turkey fines Adidas $15,000 for pigskin shoes
-
Swiatek, Alexandrova advance to Doha semi-finals
-
Lower division USL plans rival to MLS
-
What next for Honda and Nissan?
-
Sexual violence against children soars in DR Congo: UNICEF
-
Japan's Honda and Nissan scrap merger talks

No home, no insurance: The double hit from Los Angeles fires
As he looks at the ruins of his home razed when deadly fires tore through the Los Angeles area, Sebastian Harrison knows it will never be the same again, because he was not insured.
"I knew it was risky, but I had no choice," he told AFP.
Harrison is one of tens of thousands of Californians forced in recent years to live without a safety net, either because their insurance company dropped them, or because the premiums just got too high.
Some of them are now counting the crippling cost, after enormous blazes ripped through America's second largest city, killing more than two dozen people and levelling 12,000 structures, Harrison's home among them.
His own slice of what he called "paradise" stood on a mountainside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where Malibu runs into the badly hit Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
The three-acre plot, which contained his home and a few other buildings, was always costly to insure, and in 2010 was already $8,000 a year.
When the bill hit $40,000 in the aftermath of the pandemic, he decided he simply couldn't afford it.
"It's not like I bought myself a fancy car instead of getting insurance," the 59-year-old said.
"It's just that food for myself and my family was more important."
For Harrison, a former actor, the emotional strain of losing the home he had lived in for 14 years is magnified by the knowledge that without a handout from the state or the national government, he has lost everything -- he even still has mortgage payments to make.
"I'm very worried, because this property is everything I had," he said.
- Climate costs -
Insuring property in California has become increasingly difficult.
Well-intentioned legislation that prevents insurance companies from hiking prices unfairly has collided with growing risks from a changing climate in a part of the world that now regularly sees devastating wildfires near populated areas.
Faced with burgeoning claims -- more damage, and higher repair costs because of the soaring price of labor and materials -- insurance companies turned tail and left the state en masse, dropping existing clients and refusing to write new policies.
Even enormous names in the market, like State Farm and Allstate, have pulled back.
Officials in state capital Sacramento have been worried for a while.
Last year Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara introduced reforms aimed at encouraging companies to return, including allowing them more leeway to increase their premiums to better match their costs.
But huge and inevitably very expensive fires erupting in what is supposed to be California's rainy season -- it hasn't rained for eight months around Los Angeles -- have reinforced the idea that the state is becoming uninsurable.
"I don't know now, because... my greatest fear was that we were going to have a catastrophe of this nature," Lara told the San Francisco Chronicle at the weekend.
Even the state-mandated insurer of last resort, a scheme designed to provide bare-bones coverage for those locked out of the private sector, could be struggling.
The California FAIR Plan was created in 1968 and is underpinned by every insurance company that operates in the state, as a requirement of their license to operate.
But the number of people now resorting to the scheme means its $200 million reserves are dwarfed by its liabilities. (A reinsurance sector helps to keep it liquid.)
- 'They're going to drop me' -
With the enormous losses expected from the Palisades and Eaton fires set to test the insurance sector even further, California has issued an edict preventing companies from dropping customers or refusing to renew them in certain affected areas, for one year.
That's scant consolation for Gabrielle Gottlieb, whose house in Pacific Palisades survived the flames.
"My insurer dropped a lot of friends of mine... and I'm concerned that they're going to drop me as well eventually," he told AFP.
"They're basically already putting it out there that 'lots of luck after a year!'"
Even in a best case scenario, home insurance looks set to be a lot more expensive in California, as state reforms filter through allowing increased prices in places more susceptible to wildfire.
"Real estate and taxes are already very high in California," said Robert Spoeri, a Pacific Palisades homeowner who was dropped by his insurer last year.
"If the insurance gets even higher, who is going to want to live in this state?"
M.Ouellet--BTB