Global Insights Local Impact
For decades, gun control policy in the U.S. has been virtually untouchable — except through efforts to make America’s gun culture deadlier, raising the toll of innocent victims. Two recent developments suggest that the ground may finally be shifting toward rationality. One is an “advisory” from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy identifying firearm violence as a
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WASHINGTON — In a major victory for business, the Supreme Court on Friday gave judges more power to block new regulations if they are not explicitly authorized by federal law. The court’s conservative majority overturned a 40-year-old rule that said judges should defer to agencies and their regulations if the law is not clear. The vote
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State Farm General is seeking to dramatically increase residential insurance rates for millions of Californians, a move that would deepen the state’s ongoing crisis over housing coverage. In two filings with the state’s Department of Insurance on Thursday signaling financial trouble for the insurance giant, State Farm disclosed it is seeking a 30% rate increase
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By the numbers, the overall U.S. economy may look good, but down at the street level the view is a lot grimmer and grittier. The surge in interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve to slow inflation has closed like an acrid cloud over would-be homeowners, car buyers, growing families, and businesses new and old,
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SACRAMENTO — The California state Senate on Thursday passed legislation aimed at helping the news industry by imposing a new tax on some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Senate Bill 1327 would tax Amazon, Meta and Google for the data they collect from users and pump the money from this “data extraction mitigation
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Film and TV crew members have reached a tentative contract deal with the major Hollywood studios after months of bargaining, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced Tuesday night. The resolution arrived before the current contract’s expiration date, finally permitting the entertainment industry to breathe
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Some people just have a knack, even a skill, for placing themselves at the center of obnoxious public business deals. But few have proved as adroit at the practice as Martin Shkreli. Remember him? Shkreli’s first foray into public notice came in 2015, when he jacked up the price of a 60-year-old drug to a
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Known for art house films, Oscar contenders and prestige horror flicks, indie studio A24 has landed a new round of funding led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital. The studio declined to disclose the size of the funding round. But the capital raise increased the company’s valuation to about $3.5 billion, up 40% from its
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SACRAMENTO — California news publishers and Big Tech companies appear to be inching toward compromise on a controversial bill that would require Google and huge social media platforms to pay news outlets for the articles they distribute. After stalling last year, Assembly Bill 886 cleared a critical hurdle Tuesday when it passed the state Senate Judiciary
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There’s good news and bad news about a legal settlement that New York state just reached with the giant health insurer UnitedHealth over its denial of contraception coverage for a member, which violated state law. The good news is that UnitedHealth got caught and has been ordered to reimburse the member — and all others
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