William Brangham:
For years, State Farm has been the largest provider of homeowners insurance in California, but it recently announced it will no longer sell new homeowners policies in the state.
It said this move was driven by the high cost of construction and the growing risks from catastrophes like wildfires. State Farm's move followed a similar one by Allstate insurance and other pullbacks from insurers like Chubb and American International Group, who decided not to renew some existing policies. Read More...
In 1935, the Bureau of Investigation was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In 1939, the FBI became pre-eminent in the field of domestic intelligence, thanks in large part to changes made by Hoover, such as expanding and combining fingerprint files in the Identification Division, to compile the largest collection of fingerprints to date, and Hoover's help to expand the FBI's recruitment and create the FBI Laboratory, a division established in 1932 to examine and analyze evidence found by the FBI. Read More...
NEW YORK (AP) — Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as “The White Album” and “The Year of Magical Thinking” made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died. She was 87.
Didion’s publisher Penguin Random House announced the author’s death on Thursday. She died from complications from Parkinson’s disease, the company said.
“Didion was one of the country’s most trenchant writers and astute observers. Read More...