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MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Progressive^® Insurance has been named to the LATINA Style 50, LATINA Style magazine’s annual list of the best companies for Latinas in the U.S. This is the second year in a row the publication has recognized the car insurance company as a great employer for Hispanic women. The LATINA Style 50 is the most respected evaluation of corporate America’s employment policies and practices as they pertain to Hispanic women.

“It’s an honor to again receive this recognition from LATINA Style magazine.”

LATINA Style editors reviewed more than 800 applications from Fortune 1,000 companies before naming this year’s honorees. Winners were selected based on their leadership programs, employee benefits and Latina representation in senior positions. Progressive earned a spot on the list in part because of its Hispanic and Latino recruiting efforts. Progressive recruiters advertise for jobs at Progressive on and in Hispanic/Latino job boards and publications. Progressive also has a Hispanic employee resource group which promotes an inclusive and diverse workplace.

“At Progressive, diversity is an essential part of creating a dynamic workforce and an outstanding environment for our employees, and it is crucial in providing exceptional service to our customers,” said Tiffany Collins, who spearheads Progressive’s diversity and inclusion employee resource group efforts.” It’s an honor to again receive this recognition from LATINA Style magazine.”

To find out more about jobs at Progressive or to apply, visit http://jobs.progressive.com

About Progressive

The Progressive Group of Insurance Companies makes it easy to understand, buy, and use auto insurance. Progressive offers choices so consumers can reach us whenever, wherever, and however it’s most convenient for them—online at progressive.com, by phone at 1-800-PROGRESSIVE, or in-person with a local agent.

Progressive offers insurance for personal and commercial autos and trucks, motorcycles, boats, recreational vehicles, and homes. It’s the fourth largest auto insurer in the country, the largest seller of motorcycle insurance, and a leader in commercial auto insurance. Progressive also offers car insurance online in Australia at http://www.progressiveonline.com.au.

Founded in 1937, Progressive continues its long history of offering shopping tools and services that save customers time and money, like Name Your Price^®, the Snapshot Discount^®, and a concierge level of claims service.

The Common Shares of The Progressive Corporation, the Mayfield Village, Ohio-based holding company, trade publicly at NYSE:PGR.

NEW YORK  — The nation’s largest group of pediatricians on Monday urged its members to “vigorously oppose boxing for any child or adolescent.”

In a statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said thousands of boys and girls participate in the sport in North America, despite risks of serious brain and facial injuries.

The group’s position mirrors the stance at many other medical organizations and was applauded by some experts.

“There is very little one can reasonably do in order to increase the chance of having a healthy brain when you get old,” said Dr. Hans Forstl at the Technische Universitat Munchen in Munich, who has studied boxing injuries.

“One of the best things you can do is avoid boxing,” he told Reuters Health.

The new move met with fierce resistance from the boxing community. Pat Russo, a retired police officer who runs a boxing gym in Brooklyn, New York, said the sport has helped thousands of kids in poor neighborhoods find direction in life.

“Boxing has been a kind of penicillin for these kids, it has been saving these kids,” he told Reuters Health. “It teaches them discipline and a work ethic that if you do something and you practice every day, you are going to get better at it.”

According to the new statement, published in the journal Pediatrics, data from Canada show a rise in boxing injuries over the past decade. From 1999 to 2007, the injury rate jumped from 11 to 16 per 100,000 kids, with most of the damage done during sparring or competitions.

One study cited in the statement estimated that for every 1,000 hours of amateur boxing, there would be one injury — which is lower than the rates in football, wrestling and soccer.

Concussions are the biggest concern, ranging from six to 52 percent of all injuries, depending on which study you look at.

“Boxing is one of the very few sports which really aim at hurting the opponent and for a short period of time achieving loss of consciousness,” said Forstl. “A knockout is basically a cerebral concussion.”

Immediately after a bout, he added, boxers have increased production of beta amyloid, a compound found in excess in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

“The typical brain of a boxer with a long career shows severe changes,” Forstl said.

As many as one in five professional boxers may end up with so-called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury also known as dementia pugilistica, according to the AAP. However, the groups acknowledges in its statement that that statistic is based on older data, and that boxing has become safer since.

Russo, who directs the Atlas NYC Cops & Kids Boxing Club, said injuries are rare in amateur boxing. After 26 years and training thousands of kids, he’s seen just one split lip among his students.

“If the gym is run properly, injuries are at an absolute minimum,” Russo said. “Football is ten times more dangerous.”

Recently, one of his students made it onto the U.S. Olympic team, but he said he’s just as proud of another kid who went on to become a cop.

While tennis or football might also help kids gain confidence, Russo said, boxing holds a special attraction for youngsters in poor neighborhoods, because it allows them to act tough while staying out of trouble.

The AAP did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Robert Cantu, a neurosurgeon at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts, said AAP’s stance makes sense for upper- and middle-class kids.

“Clearly boxing is safer today than it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it is still a very risky activity,” he told Reuters Health.

For kids in poor areas, however, the situation is different, said Cantu, who has written a book about boxing and medicine.

“The most dangerous thing for the majority of people in boxing is just where they live,” he explained. “They are far safer in the ring, even taking blows to the head, than they are out in the neighborhood.”

An analysis of the state’s insolvent workers’ compensation trusts shows that a deficit thought last summer to be $600 million is now nearly $1 billion.

 

A 10-page report by the state Workers’ Compensation Board, required by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget legislation, puts the workers’ compensation deficit at $924.6 million. The totals are based on the funds’ latest audited financial statements.

 

The June 30 report attributes the increase to previously uncounted workers’ compensation obligations, as well as the addition of two newly insolvent trusts, bringing the total to 17.

 

Hundreds of small employers paid into the trusts to provide for workers injured on the job. But the funds were mismanaged or, as the state alleges, defrauded by Poughkeepsie-based Compensation Risk Managers, which controlled most of them.

 

The state sued CRM for $405 million, but a proposed settlement would yield only $41 million. State appellate courts, meanwhile, have upheld the board’s authority to force employers who paid into solvent trusts to cover the deficit of the insolvent funds. The employers are appealing.

 

That has left the insolvent trusts’ members, like Mark Teich, president of M&T Plumbing & Heating Co. near Union Square, on the hook.

 

“I paid a premium to cover my company and now they’re coming back and saying [employers] owe $925 million,” he said. “It’s insane.”

 

The final debt to the state is likely to be less than that because of a law crafted by the Cuomo administration to deal with the problem, which it inherited.

 

Foreseeing a political maelstrom, the governor assigned Deputy Secretary Alphonso David, who oversees labor issues, to work with the employers’ attorneys to clean up the mess. The law requires the board to give semiannual updates on the size of the deficit. The first update was June 30.

 

The new law also allows the insolvent trusts to reduce by 20% the amount of money they owe—but only if they agree to pay the remaining 80%. That measure is supposed take effect by the end of the year and is expected to reduce the shortfall, a Cuomo administration official said.

A 74-year-old woman who said she was injured after falling in a Costco store in Florida beat back the retailer’s effort to move the case to that state because it was too much trouble to defend itself in New York.

Theresa Danza sued Costco in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, claiming she was hospitalized for spinal and shoulder trauma and needed months of treatment by a chiropractor after a tumble in a Costco in North Miami, Florida, on Jan. 24, 2009.

“I didn’t know what hit me,” she said. “I just went flying. I went up in the air and down I went. It seems I slipped on a slurpee that was all over the floor.”

Costco sought to move her case to Florida. It said it would be prejudiced if the case stayed in New York, and cited the cost of locating and interviewing witnesses.

Not so, New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack said in a decision Wednesday.

Schack said it would be more inconvenient for Danza to fly her witnesses to Florida than for Costco to fly its employee witnesses to New York.

He also said Issaquah, Washington-based Costco Wholesale Corp. is hardly cash-starved, with profit of $1.3 billion on revenue of $77.95 billion in its last fiscal year.

“The court, in balancing the interests of plaintiff Danza against financial ‘goliath’ defendant Costco, holds that it would not be in the interest of substantial justice to try this action in Florida instead of New York,” Shack wrote.

A Costco spokeswoman declined to comment, citing a company policy not to discuss litigation.

Pursuing the case at home could avert more pain for Danza.

“I do not intend to be traveling to Florida in winter anymore as traveling is too painful and stressful for me,” she said in court papers quoted by Schack.

The case is Danza v. Costco Wholesale Corp., New York State Supreme Court, Kings County, No. 31512/2010.