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Italy to send suspect in pipeline explosion to Germany for extradition

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Sarah RainsfordSouthern and Eastern Europe correspondent, Rome

Danish Defence Handout The Nord Stream pipeline running between Russia and Germany was attacked in 2022 Danish Defence Handout

The Nord Stream pipeline, which runs between Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, was attacked in 2022

Italy’s top appeals court has ruled that a Ukrainian man suspected of involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany should be extradited to Berlin.

There, former Ukrainian military officer Serhiy Kuznetsov will face a charge of anti-constitutional sabotage. He is due to be removed from Italy under German police escort in the next few days.

Prosecutors believe Mr Kuznetsov coordinated and led a group that planted explosives on the pipes deep beneath the Baltic Sea in 2022, though they have not disclosed any evidence.

The case has serious implications for relations between Ukraine and Germany, which is the biggest source of military aid for Kyiv in Europe.

Mr Kuznetsov’s lawyer said his client “feels like a scapegoat” and is “very sad” that his government has not spoken out in his defence, or even confirmed that he was a serving soldier at the time of the blasts.

“If he carried out the attack, then he did so because he was ordered to do so because he was for sure a captain of the Ukrainian army,” Nicola Canestrini said after Wednesday’s hearing.

The BBC has seen a copy of Mr Kuznetsov’s military ID among the court papers. He has not commented publicly on whether he was involved in the explosions.

“The Ukrainian government knows exactly where he was every day of September 2022,” his lawyer said. “So, if he’s innocent, why don’t they say it? If he did it, why don’t they say it? That’s his question.”

The BBC has approached government and security sources in Kyiv, but they have not commented.

Mr Kuznetsov was arrested in northern Italy in late August, at a glamping site near the city of Rimini where he had booked in for a few nights with his wife and two of their children.

His passport details were entered online at check-in, and in Italy that information is automatically transferred to the carabinieri, the local police.

Later that night, officers came knocking at the family’s door.

Serhiy Kuznetsov's lawyer Nicola Canestrini

Serhiy Kuznetsov’s lawyer Nicola Canestrini says his client feels like a “scapegoat”

A month later, a second Ukrainian suspect was detained at his home close to Poland’s capital Warsaw on another arrest warrant issued by Germany.

Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, an amateur deep-sea diver, has lived in Poland with his family since just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He was held in custody for 17 days, but a court then refused to extradite him.

The judge delivered a passionate speech, arguing that no Ukrainian could be prosecuted for what he characterised as a legitimate act of self-defence against Russia’s “bloody and genocidal” invasion of Ukraine.

In Italy, further from Ukraine, the mood and the politics are very different.

Mr Canestrini described the Italian appeal court’s ruling as a “great disappointment”, but said the fight for his client would now move to Germany – with the aim of having Mr Kuznetsov acquitted on the same grounds.

Many Ukrainians consider whoever did destroy Nord Stream to be heroes for taking out an important revenue source for Russia, and struggle to understand why Germany – a key ally of Ukraine – is pursuing this prosecution.

On Wednesday, one man stood outside the palatial courthouse in Rome wrapped in a Ukrainian flag and holding a poster that read: “Serhiy Kuznetsov is a defender, not a criminal.”

Map of Nord Stream gas pipelines

Nike ACG Lava Loft Down Trail Running Jacket with Smart Ventilation

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Where there’s an uncomfortable athlete, there’s room for a wild, high-tech solution. At least that seems to be Nike’s strategy of late, resulting in such contrivances as robo-shoes and active-breathing jackets. The all-new Lava Loft Down Jacket is a little less animated, but it still uses a rather unconventional solution to solve a common problem, interspersing baffles of ultra-warm down with wide open vents to react to the massive weather shifts a trail runner can experience when logging miles. When it’s time to remove the Lava Loft all together, the 10-oz jacket packs down to fit in your hand like an apple.

There seem to be a lot of masochists out there, and a big chunk of evidence supporting that conclusion is the existence of the ultra marathon. As if a good, old 26 miles (42 km) wasn’t grueling enough, how about 50 miles (80 km)? Or 100? Or even 135 miles … through Death Valley?! And hey, pavement is kind of smooth and straightforward, so why don’t we also throw in highly variable rock and dirt trail that climbs and dives through 10s of thousands of feet worth of elevation?

Masochism.

But there are plenty of folks out there doing all that and more in the name of sport, fitness and personal growth. And, in many cases, those kinds of runs involve frosty twilight starts, sun-baked midday stretches through exposed, wide-open spaces, frigid high-alpine ridge scampers, chilly darkly shaded forest plunge, furious unexpected squalls, and maybe all of the above.

Put succinctly, trail runners need to be prepared for virtually every type of weather that Mother Nature has scribbled down in her playbook. And they certainly don’t want to be weighed down carrying a wardrobe’s worth of apparel options on their back.

In setting out to develop a trail running jacket meant to excel through those mercurial conditions, Nike’s ACG (All Conditions Gear) design team turned to the Atlas body mapping system for insight. Located at Nike’s Sport Research Lab in Beaverton, Oregon, the Atlas system delivered the cellularly precise data the team used to pinpoint exactly where trail-running athletes run hot and sweaty versus cold, giving them a blueprint for mapping out insulation and ventilation zones.

The perforated ventilation strips separate the down baffles to create warm and cool zones

Nike

After developing a prototype based on that raw data, ACG worked with the Nike Running team to test and refine a multitude of prototype iterations, racking up hundreds of hours worth of testing and development. Ultimately, the project found the most precise placement for the jacket’s blend of perforated ventilation and 700-fill ExpeDRY Gold down. A specific formulation of hydrophobic down, ExpeDRY includes non-toxic gold particles in each down cluster to electro-statically break up water molecules and keep the down dry, fluffy and warm.

As typical in a down jacket, the down is contained in horizontal baffles that run across the body and sleeves, but rather than being one baffle atop the next, Nike ACG places thin rows of perforated ventilation between baffles in critical zones. These rows can be seen around the chest, on the back, and up and down both sleeves. The perforations keep air flow moving across the hottest, sweatiest areas to wick away moisture.

Nike has put loads of data, research and development into the all-new Lava Loft Jacket
Nike has put loads of data, research and development into the all-new Lava Loft Jacket

Nike

To further manage internal and external moisture, the jacket relies on a combination of Nike’s quick-wicking/dispersing Dri-Fit fabric, water-repellent Repel four-way-stretch fabric, and durable water repellent (DWR) baffle material.

The Lava Loft jacket travels about as lightly as possible, packing down into palmable size in its own pocket. At 10 oz (284 g) for a size medium, it’s not quite the lightest down jacket available, but it’s not so far off from ultralight staples like the 6.8-oz (193-g) Zpacks Down Jacket or 8-oz (227-g) Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer.

Nike unveiled the Lava Loft Down Jacket this month at the China International Import Expo. It plans to launch the new piece globally on its website and at select retailers beginning January 1, 2026. Nike did not include pricing information with the announcement, but that will be available in the coming weeks.

Source: Nike

Nvidia surpasses revenue expectations and predicts sustained high demand for AI chips

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Nvidia blew past Wall Street financial targets in its third quarter, posting a 62% surge in revenue and forecasting continued strong growth for the current quarter with demand for its AI chips showing no sign of slowing down.

“Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a prepared statement.

Nvidia’s stock rose as much as 5% in after hours trading, after finishing the regular session up 3%.

Sales in the company’s datacenter unit, which accounts for the vast majority of Nvidia’s business, expanded 66% year-over-year to $51.2 billion, compared to the $49.7 billion expected by analysts. Overall revenue of $57 billion was above Nvidia’s own projections and topped the $55.5 billion expected by Wall Street.

Looking ahead, Nvidia projected fourth-quarter revenue between $63.7 billion and $66.3 billion, well above the $62.4 billion that analysts expected.

Nvidia’s strong results are a clear sign that the AI boom shows no signs of slowing down — but the question is whether those headline numbers will be enough to soothe jittery investors about the industry’s broader outlook. The biggest source of market nerves is the growing concern over whether AI revenue growth can keep pace with the staggering capital expenditures required to build and run next-generation models. There’s also the risk that only a handful of companies will capture most of the economic value.

Mounting power constraints, supply chain issues and fresh scrutiny of “circular” AI investments have also raised doubts about how sustainable the current trajectory really is. Analysts have warned about Nvidia’s role in a possible AI bubble — especially given the company’s $24 billion AI-investment blitz in 2025.

Case in point: In the deal announced Tuesday, Nvidia and Microsoft will invest up to $10 billion and $5 billion, respectively, in Anthropic. In turn, Anthropic will purchase $30 billion of Azure compute capacity, while also collaborating with Nvidia on future chip and model-engineering work. This follows Nvidia’s $6.6 billion investment in OpenAI in October and a $6 billion investment in Elon Musk’s xAI in November, per PitchBook, as well as its commitment to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI in a massive September deal that sent the stock higher.

In recent weeks, investors have been reassessing expectations, said Daniel Newman, analyst and CEO of the Futurum Group: “Has there been too much exuberance? Is this demand real?”

Still, Nvidia’s results speak for themselves for those looking for optimism. Still, some analysts insist this isn’t a bubble. And analysts like Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist at Hightower Advisors, argues that the demand is fundamentally real — and far broader than Big Tech.

“I don’t think we are in a bubble in AI because there are so many industries that are seeing significant growth,” she said. “AI needs more data centers, an upgraded grid, and more power — which we don’t have enough of. Each industry will be spending billions: Big Tech $400B, industrials $100B building data centers, utilities $200B, and power companies $100B — and that’s just this year. The demand is there, unlike the dot-com bubble where there wasn’t real demand.”

Dozens Killed in Russian Strikes on Ukraine

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new video loaded: Russian Strikes in Ukraine Kill More Than Two Dozen People

A deadly Russian barrage of missiles and drones in Ukraine came as President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Turkey in a bid to revive peace talks to end his country’s war with Russia.

By Axel Boada

November 19, 2025

Spotify now owns WhoSampled, the song sample and remix database

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Spotify has acquired music database WhoSampled, which provides information about song covers, samples and remixes.

The music streaming company quietly announced the acquisition in a blog post Wednesday (November 18) in which it unveiled a number of new song credit features, including an upcoming ‘SongDNA’ function for Premium users, which Spotify said will be “powered by WhoSampled, which is now part of Spotify.”

London-headquartered WhoSampled confirmed in a statement on its website that it has been acquired by Spotify.

“This marks an exciting new chapter in our journey – one where WhoSampled will not only continue to grow and improve, but also bring its unique flavor of music discovery to the world’s largest music streaming platform, used and loved by hundreds of millions of fans,” the company said.

It didn’t disclose the acquisition’s value. In a LinkedIn post, WhoSampled Founder Nadav Poraz said he will be taking on the role of Head of WhoSampled at Spotify.

MBW has reached out to Spotify for comment.

Though its database is being integrated into the Spotify platform, WhoSampled said it will continue to function as a standalone app.

The company announced some immediate changes, including that its iOS app will now be free to download, and in-app subscriptions on both iOS and Android will now be free.

WhoSampled also said it will become ad-free “in the coming weeks,” and added that its moderation will be faster, with waiting times for submissions expected to drop “dramatically.”

The company added that it will be working with Spotify on “improving the WhoSampled experience and building exciting new features.”

WhoSampled’s statistics show its database indexes more than 1.2 million songs, around 387,000 artists, 622,000 samples and 460,000 covers.

The first WhoSampled-powered function on Spotify will be SongDNA, an interactive feature that maps connections between songs via collaborators, samples and covers. Sample and cover data will come from WhoSampled.

It’s part of a series of enhancements to the data on songs available on Spotify. Other enhancements include expanded song credits, adding session musicians, engineers and other contributors to the credits, which have so far included only top-line performers, songwriters and producers.

Spotify is also planning to roll out ‘About the Song,’ which will be swipeable cards that offer in-depth info about the origins of a track, such as the inspiration behind it or interesting stories about its creation.


Spotify has over the years used acquisitions to build and expand its business. In 2021, it bought audiobook distributor Findaway. Spotify began offering audiobooks in select markets in 2023.

Also as part of its effort to expand audio offerings beyond music, Spotify acquired a series of podcast companies, including Anchor, Gimlet Media and Parcast.

Over the past several years it has focused on AI-related acquisitions, picking up AI voice company in Sonantic in 2022. The following year, it unveiled an AI-powered voice translation tool.

Also in 2022. Spotify acquired Kinzen, a content moderation company that uses AI in its technology. Spotify had been working with the platform since 2020.Music Business Worldwide

Nigerian military ramps up efforts to locate abducted schoolgirls

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NewsFeed

Two days after they were abducted from their beds by armed attackers, 24 Nigerian schoolgirls are still missing as the military intensifies its efforts to rescue them.

Challenging the Client

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Client Challenge



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Rescue operation successful: All 246 passengers saved from grounded South Korean ferry

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All 246 passengers of a South Korean passenger ferry have been rescued after it ran aground on rocks off the country’s south-east coast, according to the Coast Guard.

Officials added that the Queen Jenuvia 2 is stuck on a reef and unable to move, but there is currently no risk of sinking or capsizing.

The accident happened near Jangsan Island in Sinan County on Wednesday evening local time. The vessel ran aground on rocks near the uninhabited island of Jogdo.

Local media reported that five people sustained minor injuries from the impact of the grounding, but there have been no other casualties.

Some crew members are reportedly still on board in collaboration with the coast guard. It is unclear how many of the 21 ferry staff remain on the ferry.

South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok has ordered all available vessels to be mobilised to rescue the ferry.

“We have confirmed that there is currently no flooding. We are transferring passengers to patrol boats and moving them to a safe location,” a Coast Guard official said, Chosun Ilbo newspaper reports.

The Coast Guard plans to move the vessel ashore at high tide.

The 26,000-tonne ferry was travelling to the port city of Mokpo after departing from the resort island of Jeju, officials said.

The area is near the site of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that killed more than 300 people, mostly school children heading for a school trip.

The salvaged wreck of the Sewol ferry was brought to Mokpo nearly three years later.

Filing of Form 144 for Fidelis Insurance Holdings Ltd on November 19

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Form 144 Fidelis Insurance Holdings Ltd For: 19 November

Increasing Home Insurance Costs Threaten the Value of Homes in High-Risk Areas

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This Louisiana resident expects to pay 45 percent more for home insurance this year.

Similar increases are hitting homeowners across the state, where insurance costs have exploded over the past four years.

It’s part of a rapid shift that’s sending tremors through real estate markets across the country.

Even after she escaped rising floodwaters by wading away from her home in chest-deep water during Hurricane Rita in 2005, Sandra Rojas, now 69, stayed put. A fifth-generation resident of Lafitte, La., a small coastal community, she raised her home with stilts.

But this year, her annual home insurance premium increased to $8,312, more than doubling over the past four years.

She considered selling, but found herself in a dilemma. As insurance costs have risen, area home values have fallen, dropping by 38 percent since 2020. The roadsides around her house are dotted with for-sale signs.

“They won’t insure you,” Ms. Rojas said. “No one will buy from you. You’re kind of stuck where you are.”

Sandra Rojas is a fifth-generation resident of Lafitte, La.

New research shared with The New York Times estimates the extent to which rising home insurance premiums, driven higher by climate change, are cascading into the broader real estate market and eating into home values in the most disaster-prone areas.

The study, which analyzed tens of millions of housing payments through 2024 to understand where insurance costs have risen most, offers first-of-its-kind insight into the way rising insurance rates are affecting home values.

Since 2018, a financial shock in the home insurance market has meant that homes in the ZIP codes most exposed to hurricanes and wildfires would sell for an average of $43,900 less than they would otherwise, the research found. They include coastal towns in Louisiana and low-lying areas in Florida.

Changes in an under-the-radar part of the insurance market, known as reinsurance, have helped to drive this trend. Insurance companies purchase reinsurance to help limit their exposure when a catastrophe hits. Over the past several years, global reinsurance companies have had what the researchers call a “climate epiphany” and have roughly doubled the rates they charge home insurance providers.

Source: Keys and Mulder (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025). The New York Times

Benjamin Keys at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Philip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the authors of the study, which was published this week, have called these swift changes “a reinsurance shock.” For some Americans, these changes have made it unaffordable to remain in homes they have lived in for decades.

“Homeowners don’t appreciate or don’t understand that we are living in a much riskier world than we were 25 years ago,” Dr. Keys said. “And that risk? They have to pay for it.”

After analyzing 74 million home payments — which included mortgage, taxes and insurance and were made between 2014 and 2024 — the researchers found that a rapid repricing of disaster risk had been responsible for about a fifth of overall home insurance increases since 2017. Another third could be explained by rising construction costs.

The researchers estimated the effects of the reinsurance shock on home prices in the ZIP codes most vulnerable to catastrophes. They found that rising insurance premiums weighed down home values by about $20,500 in the top 25 percent of homes most exposed to catastrophic hurricanes and wildfires, and by $43,900 in the top 10 percent.

Buying a home has long been seen as a way to lock in predictable housing costs. But the fast-increasing burden of insurance is catching some homeowners by surprise.

Last year, Ms. Rojas’s brother-in-law, who lived down the road in Lafitte, decided to sell his home to escape the area’s rising premiums. It sold for $150,000, which is what it cost him to build it in 1984. He estimated he lost about $75,000 on the sale, after accounting for the cost of renovations.

In parts of the hail-prone Midwestern states, insurance now eats up more than a fifth of the average homeowner’s total housing payments, which include mortgage costs and property taxes. In Orleans Parish, La., that number is nearly 30 percent.

Source: Keys and Mulder (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025). The New York Times

A hundred miles north of Lafitte, the small city of Bogalusa, La., lies further inland. Nevertheless, Cristal Holmes saw her insurance premium more than quadruple in 2022, to $500 per month, on top of her $700 monthly mortgage.

Ms. Holmes, a single mother who was working 56 hours a week at a warehouse, struggled to keep up with the higher bills. She fell behind on mortgage payments after her work hours were reduced to 35 per week. She worried she couldn’t stay in her home.

Similar stories are playing out all over town. Ms. Holmes’s real estate agent, Charlotte Johnson, said her office was getting phone calls every day from people who said they could no longer afford their rising insurance premiums. For many, dropping insurance is not an option, because banks refuse to offer or maintain mortgages for people without coverage.

That means owners are being forced to choose between accepting home insurance policies they can’t afford or risking foreclosure.

Buyers face their own obstacles. High insurance prices and interest rates are making it harder than ever for first-time buyers to purchase homes, said Nancy Galofaro-Cruse, a senior loan officer with CMG Home Loans who works with many of Ms. Johnson’s clients. She estimated that more than a third of would-be buyers in the area backed out of the market this year after insurance and interest rates pushed their total monthly housing costs out of reach.

For-sale signs dot roadsides In Lafitte, La., where high insurance costs have driven residents to sell.

It’s not just the hurricane-prone coasts that have been affected by the reinsurance shock. In Colorado, where wildfires and hail pose the biggest threats to homes, the average homeowner’s premium has more than doubled in the last decade and median premiums have increased 74 percent since 2020.

Steve Hakes, an insurance broker with Rocky Mountain Insurance Center in Lafayette, Colo., has seen clients consider homes in wildfire-prone areas, only to back out when they can’t find affordable insurance. High prices and limited availability have pushed him to advise buyers to look for insurance early in the homebuying process.

And in California, 13 percent of real estate agents surveyed by an industry trade association said they’d had deals fall through in 2024 after buyers couldn’t find affordable insurance coverage.

Colorado regulators are aware of the threats these dynamics pose to the real estate market and are exploring a wide range of fixes, said Michael Conway, the Colorado insurance commissioner.

“We don’t want a situation where the insurance market is effectively decimating the real estate market,” he said.

As insurance becomes more expensive, home values will need to adjust for potential buyers to afford their monthly costs, industry analysts say. And if home values fall, lower property tax revenue could mean less money for local governments to pay for essential services or affect the ability of those governments to borrow money.

Clarence Guidry reached a breaking point this year when he got a quote to insure his home in Lafitte, La. He’d pay a $20,000 annual premium but if a hurricane struck, he’d be on the hook for the first $50,000 in damage before the insurance company would pay out.

His lender wouldn’t let Mr. Guidry, who goes by Rosco, keep his mortgage without home insurance. But keeping his home insured against damage from hurricanes would mean stomaching monthly payments that are at least 40 percent higher than the rest of his monthly mortgage and property taxes combined.

Clarence Guidry, a homeowner in Lafitte, La., would need to cover the first $50,000 in hurricane damage before his home insurance would kick in.

Over the last decade, as the number of wildfires and storms has mounted, losses have exceeded the revenue insurance companies receive from home insurance policies across the United States. In Louisiana, 12 companies, including Mr. Guidry’s insurer, became insolvent after a wave of hurricanes between 2021 and 2023. (Most private insurers do not cover flood damage, which is handled separately under a federal program.)

Note: Data shows U.S. property catastrophe prices indexed to 1990. Source: Guy Carpenter. The New York Times

Insurance companies’ own costs have climbed in recent years for a variety of reasons, including higher construction costs, higher interest rates and President Trump’s tariff policies.

But the changes in the insurance market have begun to put a higher price on risk. Reinsurers have been driving these effects, Dr. Mulder said.

“These reinsurers are looking at a lot of the same data as insurers, but at a much bigger scale and with more sophistication,” he said.

Politicians, homeowners, economists, state insurance commissioners and real estate agents have long worried that insurance costs will rise so much that they will begin to pull down home values.

According to the study by Dr. Keys and Dr. Mulder, which was published as a working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research, this is already happening in some areas.

Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University, said the direct evidence of this phenomenon remained limited and there were factors beyond insurance that affected local home prices.

But there are increasingly troubling signs in some markets, he said.

“The New Orleans housing market is exhibiting signs of failure that are imposing stress on the financial system around it,” he said.

Overall, U.S. home prices have risen about 55 percent since 2018, but New Orleans prices have increased by only 14 percent, less than the rate of inflation over the same time period.

Note: Chart shows change in Zillow Home Value Index since 2018. Source: Zillow. The New York Times

Even in states where heavy regulations have kept costs down, there are signs that home insurers will continue to raise premiums to align more closely with disaster risk. New rules in California allow insurance companies to pass rising reinsurance costs on to consumers. One consumer advocacy group, citing the effects of similar changes in other states, has estimated this provision could raise net premiums significantly for homeowners.

Back in Lafitte, Mr. Guidry was running the numbers for his own budget. Against the advice of his financial adviser, he took money out of his retirement account to pay off his home loan. The plan now is to self-insure for wind and hail damage. That means he and his wife will have to pay out of pocket to repair their home if another severe storm hits.

In forgoing coverage, the Guidrys join some 13 percent of U.S. homeowners who are uninsured, according to Census Bureau data. Insurers continue to drop people in many areas.

“Now, we’ve got to take the gamble,” Mr. Guidry said.

Methodology

Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder calculated annual homeowners’ insurance costs by separating mortgage and tax payments from loan-level escrow data obtained from CoreLogic, a property and risk analytics firm. Households whose payments were captured by CoreLogic were not necessarily present in all years of data from 2014 to 2024.

The home insurance share of total home payments are based on mean values. Total home payments include insurance, property tax and mortgage principal and interest costs. Escrow payments typically do not include utilities, homeowners’ association fees.