State Farm was expected to try to justify its need to raise property insurance rates at a three-day public rate hearing that began Tuesday.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara called for the hearing a month ago, after State Farm asked the state’s Department of Insurance to immediately approve emergency interim rate increases of an average 22% for homeowners, 15% for renters and condos and 38% for rental dwellings.

State Farm said its finances are strained because of the Los Angeles County fires, from which it expects to pay more than $7 billion in claims.

A hearing over emergency interim rates has never happened before in California.

State Farm also has pending rate requests from last summer — a separate rate hearing about those will happen by June — but said it needs to increase rates as soon as possible. Under California law, the public can object to rate increases and intervene, which could then lead to a rate hearing.

justice department disbanding its crypto-related enforcement team

The Justice Department is disbanding a team of prosecutors who targeted cryptocurrency crimes and is shifting its focus away from complex crypto-related cases involving banking and securities law, according to a memo reviewed by The Associated Press.

“The Department of Justice is not a digital assets regulator,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a memo sent to prosecutors on Monday.

It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to try to boost the cryptocurrency industry while undoing the Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on wrongdoers in the industry. The Trump administration’s effort has included a similar shift in crypto-related enforcement priorities at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Blanche’s memo is part of a larger move by the DOJ to step back from certain white-collar enforcement to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities of tackling illegal immigration, gangs and drug crimes.

Blanche said the Biden administration had used the department to “pursue a reckless strategy of regulation by prosecution, which was ill conceived and poorly executed.” Instead, Blanche said, the department’s narrower crypto-related priorities will target people and entities that rip off crypto investors or use digital assets to fund criminal conduct like human trafficking, drug running or terrorism.

minister says apple exported $17.4B in iphones from india in last fiscal year

Apple exported more than $17.4 billion in iPhones from India in the last fiscal year, the nation’s technology minister said Tuesday, underscoring the company’s efforts to diversify away from China.

As iPhone exports shot up, India has shipped out smartphones worth more than $23 billion in the fiscal year through March, a jump of 54% from the previous year, tech minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a briefing in New Delhi.

Apple has rapidly expanded in India after strict COVID-19 shutdowns paralyzed manufacturing at its largest iPhone plant in China. The diversification drive has coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambition to turn the country into a manufacturing hub. India’s subsidies have helped Foxconn Technology Group and the electronics manufacturing unit of Tata Group, which bought Wistron Corp. and Pegatron Corp.’s India factories, scale up local iPhone assembly.

Compiled from CalMatters, Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.