Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

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      Bird Flu Spreads to Dairy Cows

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      U.S. regulators confirmed that sick cattle in Texas, Kansas and possibly in New Mexico contracted avian influenza. They stressed that the nation’s milk supply is safe, saying pasteurization kills viruses.A highly fatal form of avian influenza, or bird flu, has been confirmed in U.S. cattle in Texas and Kansas, the Department of Agriculture announced on Monday.It is the first time that cows infected with the virus have been identified.The cows appear to have been infected by wild birds, and dead birds were reported on some farms, the agency said. The results were announced after multiple federal and state agencies began investigating reports of sick cows in Texas, Kansas and New Mexico.In several cases, the virus was detected in unpasteurized samples of milk collected from sick cows. Because pasteurization kills viruses, officials emphasized that there was little risk to the nation’s milk supply.“At this stage, there is no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply or that this circumstance poses a risk to consumer health,” the agency said in a statement.Outside experts agreed. “It has only been found in milk that is grossly abnormal,” said Dr. Jim Lowe, a veterinarian and influenza researcher at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.In those cases, the milk was described as thick and syrupy, he said, and was discarded. The agency said that dairies are required to divert or destroy milk from sick animals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars

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      The auto giant lobbied hard against tougher pollution rules. This week, the E.P.A.’s new rules proved favorable to hybrid technology, an area that Toyota dominates.The breakfast at Toyota’s annual dealership gathering in Las Vegas last fall was an exclusive, invite-only affair, where attendees were told to cover their cellphone cameras with red stickers.Speaking was Stephen Ciccone, Toyota’s top lobbyist. He said the industry was facing an existential crisis — not because of the economy or fuel prices, but because of stronger tailpipe pollution limits being proposed in the United States. The rules were “bad for the country, bad for the consumer, and bad for the auto industry,” he said, according to a memo he later circulated among Toyota dealerships that was reviewed by The New York Times.“For more than two years, Toyota and our dealer partners have stood alone in the fight against unrealistic BEV mandates,” he wrote, using the acronym for battery-electric vehicles. “We have taken a lot of hits from environmental activists, the media, and some politicians. But we have not — and we will not — back down.”On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized tailpipe emissions rules that require car makers to meet tough new average emissions limits. The rules are some of the most significant aimed at fighting climate change in United States history.But the rules relaxed major elements of an earlier, more stringent proposal. In particular, the final regulations were favorable to hybrid cars, those that run both on gasoline and electricity — giving a bigger role to a market that Toyota dominates.Toyota, it appeared, had come out on top.Once a leader in clean cars, Toyota has cemented its role as the voice of caution against electrifying the auto industry too quickly, using its lobbying and public relations muscle to oppose a rapid shift that experts say is critical to fighting climate change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Must Figure Out How to Fix Cannabis Mess, Hochul Orders

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a review of the way New York State licenses cannabis businesses after calling the sluggish rollout of legal cannabis a “disaster.”Gov. Kathy Hochul has told New York officials to come up with a fix for the way the state licenses cannabis businesses amid widespread frustration over the plodding pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout and the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries.The governor has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the state’s licensing bureaucracy, to begin Monday — weeks after she declared the rollout “a disaster” and called off a Cannabis Control Board meeting when she learned the body was prepared to hand out only a few licenses.The main goal of the review, to be conducted by Jeanette Moy, the commissioner of the Office of General Services, is to shorten the time it takes to process applications and get businesses open, officials said.The state Office of Cannabis Management, which recommends applicants to the board for final approval, received 7,000 applications for licenses last fall from businesses seeking to open dispensaries, grow cannabis and manufacture products. But regulators have awarded just 109 so far this year. The agency has just 32 people assigned to evaluate the applications.Ms. Moy has “a proven track record of improving government operations,” the governor said in a statement, and will provide a playbook to turn around the cannabis management office “and jump-start the next phase of New York’s legal cannabis market.”In an interview, Ms. Moy said her goal was to work with the cannabis management office “to identify ways in which we can support them as they look to streamline and move forward some of the backlogs and challenges that may be faced in this industry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Court Temporarily Halts S.E.C.’s New Climate Rules

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      Two fracking companies had challenged requirements that some businesses disclose more information about the risks they face from climate change.A federal court on Friday temporarily halted new rules from the Securities Exchange Commission that require public companies to disclose more about the business risks they face from climate change, siding with two oil and gas companies that criticized the requirements as costly and arbitrary.Approved by the S.E.C. this month, the rules require some publicly traded companies to disclose their climate risks, and how much greenhouse gas emissions they produce. Industry groups, as well as their political allies, have filed numerous lawsuits challenging the regulation.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents a wide cross-section of industries, filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this week to stop the rules, calling them unconstitutional. Ten Republican-led states have also sued to stop the rules.The emergency stay granted by Fifth Circuit judges on Friday came in a case brought by two fracking companies, Liberty Energy and Nomad Proppant Services. “There is no clear authority for the S.E.C. to effectively regulate the controversial issue of climate change,” the two companies wrote in their petition. They were “arbitrary and capricious,” the two companies said, and violated the First Amendment, which protects free speech, by “effectively mandating discussions about climate change.”In addition, the rules would cost companies “irreparable injury in the form of unrecoverable compliance costs,” they said.Climate disasters, including extreme weather like hurricanes, floods and drought, are taking a rising toll on people as well as businesses around the world. In 2023, the United States experienced a record 28 weather and climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last year that losses tied to climate change could “cascade through the financial system.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      FAA Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues

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      The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.The F.A.A. also conducted 13 product audits for the part of the inquiry that focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage, or body, of the 737 Max. Six of those audits resulted in passing grades, and seven resulted in failing ones, the presentation said.At one point during the examination, the air-safety agency observed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to check a door seal, according to a document that describes some of the findings. That action was “not identified/documented/called-out in the production order,” the document said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fed Chair Powell Signals a Retreat on Banking Rules

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      The Fed chair said regulators could scale back or rework a sweeping capital-requirements proposal that Wall Street has been fighting for months.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, stunned Wall Street yesterday with an apparent U-turn in bank regulation.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJay Powell’s surprise For months, Wall Street C.E.O.s have been complaining bitterly and lobbying against the prospect of higher capital requirements, which would require them to keep more money on hand and would lower their profits. It appears they have scored a big win.Jay Powell dropped the bombshell in his testimony before the House on Wednesday. Markets were still digesting the Fed chair’s go-slow comments on interest rate cuts when he signaled that proposed new rules to force lenders to beef up their books would be scaled back, or reworked.“I do expect that there will be broad and material changes to the proposal,” he said.The capital rules, known as the “Basel III Endgame,” would apply to the largest banks. They would have to set aside a bigger emergency cushion to soak up losses stemming from shocks like the bank run last year that led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and prompted a wider crisis.But the proposals have come under fire from bank chiefs, industry lobbyists, Republican lawmakers and even some liberal members of Congress, who fear that a mandate to set aside billions to fight the next potential crisis could feed another one.Critics fear that Basel III would crimp lending just as banks grapple with upheaval in commercial real estate. Lenders face a looming “maturity wall” of as much as $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans set to come over the next two years.That risk came into blaring focus during Powell’s testimony. The stock price of New York Community Bank, a Long Island-based lender with a mountain of souring real estate loans, plummeted on news it was seeking emergency funding. (More on that below.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      S.E.C. to Approve New Climate Rules Far Weaker Than Originally Proposed

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      The rules, designed to inform investors of business risks from climate change, were rolled back amid opposition from the G.O.P., fossil fuel producers, farmers and others.The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected on Wednesday to approve new rules detailing if and how public companies should disclose climate risks and how much greenhouse gas emissions they produce, but there are fewer demands on businesses than the original proposal made about two years ago.The rules represent a step toward requiring corporations to inform investors of both their climate emissions, as well as the business risks that they face from floods, rising temperatures and weather disasters. An earlier and more all-encompassing proposal faced outspoken Republican backlash and opposition from a range of companies and industries, including fossil fuel producers.The main difference: Under the original proposal, large companies would have been required to disclose not just planet-warming emissions from their own operations, but also emissions produced along what’s known as a company’s “value chain” — a term that encompasses everything from the parts or services bought from other suppliers, to the way that people who use the products ultimately dispose of them. Pollution created all along this value chain could add up.Now, that requirement is gone.In addition, the biggest companies will have to report the emissions they directly produce, but only if the companies themselves consider the emissions “material,” or of significant importance to their bottom lines, a qualification that leaves corporations leeway. Thousands of smaller businesses are exempt, another big change from the original proposal, which would have required all publicly traded corporations to disclose their direct emissions.Also gone from the final rules is a requirement that companies state the climate expertise of members on their board of directors.But the directive for companies to disclose significant risks related to climate change — for example, risks to waterfront properties owned by a hotel chain from rising sea levels and storm surges — survived.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JetBlue and Spirit Call Off Their Merger

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      JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to terminate the $3.8 billion deal, which had been blocked by federal antitrust regulators.JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines announced on Monday that they would walk away from their planned $3.8 billion merger after federal antitrust regulators successfully challenged the deal in court. JetBlue said it would pay Spirit $69 million to exit the deal.A federal judge in Boston blocked the proposed merger on Jan. 16, siding with the Justice Department in determining that the merger would reduce competition in the industry and give airlines more leeway to raise ticket prices. The judge, William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, noted that Spirit played a vital role in the market as a low-cost carrier and that travelers would have fewer options if JetBlue absorbed it.“We are proud of the work we did with Spirit to lay out a vision to challenge the status quo, but given the hurdles to closing that remain, we decided together that both airlines’ interests are better served by moving forward independently,” JetBlue’s chief executive, Joanna Geraghty, said in a statement on Monday. “We wish the very best going forward to the entire Spirit team.”JetBlue and Spirit appealed Judge Young’s decision. JetBlue filed an appellate brief last week arguing that the deal should be allowed to go through.But in a regulatory filing on Jan. 26, JetBlue said it might terminate the deal. Spirit said in its own filing the same day that it believed “there is no basis for terminating” the agreement.The merger agreement, which expired on Jan. 28, could have been extended to July 24 if certain conditions were met. But JetBlue suggested in its filing in January that Spirit had not met some of its obligations under the agreement, giving JetBlue the ability to walk away.As part of the merger agreement, JetBlue agreed to pay Spirit and its shareholders $470 million in fees if the deal was blocked. Some legal experts said JetBlue was potentially positioning itself to dispute the remainder of those fees by terminating the agreement.Spirit is heavily indebted and last turned a profit before the Covid-19 pandemic. Investors see a merger as a lifeline for the company. Its stock price has lost more than half its value since the ruling blocking the merger.JetBlue’s stock nudged up on the same news, as investors see the end of the deal as a cost-saving measure.A merger of the airlines would have given the combined company a bigger share of the market, which is dominated by four carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.Alaska Airlines has also announced plans to increase its size. In December, it said it wanted to acquire Hawaiian Airlines for $1.9 billion. That deal, too, is likely to attract the scrutiny of federal antitrust regulators. More