Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

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      Lawmakers Seek Inquiry Into F.D.A. Device Chief’s Potential Conflicts

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      A top medical device regulator’s work overlapped at times with his wife’s legal representation of clients with business before the agency.Two members of Congress have asked an inspector general to investigate whether the top federal regulator for medical devices like pacemakers and artificial hips acted ethically in work that overlapped with that of his wife, a leading lawyer for device companies.The lawmakers cited an investigation by The New York Times that examined the intersection of the work of the regulator, Dr. Jeffrey Shuren of the Food and Drug Administration, and his wife, Allison Shuren, a co-chair of the drug and medical device practice at the prominent Washington office of Arnold & Porter.The two House Democrats who wrote a letter seeking an inquiry are Representatives Anna Eshoo, of California and ranking member of the health subcommittee, and Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut and ranking member of the appropriations committee.The Times found several instances in which the couple’s work overlapped and could have posed conflicts of interest requiring Mr. Shuren’s recusal. The F.D.A. acknowledged ethics violations, saying that Dr. Shuren should have stepped aside or sought approval to be involved in two matters to “avoid any potential appearance of bias.”“In circumstances such as these,” the congresswomen’s letter to the inspector general, Christi Grimm, said, “the only way to get to the truth and be fair both to the public and Dr. Shuren is through an independent review of the matter to determine whether this is simply an appearance of impropriety or actual inappropriate and unethical conduct.”A spokeswoman for the inspector general’s office of the Health and Human Services Department said that the letter was received Tuesday and that “we are reviewing it for appropriate action.”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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      Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

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      The California legislation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of cellphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Friday aimed at protecting minors from social media addiction amid growing concerns about the impact of technology on adolescents’ mental health.The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said in a statement on Friday.The move, targeting powerful tech interests in the nation’s most populous state, is part of a nationwide effort to address concern over cellphone and social media use among adolescents. Amid reports of cyberbullying and distraction in classrooms, at least eight states, including Florida and Indiana, have already enacted restrictions on the use of cellphones in school settings. New York put in place a similar law aimed at social media addiction this year.In June, Governor Newsom also called for a ban on smartphone use in all public schools in California. Legislation now before him includes a requirement that the schools devise a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit smartphones during the school day, though most school districts already have cellphone policies.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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      Qualcomm Asked Rival Intel if It Would Consider Sale

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      While Intel has struggled in recent years, other chipmakers are thriving because of a boom in demand.The chipmaker Qualcomm has approached its rival Intel in recent days about the possibility of acquiring the slumping Silicon Valley giant, two people familiar with the matter said Friday, requesting anonymity because the talks were confidential.Qualcomm has not yet made an official offer for Intel, one of the people said, and the obstacles to a deal remain steep. Any deal would likely draw significant regulatory scrutiny, given the mammoth size and national security importance of both chip companies. It is unclear whether regulators would allow Qualcomm to buy Intel without taking on its struggling foundry business, and it remains equally unclear whether Qualcomm would want to take on that complex endeavor. A deal would also be costly. Intel, which has seen its shares fall nearly 40 percent over the last year, has a market capitalization of $93 billion. Qualcomm, which has seen its shares rise 55 percent, has a market value of $169 billion. Qualcomm and Intel, through spokeswomen, both declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Qualcomm’s approach. That any chip-making rival would consider trying to buy Intel would have been inconceivable a decade ago. But years of management issues and whiffs on technology transitions have weakened what was once one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies.Intel missed out on selling chips for mobile phones and has failed to capitalize on the boom in artificial intelligence, a field rival Nvidia now dominates with specialized chips used in data centers. Intel’s chip manufacturing operations, once the most advanced, also lost a technology lead to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.Intel’s problems were underscored in early August, when it announced a $1.6 billion quarterly loss and plans to cut 15,000 jobs. The company, the largest planned recipient of federal financing under legislation called the CHIPS Act, on Monday announced other moves that include plans to pause the setting up of new plants in Germany and Poland.Qualcomm, based in San Diego, is a leader in cellular technology and provides chips used in flagship smartphones from companies such as Apple and Samsung Electronics. Unlike Intel, Qualcomm has never operated factories, a costly business that most chip designers avoid. So it would seem more likely to be interested in the Intel operations that design chips, as well as its broad expertise in PC software and channels for selling those systems, said Patrick Little, a former Qualcomm executive who now is chief executive of SiFive, a Silicon Valley start-up that sells rival microprocessor designs.“Those are things Qualcomm would have to mature on their own over time,” Mr. Little said. “If they worked with or somehow had a piece of Intel that could accelerate that part of their strategy.”Any effort to buy Intel would likely face a tough antitrust review and would be scrutinized closely on national security grounds, since its design and manufacturing operations are important for defense applications and overall U.S. competitiveness in semiconductors.Lauren Hirsch reported from New York and Don Clark from San Francisco. More

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      Backlash Erupts Over Europe’s Anti-Deforestation Law

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      Leaders around the world are asking the European Union to delay rules that would require companies to police their global supply chains.The European Union has been a world leader on climate change, passing groundbreaking legislation to reduce noxious greenhouse gasses. Now the world is pushing back.Government officials and business groups around the globe have jacked up their lobbying in recent months to persuade E.U. officials to suspend a landmark environmental law aimed at protecting the planet’s endangered forests by tracing supply chains.The rules, scheduled to take effect at the end of the year, would affect billions of dollars in traded goods. They have been denounced as “discriminatory and punitive” by countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.In the United States, the Biden administration petitioned for a delay as American paper companies warned that the law could result in shortages of diapers and sanitary pads in Europe. In July, China said it would not comply because “security concerns” prevent the country from sharing the necessary data.Last week, the chorus got larger. Cabinet members in Brazil, the director general of the World Trade Organization and even Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany — leader of the largest economy in the 27-member European Union — asked the European Commission’s president to postpone the impending deforestation regulations.The uproar underscores the bruising difficulties of making progress on a problem that most everyone agrees is urgent: protecting the world’s population from devastating 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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      California Gov. Newsom Signs Laws Regulating Election A.I. ‘Deepfakes’

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      The state joins dozens of others in regulating the A.I. fakery in ways that could impact this year’s presidential race.California will now require social media companies to moderate the spread of election-related impersonations powered by artificial intelligence, known as “deepfakes,” after Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed three new laws on the subject Tuesday.The three laws, including a first-of-its kind law that imposes a new requirement on social media platforms, largely deal with banning or labeling the deepfakes. Only one of the laws will take effect in time to affect the 2024 presidential election, but the trio could offer a road map for regulators across the country who are attempting to slow the spread of the manipulative content powered by artificial intelligence.The laws are expected to face legal challenges from social media companies or groups focusing on free speech rights.Deepfakes use A.I. tools to create lifelike images, videos or audio clips resembling actual people. Though the technology has been used to create jokes and artwork, it has also been widely adopted to supercharge scams, create non-consensual pornography and disseminate political misinformation.Elon Musk, the owner of X, has posted a deepfake to his account this year that would have run afoul of the new laws, experts said. In one video viewed millions of times, Mr. Musk posted fake audio of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, calling herself the “ultimate diversity hire.”Election-Related ‘Deepfake’ LawsSeveral states have adopted or seem poised to adopt laws regulating “deepfakes” around elections. More

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      F.D.I.C. Says Banks Need to Keep a Record of Their Fintech Customers

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      Banks holding customer funds for money management apps should keep track of customers’ identities and balances, the agency says.When a banking software company collapsed this spring, thousands of people keeping cash in online money management apps found themselves cut off from their own money for months. On Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new rules designed to prevent that from happening again.Customers often choose to put money they would otherwise hold in a bank checking account into an online app. Some apps offer higher interest rates on deposits than traditional banks do, while others offer customers new saving and investing plans or small loans ahead of their paydays.But money that customers send to online financial companies almost always ends up in a brick-and-mortar bank — and sometimes it is pooled into a single account. Customers often do not know which bank has their money.Banks are under no obligation to keep track of the identity of fintech customers. The federal bank regulator’s proposal would require the banks to pay more attention.Traditional banks holding funds for fintech customers would have to know each person’s identity and keep daily tabs on their balances. They would have to make sure that, no matter what happened to the other companies in the chain linking customers to their funds, the banks had a record of those funds and could share their identities and balances with regulators.This change would also help if a bank at the end of one of those long chains of software companies were to fail, the regulators said on Tuesday. At present, it is hard for the F.D.I.C. to determine whose money is covered by the $250,000 deposit insurance guarantee.Senior F.D.I.C. officials said in a briefing held for journalists on Tuesday that while they had been contemplating such rules for years, the collapse this spring of Synapse Financial Technologies, which operated banking software for online lenders, provided a good real-world example of how customers could be harmed.When Synapse filed for bankruptcy and shut down its services, it said it had only $2 million in cash on hand. But customers who had funds at the online lenders Synapse supported were collectively cut off from $300 million of their own money. The F.D.I.C. said it had received more than 1,000 customer complaints related to Synapse since May.The banks that take deposits from fintech customers are often small institutions trying to grow. Their managers could complain about having to meet new record-keeping requirements. Regulators said on Tuesday that any new requirements would apply narrowly to banks taking the kinds of deposits that could get lost in a chain of software companies.There are other methods smaller banks use to swap deposits and increase their customers’ deposit insurance coverage that would not be affected by the new proposal, the regulators said.The proposal made Tuesday was the first step toward putting the new rules in place. Regulators now want banks and other members of the public to provide feedback to help shape it. More

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      The Sunday Read: ‘The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down’

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      Tanya Pérez and Diane Wong and Listen and follow ‘The Daily’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioIf Próspera were a normal town, Jorge Colindres, a freshly cologned and shaven lawyer, would be considered its mayor. His title here is “technical secretary.” Looking out over a clearing in the trees in February, he pointed to the small office complex where he works collecting taxes and managing public finances for the city’s 2,000 or so physical residents and e-residents, many of whom have paid a fee for the option of living in Próspera, on the Honduran island of Roatán, or remotely incorporating a business there.Nearby is a manufacturing plant that is slated to build modular houses along the coast. About a mile in the other direction are some of the city’s businesses: a Bitcoin cafe and education center, a genetics clinic, a scuba shop. A delivery service for food and medical supplies will deploy its drones from this rooftop.Próspera was built in a semiautonomous jurisdiction known as a ZEDE (a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development). It is a private, for-profit city, with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. Now, the Honduran government wants it gone.There are a lot of ways to listen to ‘The Daily.’ Here’s how.We want to hear from you. Tune in, and tell us what you think. Email us at thedaily@nytimes.com. Follow Michael Barbaro on X: @mikiebarb. And if you’re interested in advertising with The Daily, write to us at thedaily-ads@nytimes.com.Additional production for The Sunday Read was contributed by Isabella Anderson, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Elena Hecht, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Frannie Carr Toth and Krish Seenivasan. More