Stocks start week on high note

Stocks ticked higher to begin a week packed with potentially market-moving news. The S&P 500 rose 0.3% Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.3%. Amazon and Apple will report their latest earnings results this week, along with roughly a third of the companies in the S&P 500. The Federal Reserve will also announce its latest decision on interest rates Wednesday, with virtually everyone expecting it to stand pat. The U.S. government’s monthly jobs report will hit on Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note eased to 4.61%.

All new cars to get emergency braking

Automatic emergency braking will have to come standard on all U.S. new passenger vehicles in five years. It’s a requirement that the government says will save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of injuries every year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration unveiled the new regulation on Monday and called it the most significant safety rule in the past two decades. It’s designed to prevent many rear-end and pedestrian collisions and reduce the roughly 40,000 traffic deaths per year. Although about 90% of new vehicles have the systems standard now, the new regulations set standards for vehicles to automatically stop and avoid hitting other vehicles or pedestrians, even at night. 

Bill would add air traffic controllers

Congressional negotiators have agreed to help the Federal Aviation Administration hire more air traffic controllers and safety inspectors. House and Senate leaders said Monday they have agreed on a $105 billion bill governing the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years. They say the bill will increase the number of air traffic controllers and require the FAA to use new technology designed to prevent collisions between planes on the ground. The agreement in Congress comes after several highly publicized close calls at the nation’s airports. The bill drops a House provision that would have raised the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots to 67; it will stay at 65.

Treaty would end plastic pollution

For the first time, negotiators from most of the world’s nations are discussing actual text for what is supposed to become a global treaty to end plastic pollution. Delegates and observers at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in Ottawa called it a welcome sign that talk has shifted from ideas to treaty language at this fourth of five scheduled summits. Most contentious is the idea of limiting how much plastic is manufactured globally. That idea remains in the text at this stage over the strong objections of plastic-producing countries and companies and oil and gas exporters. The Ottawa session was expected to end late early Tuesday.