Legislation to open up the credit rating industry to more competition has been proposed in a bill introduced by Representative Michael Fitzpatrick.

The legislation would let any rating agency that meets certain standards register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It would also allow the SEC to inspect rating agencies and regulate how they handle conflict of interest situations and non-public information.

Passage of the bill through Congress would not only open up the industry for competition, but it would also greatly reduce the power of such agencies as S&P and Moody’s.

Those two agencies currently hold 80 percent of the market between them. In introducing the legislation, Mr. Fitzpatrick criticized these two agencies for failing to give adequate warning of the disasters at Enron and WorldCom.

Under the current system, the SEC designates select agencies as “nationally recognized statistical rating organizations,” and only credit ratings generated by those agencies are legally valid in the US.

If Abbot Laboratories will not cut the price of one of its AIDS drugs, Brazil has said that it will break the company’s patent on the drug and begin manufacturing the drug itself.

Brazil is in talks with Abbot to try to convince the drug maker to cut the price of Kaltera, an anti-retroviral drug, by 42 percent. Abbot’s current price for the drug is $1.17 per pill. Brazil says that a state-owned lab could sell the drug for 68 cents per pill.

Humberto Costa, Brazil’s health minister, said that if his country does break Abbot’s patent on Kaltera, it will do so only because it is in the best interest of the public.

The World Trade Organization permits nations to break patents in this way if certain circumstances of national emergency exist, but critics of Brazil’s intentions say that such conditions do not exist in this case because Brazil is spending less to treat AIDS now than was the case five years ago.

Abbot Laboratories said that if Brazil makes good on its threat, it could have a negative impact on research into and development of new drugs for all diseases. An official of a US drug industry lobby, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, called Brazil’s threat “troubling.”

The Brazilian government is also currently in discussions with Merck and Gilead Sciences, two other US drug manufacturers, concerning the prices of their AIDS drugs, and Mr. Costa said that Brazil is ready to break their patents as well if they will not lower their prices.

It has been revealed that AMC Entertainment and Loews Cineplex Entertainment will merge into the second-largest chain of movie theaters in the United States.

Terms of the deal, which comes at a time when US movie attendance is at its lowest in nearly 10 years, were not made public, but when each company was purchased by separate groups of private equity firms in 2004, AMC cost JP Morgan Partners and Apollo Management $1.67 and Bain Capital, Carlyle, and Spectrum Equity Investors paid $1.46 billion for Loews.

AMC and Loews were already talking about a merger at the time they were purchased last year. The merger is expected to give the new company, which will be run by the current AMC chief executive, a better position in negotiating exhibitor’s rights with Hollywood studios.

It is also expected to bring cost cuts at a time when US movie ticket sales are down 11 percent from last year since the summer movie season began on May 6.

The group that owns AMC will control 60 percent of the new company, and the Loews group will control the remaining 40 percent, but once the deal is closed and regulators approve it, the company will likely be taken public next year.

Legislation has been introduced in the United States that would require aircraft capable of carrying over 800 passengers to have the technology to combat weapons such as Stinger missiles.

If passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, it would mean that the A380, currently under development by European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, would have to have such technology installed or the planes could not fly in the US.

The bill does not specifically mention the A380, but that aircraft is the only one currently being developed that could carry that many people. Representative John Mica, the Republican chairman of the House aviation committee who introduced the bill, has denied that his legislation is aimed at Airbus.

The introduction of the bill, however, comes at a time when the US and the European Union have a dispute before the World Trade Organization that concerns government subsidies paid to Airbus and Boeing, its US rival. An Airbus official called the legislation “silly” and dismissed the legislation as an attempt to give Boeing an advantage in the marketplace.

In the US the bill is opposed by the Air Transport Association, which represents US airlines, as an attempt to mandate aircraft technology through legislation.

A US company with the same name as an Indian airline scheduled to begin flights to the US on June 23 has alleged that the Indian company is tied to al-Qaeda.

Jet Airways of India, based in Mumbai, currently has a 43 percent share of the domestic market in India and in it’s last phase of global expansion, has been accused of ties to al-Qaeda by Jet Airways of Maryland in the US in a complaint filed with the US department of transportation.

In its complaint, the US company alleges that the Indian company has ties to Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian gangster, and through him to al-Qaeda, and that allowing the Indian company to operate in the US would give al-Qaeda access to the US to carry out its terrorist activities.

Jet Airways of India says that the US company does no business but merely has rented a suite of offices, and that the real issue is over the similar trade-name of the two companies. The Indian company has filed a rebuttal to the charges with the department of transportation, and they say they hope to meet their launch date despite the claim from the US company.