Latest news with #CfA
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The Lone Star State — and Trump — versus BlackRock
The Trump administration has waded into a politically charged Texas-led legal fight to dilute US financial giants' alleged influence over corporate America. Last week, the US Justice Department and the US Federal Trade Commission filed a joint "statement of interest" siding with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 10 other Republican-led states in an antitrust case against trillion-dollar asset managers BlackRock (BLK) and its rivals State Street (STT) and Vanguard. The charge: Using their substantial stock holdings, BlackRock and its rival financial firms coordinated a "left-wing ideological" attack on US coal companies, pressuring coal producers Arch Coal, Black Hills, and Peabody to cut coal production in the South Powder River Basin and thermal coal markets, the DOJ and FTC said in the court filing. The decreased output, they said, harmed US consumers by artificially inflating energy prices. "Carbon reduction is no more a defense to the conduct alleged here than it would be to price fixing among airlines that reduced the number of carbon-emitting flights," the DOJ and FTC said in the statement supporting the states' claims. The states allege that the financial firms agreed to reduce output through commitments to carbon-reduction organizations Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and Climate Action 100+. They also say disclosures from the defendants and public statements show that they engaged directly with coal company executives in efforts to influence production levels, and they used their voting power when engagement fell short of meeting those goals. As large yet minority shareholders, the complaint claims, the defendants have more influence than their formal equity share. The actions extend beyond shareholder advocacy and passive investing by furthering their own "green energy" or net-zero goals, rather than the goals of the coal corporations, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act and Section 7 of the Clayton Act, the challengers claim. The agencies' effort to have the administration's perspective considered in the case, despite not being a party to the dispute, has drawn criticism from the defendants and others. On Wednesday, Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a nonpartisan nonprofit watchdog organization, accused the administration of targeting the money managers for political rather than law enforcement reasons. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act Request asking the agencies to disclose communications underlying their decision to weigh in on the case. CfA was co-founded in 2015 by Anne Weismann, former head counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "This case isn't about antitrust law, but about conservative opposition to even recognizing the risks of climate change," CfA executive director Michelle Kuppersmith said. "Americans deserve to know who is influencing the FTC to use its antitrust authority to attack political opponents." Meanwhile, Derek Mountford, an antitrust partner at Gunster, said the lawsuit's rhetoric also signals political motivation. But, he added, it could ultimately answer an unsettled antitrust question over how competition law applies to the actions of asset managers with significant ownership interests in competing companies. Should asset managers and index fund providers, for example, be treated differently under the law than individuals and businesses that offer products and services and control multiple firms within a singular market? "If one individual owns a significant interest in three competing companies, alarm bells start going off in your head that there could be some anticompetitive conduct going on," Mountford said. Although the BlackRock scenario isn't as cut and dried, he said, concerns have been bubbling about the competitive role that institutional shareholders are allowed to play, compared to companies and suppliers that can more directly influence market competition. "This case is going to represent a much clearer answer to that question than I think we've gotten in any other case of its kind," Mountford said. BlackRock asked for a judge to dismiss the case and accused the administration of trying to "re-write" antitrust law under an "absurd" theory that the coal companies conspired with them to reduce production outputs. "Forcing asset managers to divest from coal companies will harm their ability to access capital and invest in their businesses and employees, likely leading to higher energy prices," the company said in a statement. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink made a series of disengagements from the company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives as bipartisan concerns spread over the financial giant's power to sway US markets. Fink publicly stated in June 2023 that he would cease using the politically sensitive acronym "ESG" because it had been "weaponized" by both the ideological right and the left. In January, before President Trump took office, the financial giant cut ties with UN-backed Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative (NZAM), an environmental advocacy group that pledged net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The administration's legal filing came roughly six months after a GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee issued a report accusing the three money managers of using their financial clout to force US coal companies to "decarbonize" and reach net zero. According to the report, the money managers forced coal companies to disclose and reduce carbon emissions through negotiations, stockholder proxy resolutions, and the replacement of directors at "recalcitrant companies." Democrats have also criticized the financial firms' outsized influence over US markets, but for different reasons. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), a vocal critic of the megamanagers' influence, described the group's stock ownership in 95% of S&P 500 (^GSPC) companies an "oligarchy." Sanders, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also criticized BlackRock for declining to use its weight to intervene in a coal mining labor dispute. Gunster's Mountford said the federal government's decision to weigh in on a state AG-initiated case is unusual but becoming increasingly more prevalent. "It's not something that courts have had to wrestle with, where you have the DOJ weighing in on these types of cases," he said. "It's a pretty new phenomenon, and it's one that Trump sort of pioneered ... and continued during the Biden administration." "I think," he added, "it's here to stay." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'Super-Earths' May Be Surprisingly Common, Scientists Reveal
Earth-like exoplanets might be more common throughout the Milky Way than previously believed, astronomers report in a new study. The researchers discovered an unusual super-Earth orbiting its star at a Jupiter-like distance, an orbital range for which only the frequency of larger planets – gas giants and ice giants – has been determined so far. "We found a 'super-Earth' – meaning it's bigger than our home planet but smaller than Neptune – in a place where only planets thousands or hundreds of times more massive than Earth were found before," says lead author and astrophysicist Weicheng Zang of the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). In addition to finding this seemingly quirky world, the authors combined their discovery with a larger sample of exoplanet data from a microlensing survey. Their findings indicate this planet might not be quite so quirky after all. The researchers studied changes in apparent brightness from the planet's host star, which they incorporated into broader data from the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) survey, a trio of telescopes located in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. By examining mass ratios between a large volume of exoplanets and host stars, the researchers shed new light on our galaxy's planetary demographics. Their results suggest super-Earths are not limited to short-period orbits near their host stars, which is where they've primarily been found. These intriguing exoplanets can also exist farther away, with orbital periods more akin to those of our Solar System's gas giants. It's generally harder to detect planets orbiting farther from their stars, but based on this study, Zang and his colleagues estimate one out of every three stars in the Milky Way should host a super-Earth with a Jupiter-like orbit. "Scientists knew there were more small planets than big planets, but in this study, we were able to show that within this overall pattern, there are excesses and deficits," says co-author Andrew Gould, an astronomer at Ohio State University. "It's very interesting." The study relied on a phenomenon called gravitational microlensing, in which a massive celestial object (serving as the lens) passes between an observer and a bright background object like a star. If the lens is massive enough, it gravitational field will warp spacetime enough to cause the path of light from the background source to curve on its way to the observer, like light bending through a magnifying glass. This creates a temporary spike in the object's brightness, which may last for minutes or months, depending on the alignment. The new study focuses on a microlensing event known as OGLE-2016-BLG-0007, first detected in early 2016. Microlensing events are rare, and only a fraction of known exoplanets have been detected this way. The technique is well-suited for revealing exoplanets orbiting farther from their stars, however. The new study is the largest of its kind to date, featuring three times as many exoplanets as previous samples, including many smaller ones. While previous research has shown how stars can host a variety of exoplanet sizes in relatively tight orbits, the new study points to comparable planetary diversity – and profusion – in the outer regions of these planetary systems, too. "This measurement of the planet population from planets somewhat larger than Earth all the way to the size of Jupiter and beyond shows us that planets, and especially super-Earths, in orbits outside the Earth's orbit are abundant in the galaxy," says co-author Jennifer Yee, an observational astronomer at the CfA's Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The term 'super-Earth' typically refers to the mass of an exoplanet, not its surface conditions or habitability, about which few details are available. Still, research like this may help demystify planetary formation and distribution in the Milky Way, building upon what our own Solar System can teach us. "This result suggests that in Jupiter-like orbits, most planetary systems may not mirror our Solar System," says co-author Youn Kil Jung of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute that operates the KMTNet. These findings suggest our galaxy may teem with a wide variety of exoplanets. It also offers clues about how the different types of exoplanets form, but we still need a lot more data – which is easier said than done. "Finding a microlensing star event is hard. Finding a microlensing star with a planet is hard squared," says co-author Richard Pogge, an astronomer at Ohio State. "We have to look at hundreds of millions of stars to find even a hundred of these things." The study was published in Science. JWST Confirms Coldest Exoplanet Ever Found, Circling Its Dead Star Defunct Soviet Spacecraft Set to Crash to Earth in Fiery End to 53-Year Orbit Giant Structure in Deep Space Challenges Our Understanding of The Universe
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A Supermassive Black Hole Is on a Collision Course With The Milky Way
A Milky Way collision with a supermassive black hole might be closer than we thought. Hidden deep in the Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way on an ever-closing loop, signs of a massive invisible object clocking in at around 600,000 times the mass of the Sun have been detected. Since the Large Magellanic Cloud will one day collide with our own galaxy, that means the black hole is also destined to come crashing in. What's even more interesting is that the black hole falls into a mass regime rarely seen, under a million times the mass of the Sun. If its existence can be confirmed, it gives us a new datapoint for understanding how black holes grow from star-sized masses to chunky monsters equivalent to not just millions but billions of Suns' worth of mass. The discovery, led by astrophysicist Jiwon Jesse Han of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, and is currently available on preprint server arXiv. Black holes can actually be pretty difficult to spot. Unless they're actively slurping up matter, a process that produces blazing light as the material is super-heated by friction and gravity, they emit no radiation we can detect. That means scientists have to get tricky, and one of their tricks is to look for stars that are moving around in a way that can be explained no other way. The primary method of doing this is to measure for unusual orbits. It was by carefully studying orbits in the center of the Milky Way, for example, that astronomers confirmed the existence and mass of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way (it's about 4.3 million solar masses, if you're interested). Han and his colleagues did not look for orbits, however. Instead, their research focused on another type of stellar motion: the hypervelocity star, anomalous objects that travel much faster than the average speed of other stars in their galaxy – so fast, they could even make a break for intergalactic space. There are a number of these daredevil stars zooming through the galactic halo, destination unknown. The way these stars are accelerated led the researchers to the notion that they might lead us to hidden black holes. That acceleration kick is known as the Hills mechanism, a three-body interaction between a black hole and two stars. Eventually, the gravitational dance will lead to a member of this triplet being forcefully yeeted across space at hypervelocity. The recently retired Gaia space telescope spent several years in space mapping the objects of the Milky Way, including their positions in three-dimensional space (which is harder than you'd think), as well as their motions and velocities. Armed with Gaia data, the researchers made a new analysis of 21 hypervelocity stars in the galaxy's outer halo that are consistent with the Hills mechanism. These stars are all of the B subtype, huge and hot, with relatively short lives, which means their high-speed journeys through space have to have been relatively short too. This analysis involved tracking back the stars' velocity and motion to their point of origin, carefully ruling our other possible acceleration scenarios. They were able to confidently trace 16 stars. Seven of them originated close to Sgr A*, at the center of the Milky Way. The remaining nine stars, however, appear to have come from the Large Magellanic Cloud. And together, they suggest ejection via the Hills Mechanism by an object that weighs around 600,000 solar masses – a hidden black hole lurking therein. The Large Magellanic Cloud currently orbits the Milky Way at a distance of around 160,000 light-years. Its long, slow fall into our galaxy is not a straightforward affair, but an ongoing dance; a recent estimate puts the encounter at around 2 billion years away. Once the two galaxies are merged, the supermassive hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud – if black hole there is – will make its way to the galactic center, where it will eventually, after many more eons, merge with Sgr A* to make an even bigger black hole. Astronomers believe that this is one way that black holes can grow from relatively small sizes to even bigger ones. It would be so incredible to see that process slowly taking place, right here in our own galaxy – even if we're not going to be around to see the finale. Future research, the team hopes, will help them confirm the existence and determine the properties of their fascinating new discovery. The research, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, is available on arXiv. Astronomers Discover Nearby Alien World That May Sustain Life NASA Announces Return Date For Astronauts Trapped on ISS Record-Breaking Neutrino From Deep Space Spotted by Undersea Telescope
