By KELVIN CHAN

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators have accepted Microsoft’s proposed changes to Teams, resolving a long-running antitrust investigation that targeted the company’s messaging and videoconferencing app.

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The European Commission said in a statement Friday that Microsoft’s final commitments to unbundle Teams from its Office software suite, including further tweaks following a market test in May and June, are enough to satisfy competition concerns.

The legally binding commitments will remain in force for up to 10 years and allow the company to avoid a potentially hefty fine.

“We appreciate the dialogue with the Commission that led to this agreement, and we turn now to implementing these new obligations promptly and fully,” Microsoft’s vice president of European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, said in a statement.

The Commission, acting on a complaint filed by Slack Technologies, accused Microsoft of “possibly abusive” practices after an investigation, saying that it was tying the Teams app to its widely used Office business software suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook.

Slack, now owned by Salesforce, makes popular workplace messaging software. Alfaview, a German maker of videoconferencing software, also filed a separate complaint.

Microsoft responded by proposing to make its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software packages available at a discount without Teams, and to let customers switch to packages without Teams. The company also promised to make it easier for rival software to work with Teams and for users to move their data to competing products.

Salesforce President Sabastian Niles said the final decision sends a “clear message” that Microsoft’s ”anticompetitive” bundling of Teams has “harmed businesses, denied customers fair choice, and resulted in many years of lost competition.”

Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for competition affairs, said the announcement “opens up competition in this crucial market.”

The announcement comes a week after the Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust authority, fined Google nearly 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) because its ad-tech business breached competition rules, prompting President Donald Trump to threaten retaliation.

By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed doing away with a program that has required large, mostly industrial polluters to report their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions to the government.

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The program requires refineries, power plants, oil wells and landfills to report their emissions without risk of penalty as officials seek to identify high-polluting facilities and develop policies to lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Experts say the reporting held the companies publicly accountable for their emissions.

Since the program began in 2009, U.S. industry has collectively reported a 20% drop in carbon emissions, mostly driven by the closure of coal-fired power plants.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “burdensome” and unhelpful to improving human health and the environment.

Removing the rule would save American businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs over 10 years while maintaining the agency’s statutory obligations under the Clean Air Act, Zeldin said. If finalized, the proposal would remove reporting obligations for most large industrial facilities in the United States, as well as fuel and industrial gas suppliers and carbon dioxide injection sites.

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” Zeldin said in a statement.

“It costs American businesses and manufacturing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of living, jeopardizing our nation’s prosperity and hurting American communities,” he said. “With this proposal, we show once again that fulfilling EPA’s statutory obligations and Powering the Great American Comeback is not a binary choice.”

But experts say dropping the requirement — as Zeldin promised in March when he unleashed what he called the greatest day of deregulation in U.S. history — risks a big increase in emissions, since companies would no longer be publicly accountable for what they discharge into the air. And they say losing the data — at the same time the EPA is cutting air quality monitoring elsewhere — would make it tougher to fight climate change.

Joseph Goffman, who led EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under President Joe Biden, said eliminating the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program “blinds Americans to the facts about climate pollution. Without it, policymakers, businesses and communities cannot make sound decisions about how to cut emissions and protect public health.”

FILE – The Warrick Power Plant operates, April 8, 2025, in Newburgh, Ind. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)

By hiding pollution information from the public, “Administrator Zeldin is denying Americans the ability to see the damaging results of his actions on climate pollution, air quality and public health,” Goffman said, calling the plan “yet another example of the Trump administration putting polluters before people’s health.”

David Doniger, a senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, called the proposal “a cynical effort to keep the American public in the dark, because if they don’t know who the polluters are, they can’t do anything to hold them responsible.”

Big polluters may want to keep their climate pollution secret, he added, but the public, states and local policymakers “have depended on this data” for more than 15 years. Public accountability and pushback from investors have led many companies to reduce their climate pollution even before EPA sets stricter standards, Doniger said.

But Zeldin said reducing the overall regulatory burden on U.S. industry will allow companies to “focus compliance expenditures on actual, tangible environmental benefits.”

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program covers 47 source categories and requires more than 8,000 facilities and suppliers in the U.S. to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions annually, Zeldin said.

“Following a careful review, EPA proposed that there is no requirement under (the Clean Air Act) to collect GHG emission information from businesses, nor is continuing the ongoing costly data collection useful to fulfill any of the agency’s statutory obligations,” he said.

The EPA will accept public comments on the proposal for more than six weeks after the plan is published in the Federal Register, expected in coming days.

As rookie left guard Donovan Jackson got acclimated to the NFL, it appears that consistently going up against a pair of dominant defenders this summer served him well.

Though there were many times throughout training camp that Jackson struggled in the trenches, maybe not enough was made about the fact that he was often going up against either defensive tackle Jonathan Allen or fellow defensive tackle Javon Hargrave.

If his performance against the Chicago Bears on Monday night at Soldier Field was any indication, Jackson should be able to hold his own from the onset. He garnered a 88.1 pass blocking grade, per Pro Football Focus, to go along with a 66.9 run blocking grade.

It was everything the Vikings could’ve hoped for after selecting him in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft.

“There was a lot to really build off of,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “That was really encouraging.”

The assessment from Jackson wasn’t quite as glowing.

“Not quite to the standard I need to be at,” Jackson said. “There were a lot of stuff that I need to clean up. That makes it more exciting for me in a way. I know there’s still more to improve upon.”

The showing from Jackson was even more impressive when considering that Jackson didn’t have star left tackle Christian Darrisaw by his side. Though the Bears were attacking replacement left tackle Justin Skule seemingly on every snap, Jackson continued to stand his ground.

“He played amazing,” Darrisaw said. “I’ve seen the whole progression from the spring to the summer. He’s been playing really well, so I knew that type of game was coming. The sky is the limit for him.”

It was a similar tone from right tackle Brian O’Neill as he reflected on Jackson’s ability to rise to the occasion.

“I thought he did a really good job,” O’Neill said. “He was super poised. The moment definitely wasn’t too big for him. It was about what I expected, to be honest, based on everything that I’ve seen from him so far.”

The next step for Jackson will be following it with another standout effort against the Falcons on Sunday night at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“The challenge for him will be to be able to do it again,” O’Neill said. “He’s got to keep his body healthy and have that same game over and over and over for hopefully 15 years.”

It helps that Jackson doesn’t plan on letting complacency set in at any point. That’s not in his nature.

“I’m never really satisfied with my play,” Jackson said. “Regardless of how well I play, in my eyes, I always find little things I can improve upon.”

Briefly

After listing Darrisaw (knee) as questionable last week, the Vikings have ruled him out this week. Asked for details on the decision, O’Connell emphasized that Darrisaw hasn’t had a setback in the recovery process.

Meanwhile, edge rusher Andrew Van Ginkel (concussion) and cornerback Jeff Okudah (concussion) have also been ruled, and safety Harrison Smith (illness) and linebacker Austin Keys (groin) are being listed as questionable.

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By JAVIER CÓRDOBA

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica (AP) — Authorities in Costa Rica raided for the second time a hotel where the youngest son of former New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner died during a family vacation on March 21.

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Miller Gardner was 14 when he died in his sleep, according to a statement from the New York Yankees in what initially was ruled by authorities as asphyxiation.

On April 2, the final ruling was that carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of death of the minor.

Prosecutor Kenneth Alvarez told ESPN that the raid at the Arenas Del Mar Beachfront & Rainforest Resort in Manuel Antonio beach, located in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific, was to collect additional evidence related to that autopsy.

“These proceedings seek to confirm or rule out the possibility of negligent homicide, that is, to determine whether this person’s death was caused by a breach of duty of care. For now, no one has been charged,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement released on Thursday.

The Associated Press contacted the authorities on Friday to find out the outcome of the investigation, but no additional details were provided.

The authorities conducted a raid on the same property on March 28.

“That initial inspection allowed for measurements of hazardous atmospheres and the detection of carbon monoxide in the room where the Gardner family was staying,” the Prosecutor’s Office said.

This story has been corrected to show that Miller Gardner died on March 21, not March 24.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb