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A mega merger creates America's first coast-to-coast rail operator.

Plus, why utilities and technology companies are at odds over who should pay for the electricity costs in the unprecedented data center buildout.

Utilities have, for a long time, been increasing rates to make the investments needed to stabilize the grid at this time.

And in some places, the sheer amount of demand coming from data center specifically adds another

layer of stress. And how one of the biggest credit card deals ever could bring JPMorgan Chase and Apple

together. It's Tuesday, July 29th. I'm Alex Sosola for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition

of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

Union Pacific has agreed to acquire Norfolk Southern in a $71.5 billion deal, which would create

the first company to control coast-to-coast rail shipments,

joining 50,000 miles of railroad tracks that span from the Jersey Shore to the ports in California.

The union would create a single company controlling coast-to-coast rail shipments for the first time in U.S. history.

The deal still requires regulatory approval from the Surface Transportation Board.

Esther Fung covers transportation companies for the journal and joins me now. Esther, why did we not

have a coast-to-coast railway operator before? The reason why we don't have one single

coast-to-coast rail operator before, is largely due to regulators.

In the past, when there were mergers between major railroads, there were lots of traffic

snarls and service disruptions that occurred because some of these railroad executives

admitted that they were overconfident in their ability to combine networks that had hundreds of thousands of freight rail cars.

And the resulting service meltdown spooked shippers and made regulators very wary of approving such mergers again.

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