American Home Mortgage, based in Melville, N.Y., and once the nation's 10th largest mortgage lender, said it fell victim to "extraordinary disruptions" that effectively cut off the funding it needed to make new loans. Falling home prices and a spike in payment defaults scared investors away from mortgage debt, including bonds and other securities backed by home loans.

Houston-based Aegis Mortgage Corp. said it would not accept any more applications and said it could not meet all of its existing funding obligations. Cleveland-based National City Corp. also stopped taking applications for new loans and lines of credit in its wholesale home equity unit.

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AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Chrysler got a taste of its new owner's swift and decisive style Monday as its chief executive was demoted and the former head of Home Depot was tapped to lead the automaker through a major restructuring.

Bob Nardelli, who left The Home Depot Inc. in January after a shareholder rebellion over his outsized pay, was named chairman and chief executive of Chrysler LLC, replacing Tom LaSorda, who is taking the No. 2 slot. The changes came just three days after the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP acquired a majority stake in Chrysler.

LaSorda said Nardelli is a strong manager who has helped companies grow and he is happy to be working with him.

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NEW YORK — The Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking into whether Fisher-Price let the agency know as quickly as it should have about lead paint found in 1.5 million Chinese-made toys that were recalled worldwide last week.

Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the commission, told The Associated Press on Monday that it was conducting "an active and open" investigation into the timing of Fisher-Price's disclosure. He declined to provide deta###e company's record in timely reporting of defects is checkered: Fisher-Price was fined $975,000 in March for not notifying authorities quickly enough about a choking hazard in a toy from its popular Little People product line. In 2001, it paid $1.1 million for a similar infraction regarding safety defects in its Power Wheels toy vehicles.

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CHICAGO — McDonald's Corp. said Monday it agreed to sell its meat-and-potatoes Boston Market restaurant chain to private equity firm Sun Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum.

Richard Hurwitz, a spokesman for Boca Raton, Fla.-based Sun Capital, confirmed the agreement but declined to make further comment. McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker said the deal is expected to close in several weeks. He would not discuss details of the sale.

The transaction was first announced in a regulatory filing made by the world's largest restaurant company on Monday. In that filing, McDonald's said it had signed a definitive agreement to sell Golden, Colo.-based Boston Market in "early August."

The news of a sale came seven months after McDonald's acknowledged it was studying strategic options for the chain.

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DETROIT — Delphi Corp. said Monday it tentatively agreed to contracts with four more unions, including one that recently warned a strike was possible if talks stalled.

With the agreements, the auto parts maker continues to make progress on its emergence from bankruptcy protection. Delphi remains in talks with one more union, the United Steelworkers, about a deal.

Delphi and the International Union of Electronic Workers-Communications Workers of America reached a four-year contract about 10 p.m. Sunday, the union said in a news release.

The Communications Workers' industrial branch said its members will hold a ratification vote by mail. The union represents about 2,000 Delphi employees.

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SAN DIEGO — The Bush administration upheld an import ban Monday on phones that contain Qualcomm Inc. chips, further threatening the introduction of new handsets.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said she was sticking to a long practice of declining to overrule the U.S. International Trade Commission unless conditions were "extraordinary." The executive branch has overruled the ITC only five times, most recently in 1987.

In June, the ITC banned imports of new, high-end phones that contain Qualcomm chips, raising doubts about the introduction of some models from carriers including Sprint Nextel Corp. and manufacturers like LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

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LOS ANGELES — Countrywide Financial Corp. said Monday it has access to $46.2 billion in cash, credit lines and other investments, a move aimed at reassuring nervous investors the nation's biggest mortgage lender can weather a market downturn.

The Calabasas-based company made the disclosure in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the same day American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., the nation's 10th largest home lender, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Last week, Countrywide issued a statement indicating it had access to "nearly $50 billion" through short-term borrowing arrangements. The lender on Monday said it has $46.2 billion in "highly reliable short-term funding liquidity."

The company did not immediately respond to a request to explain the discrepancy in the numbers.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. airline delays are at their highest level in at least 13 years, and analysts say fliers can expect more of the same for the rest of the summer.

The Department of Transportation on Monday said the industry's on-time performance in the first six months of the year was its worst since 1995, the earliest period for which the agency has comparable data. In June, nearly a third of domestic flights on major U.S. airlines were late.

Part of the explanation for the worsening delays is that demand for air travel is rising, both on major airlines and on smaller regional carriers. In addition, the government said weather-related delays in June were up 7 percent from a year ago.

Reports of mishandled baggage and complaints filed with the government also rose.

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LONDON — Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday toured an emergency response center set up to deal with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in southern England and reassured farmers the government was taking swift measures to stem the spread of the virus.

The European Union endorsed Britain's decision to ban meat and dairy exports.

Brown, who came back early from vacation to handle the government's response to the outbreak, held talks at his London office with farming union leaders and pledged to do everything possible to avoid a repeat of mass infections that devastated the economy in 2001.

He said experts were working to pinpoint the precise cause of the outbreak, but added that the strain of the disease found in two infected cattle at the farm where the outbreak occurred is the same one used at a research laboratory nearby.