From the NYT:
The Environmental Protection Agency revoked the permit for one of the nation’s largest mountaintop-removal coal mining projects on Thursday, saying the mine would have done unacceptable damage to rivers, wildlife and communities in West Virginia. It was the first time the agency had rescinded a valid clean water permit for a coal mine.
Arch Coal’s proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, which would have buried miles of Appalachian streams under millions of tons of residue, has been the subject of controversy and litigation since the first application was filed more than a decade ago. Opposition intensified after the Bush administration approved the mine’s construction in 2007, issuing a permit required under the Clean Water Act.
The boldness of the E.P.A.’s action was striking at a time when the agency faces an increasingly hostile Congress and well-financed business lobbies seeking to limit its regulatory reach. Agency officials said that the coal company was welcome to resubmit a less damaging mining plan, but that law and science demanded the veto of the existing plan.
And, again, from the NYT:
The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun examining the interactions between U.S. financial firms and sovereign wealth funds and whether they may have violated bribery laws, people briefed on the matter said on Thursday.
The S.E.C. is looking into whether these institutions, including banks and private equity firms, violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in their efforts to secure investments from foreign governments’ investment funds.
The S.E.C. sent out letters to several firms recently, though the agency is only in the early stages of its inquiry, these people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. The letters asked the firms to preserve documents.
A spokesman for the S.E.C. declined to comment.
At the heart of the inquiry are the huge investments made by sovereign wealth
funds into American financial firms in recent years, many struckjust as a financial crisis began to snowball. Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch all sought capital injections from these government investment funds, raising billions of dollars in capital to shore up their balance sheets.
