VALLENAR, Chile (AP) — Chile’s environmental regulator blocked Barrick Gold Corp.’s $8.5 billion Pascua-Lama project on Friday and imposed its maximum fine on the world’s largest gold miner, citing “very serious” violations of its environmental permit as well as a failure by the company to accurately describe what it had done wrong.
Earlier this month the House Financial Services Committee approved six bills that would roll back pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act designed to improve regulation of the derivatives market. The most contentious of the bills, H.R. 992, would repeal most of Sec. 716 of the 2010 financial reform bill, Dodd-Frank, which requires banks to spin off their derivatives activities into separate affiliate institutions that do not have access to federal bank subsidies. Many financial reform advocates consider Sec. 716 to be Dodd-Frank’s key measure for preventing public subsidies of speculative derivatives trading.
In the wind-swept prairie called Tornado Alley, the scene is eerily familiar: Homes smashed to splinters. Trees and telephone poles snapped like twigs. Piles of bricks, overturned cars and dazed survivors sifting through rubble in search of a precious photo or heirloom. A town in ruins.
Text of President Barack Obama’s speech on the fight against terrorism at the National Defense University, as provided by the White House: