Energy, Mining & Utilities

PRESIDENT Macapagal-Arroyo has offered to suspend the issuance of new mining permits to try to appease Roman Catholic bishops strongly opposed to the country's new Mining Act, a top Malacanang official said yesterday. Read More

The "conflict" or "blood" diamond problem first drew wide notice in the late 1990s, when reports highlighted that rebels in African countries were using diamonds to fund brutal campaigns. Read More

High-ranking officials from the United States as well as Iraq accuse the Danish shipping company Maersk of having taken advantage of the chaos of war in order to grab control of Iraq's oil port. Read More

KENNETH L. LAY and his second in command, Jeffrey K. Skilling, were the public faces of Enron, painting a rosy picture of strong profits and healthy businesses. But as the facts began to tumble out, in the fall of 2001, the company swiftly collapsed, taking with it the fortunes and retirement savings of thousands of employees. Read More

Indigenous protesters from northwestern Venezuela marched Friday through the streets of Caracas, which is hosting the sixth World Social Forum (WSF), to protest plans for mining coal on their land. Read More

"For the government, if they lose the Enron case, it will be seen as a symbolic failure of their rather significant campaign against white-collar crime," said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School. "It will be seen as some evidence that some cases are too complicated to be brought into the criminal justice process." Read More

For Angelique Chappell, a former administrative assistant at Enron, it all now seems like a mirage. Read More

Evo Morales was sworn in on Sunday as Bolivia's first indigenous president in a historic and emotional ceremony that set the tone for his new government, promising to move much the profits of Bolivia's natural resources to the people of Bolivia. Read More

Transnational aluminium smelters, some teaming up with Malaysian partners, are beating a path to eastern Sarawak state with an eye to surplus power from the problem-ridden Bakun Dam. Read More

Sean M. Berkowitz and a small group of government lawyers will be in the spotlight in the Jan. 30 trial of Enron's former leaders. The case is the capstone in the cleanup after an era of business misconduct that left investors billions of dollars poorer. The outcome could shape the public's -- and history's -- judgment of how effective it was. Read More