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bloomberg.com — The new rules being negotiated by regulators in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision would have a greater impact on the firms’ so-called trading books, which include stocks, bonds and other securities, Dugan said in an interview. Loans and other debt held until maturity in their banking books would be less affected.

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politico.com — Environmentalists went with an all-or-nothing strategy for the 111th Congress. Nothing won. Now, green groups licking their wounds after spending tens of millions of dollars to pass a cap-and-trade bill must answer serious questions about whether they are capable of playing another round of hardball.

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thehill.com — Two senior White House officials said Wednesday that the administration’s controversial moratorium on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling could end before the scheduled late November expiration.

The six-month ban imposed in the wake of the BP spill is under heavy attack from the oil industry, Republicans and Gulf Coast lawmakers from both parties.

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huffingtonpost.com — The Obama administration on Wednesday delivered an upbeat verdict on the fate of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed out of BP's blown out well in the Gulf of Mexico, saying that most of it has either been dispersed, burned off, skimmed up, directly recaptured through containment efforts, evaporated or dissolved.

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nytimes.com — The Obama administration’s latest report on the Gulf of Mexico disaster set off a war of words Wednesday among scientists, Gulf Coast residents and political pundits about what to make of the Deepwater Horizon spill and its aftermath.

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nytimes.com — The company that owned the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April had widespread safety concerns about several of its other rigs in the gulf, and a month before the disaster it commissioned a broad review of the safety culture of the company’s North American operations, according to confidential internal reports.

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thehill.com — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is open to broadening the energy package that has been delayed until after the August recess, according to a news report. Reid told the publication Greenwire on Wednesday that, “There's a chance we're going to bring a broader bill.”

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nytimes.com — Senate leaders said Wednesday that debate would most likely begin in September over whether to let the Bush income tax cuts for the rich expire at the end of this year as scheduled, setting up a new battle just weeks before the midterm elections.

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thehill.com — Senate Democrats will hold a September showdown over trillions of dollars in expiring tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush.

Senior Democrats had expected the controversial issue to be postponed until after the election, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring it up when lawmakers return from a five-week August recess.

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mcclatchydc.com — The U.S. Senate might leave town this week without finishing up what Democrats had hoped would be a significant political achievement before the August recess: passing a multibillion-dollar swath of programs to help struggling small businesses.

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