A coalition of environmental and Native American groups on Monday sued the California Department of Fish and Game over permits issued to build 21,000 homes on Los Angeles County's last major tract of undeveloped land.

The coalition, which filed the suit in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleges that fish and game officials violated state environmental codes in granting permits Dec. 3 for the controversial Newhall Ranch development.

"It is appalling that the Department of Fish and Game, the trustee for all of California's wildlife, approved ecological destruction on this scale," said John Buse, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs. "Far less damaging options were available, but the department brushed them aside."

Fish and Game spokesman Andrew Hughan said he could not comment because the department has not yet seen the lawsuit, but in an earlier statement department officials said the approved plan will preserve 70 percent of the nearly 14,000-acre area as natural open space.

That space includes preserves to protect 76 percent of the rare San Fernando Valley spineflower and 93 percent of the Santa Clara River corridor.

Developers must also establish a $6 million endowment for preservation efforts.

"Hundreds of people, including biologists, botanists, hydrologists and other scientists, worked together to shape this biologically innovative project, and the end result ensures the protection of this site's unique natural resources," said Ed Pert, South Coast regional manager.

Cleanup, government fines, lawsuits, legal fees and damage claims will likely exceed the $40 billion that BP has publicly estimated, according to an Associated Press analysis. But they'll be far below the highest estimates made over the summer by legal experts and prominent Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which said costs could near $200 billion.

BP will survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history for several key reasons: it has little debt; its global businesses are forecast to generate $26 billion next year in cash flow from operations; the environmental impact of the spill isn't as bad as feared; and the government seems unlikely to ban BP from Gulf drilling. To bolster its finances, BP has cut its dividend, issued debt and sold more than $21 billion in assets.

"It could have been a lot worse," says Tyler Priest, a University of Houston petroleum historian who serves on President Obama's oil spill investigation committee. "BP is going to come back from this."

Many influential investors appear to agree. According to Thomson Reuters, 23 firms with $1 billion or more invested in the stock market, including BlackRock Investment Management, Managed Account Advisors and Rydex Security Global Investors, more than doubled their holdings of BP stock from July through September.

A California woman is under arrest as part of a federal crackdown on people working at financial research firms who illegally feed inside information to investors.

Winifred Jiau is scheduled to appear Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco.

Manhattan prosecutors say the 43-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday at her home in Fremont, Calif.

She is charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Authorities say she gave two portfolio managers at separate hedge funds information about upcoming earnings reports for Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and Nvidia Corp.

The government said she was paid more than $200,000 for early information about the two technology companies.

Alcatel-Lucent SA has agreed to pay more than $137 million to settle charges brought against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.

The SEC late Monday accused the Paris-based telecommunications company of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to foreign government officials to illicitly win business in Latin America and Asia.

Alcatel, a top supplier to U.S. and European phone companies, agreed to pay more than $45 million to settle the SEC's charges. It will pay an additional $92 million to settle criminal charges announced by the Justice Department.

A representative for Alcatel couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The SEC's complaint said Alcatel's bribes went to government officials in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan between December 2001 and June 2006.

The SEC complaint said all of the bribery payments were undocumented or improperly recorded as consulting fees by Alcatel subsidiaries and then consolidated into the company's financial statements. The complaint also says leaders of several Alcatel subsidiaries and geographical regions either knew or were severely reckless in not knowing about the misconduct.

Economists, pundits and politicians had little choice but to endorse the tax deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, because snapping back to pre-Bush tax rates would crush the economic recovery. But Washington exhibited not even the shadow of self-restraint and cut taxes far beyond what is needed or smart.

Newly emboldened Republicans demanded all the Bush tax cuts be extended. President Obama argued the country couldn't afford those for families in the highest tax brackets, but failed to apply such reasoning to temporary benefits bestowed on Democratic constituencies by his 2009 stimulus program.

Instead of compromising, with each side getting half of what it wanted, Washington feasted-everyone got everything they wanted and more. Business got its R&D tax credit and a temporary tax holiday on new investments. The wealthy got Bush-era tax rates and even lower rates through temporary elimination of income-triggered phase outs on deductions and personal exemptions. The poor and middle class got a temporary 33 percent cut in social security taxes.

Since Nancy Pelosi became speaker in 2007, government spending and the federal deficit have jumped from 19.6 percent of GDP and $161 billion to 25.1 percent and $1.5 trillion in 2011. Unfunded, increases in health care spending, the regulatory bureaucracy and fanciful experiments in industrial policy-windmills, electric cars and batteries, and the like-have bloated federal spending without credible plans to pay for it all.

Now Congress and the President compound those sins by both enacting additional "temporary" tax cuts that will be very difficult to ever let lapse. For example, thanks to Clinton and Bush tax cuts, the Social Security tax is the principal tax low- and middle-income workers pay-many pay zero or minimal personal income taxes.