WADA had expressed its disappointment with the judge's decision last month to order evidence including bags of blood to be destroyed, depriving the agency and other sports bodies of the chance to analyse them.

The Spanish doctor at the centre of the trial, Eufemiano Fuentes, had told the court that as well as cyclists his clients included athletes in sports such as soccer, athletics, tennis and boxing.

"The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is filing a declaration to appeal to the Criminal Court in Madrid in relation with the Operation Puerto," WADA said in a brief statement on their website (www.wada-ama.org).

"Following its policy, WADA will refrain from commenting further in order to protect the integrity of the process," the statement added.

WADA's appeal joins those already filed by the Spanish prosecutor and the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI).

Other bodies including Spain's anti-doping agency (AEA) have said they will challenge the judge's ruling and have until the beginning of next month to file their appeals.

The judge's decision not to release the evidence for further investigation dented hopes that the case would unmask other athletes involved in doping and prompted widespread condemnation.

Spain hoped the trial would help dispel the impression that the nation was soft on doping and boost Madrid's bid to win the right to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

The country is pushing updated anti-doping legislation through parliament which the government says will bring Spain into line with international norms. (Reporting by Iain Rogers, editing by Toby Davis)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is the clock is running out for U.S. prosecutors to make a case against billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors after years of investigation.

There is a legal prohibition against filing criminal charges based on an instance of insider trading more than five years old, and two of the sets of trades viewed by legal analysts as having the best chances of leading prosecutors to Cohen were made five years ago, in July and August of 2008.

But continuing investigations into allegations of insider trading in at least two other stocks, which were first reported by Reuters in December, could extend the deadline to file charges for three more years, according to people familiar with the SAC probe.

Cohen, whom prosecutors recently subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, has never been charged with wrongdoing. A spokesman for SAC Capital declined to comment.

Based on the five-year statute of limitations on insider trading charges, probes into potentially improper trading in Weight Watchers Internationalin 2011 and InterMunein 2010 give prosecutors until 2016 to make a case.

So even if they take no action against Cohen or his firm because of improper trading in shares of Dellin August of 2008 and Elanin July of 2008, a legal cloud could continue to hang over the 56-year-old manager and his firm for some time, the sources said.

But given how little is known about the investigations into trading in Weight Watchers and InterMune, it is also possible they may end-up being dead-ends, as has happened with other insider trading probes.

Peter Donald, a spokesman for the FBI declined to comment. Ellen Davis, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York, which has brought insider-trading cases against former and current SAC employees, declined to comment.

"Once the government starts looking at anything, they're going to look at everything," said C. Evan Stewart, a partner at the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder, who is not connected to the investigation. "They've got unlimited resources, which they seem committed to devoting to this to try to find something."

In the criminal complaint against former SAC portfolio manger Mathew Martoma, who was charged with trading illegally on information about Elan, a person referred to only as "Hedge Fund Owner" discusses with Martoma the quick sale of the Elan stock. Sources have confirmed to Reuters that Cohen is "Hedge Fund Owner.

Martoma, whose lawyer did not respond to a request for comment, pleaded not guilty to the charges and has resisted the government's efforts to get him to cooperate.

The statute of limitations on the Elan trades is set to run out in six weeks.

The charges against senior SAC executive Michael Steinberg for trading illegally in shares of Dell in August 2008 and Nvidiain 2009, also offers a possible prosecutorial path to Cohen. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer declined to comment.

In the Weight Watchers case, an SAC trader used various options trades to build a bet that the stock would move by a large percentage after an earnings announcement. The trades were unusual enough that Goldman Sachs , SAC's broker for the options, reported them to financial regulators, according to a source familiar with the matter. A spokesman for Goldman, which is one of SAC Capital's prime brokers and largest trading party on Wall Street, declined to comment.

No charges have been filed with regards to the Weight Watchers trades, which date back to February 2011, meaning prosecutors have until February 2016 to bring a case.

Another investigation, which Reuters has previously reported, is focusing on suspiciously timed 2010 trades in InterMune, a biotechnology company, made by former SAC employee Nikej Shah. The exact date of the trades is not known.

Shah left his position as a portfolio manager for SAC and is starting a new hedge fund, Mountain Brook Capital. He has not been charged with wrongdoing. He declined to talk to a reporter who visited him in his office in Manhattan.

The five-year statute of limitations on the InterMune trades will run out in 2015.

Another potential source of insider trading cases lies in last year's testimony in the trial of Anthony Chiasson, a former SAC employee, who left SAC to co-found his own hedge fund, Level Global. Chiasson was found guilty and sentenced in May to six- and-a-half years in prison. He is appealing the conviction.

Chiasson's source for insider tips, Spyridon Adondakis, testified that he passed inside information to former SAC analyst Jon Horvath and another SAC employee, Ron Dennis.

Horvath was fired from SAC in 2010 and pleaded guilty last year to insider trading and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Dennis, who has not been charged, also left SAC in 2010. Attempts to contact Dennis by phone and email were unsuccessful.

Adondakis is still cooperating with the government. Based on the information he has provided, cases against nearly a dozen people have been filed.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter; editing by Matthew Goldstein)

After moving between small losses and gains for most of the day, the stock market plunged in the final hour of trading. The Dow Jones industrial average lost more than 200 points, half of them in the last 15 minutes. It was the worst drop in six weeks.

Some traders said the afternoon swoon came as large investors rearranged their holdings to match changes in the widely followed MSCI indexes. Others said rapid-fire automated sell programs kicked in as the decline accelerated, exacerbating the loss.

By late Friday, the market looked like it was "feeding on itself," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott. "Why did we go from trading flat to down 200 points at the close? It suggests to me that it was driven by computer models."

The market managed to hold on to gains for the month, extending winning streaks for major indexes. The Standard & Poor's 500 index ended May with its seventh straight monthly gain, its best run since 2009, but the last two weeks have been choppy. The index has declined on five of the last seven trading days and had its first two-week decline since November.

Traders and investors have started to question whether this year's record-setting rally has run its course. Concern is building that the Federal Reserve may slow its $85 billion bond-buying program. The program has supported the stock market as investors move money out of bonds and into riskier assets. The bond purchases also hold down long-term interest rates to encourage borrowing and spending.

The market appeared to be headed for an inconclusive day of trading early Friday after both encouraging and disappointing news on the economy was reported. An unexpected decline in consumer spending in April was offset by news that a measure of U.S. consumer confidence jumped to the highest level in almost six years in May.

The late afternoon slide in stocks caught many market-watchers by surprise. Big investors may have gotten spooked at the end of the day and sold, says Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities.

"In a thin market, all you need is one or two big money managers to reassess their view and the market can go down quickly," Ricchiuto said.

MSCI, originally known as Morgan Stanley Capital International, provides a range of global stock indexes that professional investors track to measure their performance. The company reviews its indexes twice a year, adding some stocks and removing others.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.13 percent from 2.12 percent late Thursday. The yield has risen by half a percentage point since the start of the month and is the highest it's been since April 2012. That has troubled some investors since a rapid rise in rates could curtail borrowing and spending.

The yields on Treasury notes are benchmarks for setting interest rates on many kinds of loans to consumers and businesses. The higher yields are already pushing mortgage rates higher. On Thursday the mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported that average mortgage rates jumped this week to the highest level in a year.

"People are worried a rise in interest rates might derail the recovery," says Joseph Tanious, the global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.

The Dow closed down 208.96 points, or 1.4 percent, to 15,115.57.

It was the biggest loss for the index since April 15, when markets plunged after worries about an economic slowdown in China caused commodity prices to drop sharply.

The Dow managed its sixth straight month of gains.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 23.67, or 1.4 percent, to 1,630.74. The Nasdaq composite declined 35.38 points, or 1 percent, to 3,455.91.

In commodities trading, oil fell $1.64, or 1.8 percent, to $91.97 a barrel, close to its lowest in a month, after OPEC oil ministers said they would keep their output targets steady. Gold fell $19 to $1,393 an ounce, a decline of 1.3 percent.

Among stocks making big moves:

Lions Gate Entertainment rose 77 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $28.80. The company reported net income that topped Wall Street's expectations as it benefited from home video sales of the finale to its hit franchise "Twilight."

Palo Alto Networks fell $5.87, or 11 percent, to $48.52 after the network security company posted a quarterly loss and predicted lower profit and revenue in the current quarter than analysts were expecting.

OmniVision Technologies, a maker of mobile camera sensors, jumped $2.98, or 19 percent, to $18.47. The company reported that its net income doubled in its fourth fiscal quarter as revenue rose sharply.

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AP Business Writers Matt Craft and Bernard Condon contributed to this report

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"Our industry has an important role to play in helping people lead healthy lives and our actions are having a positive impact," said Indra Nooyi, HWCF Chair, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. "We see continued opportunities to give consumers the choices they're looking for and to work collaboratively with the public and non-profit sectors on initiatives that enable continued progress."

"Our efforts to help Americans lead healthy lives are paying off," said Indra Nooyi, HWCF Chair, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. "Consumers told us what they wanted and we took action."

The progress report showcased that the HWCF calorie reduction in the marketplace since our baseline year of 2007 was achieved by giving new choices and continued great taste for the consumer.

"We continue to thank the First Lady for her leadership in calling for national action to end childhood obesity," said Lisa Gable, president of the HWCF. "In 2010 we pledged that we would reduce calories in the marketplace and we have delivered on that promise."

Gable was joined at today's announcement at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) by former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and BPC Senior Fellow Dan Glickman; Tracy Orleans, senior scientist at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); and representatives from the White House.

"Today we are seeing an example of what can happen when the public and private sectors join forces you get results," said Glickman. "The leading food and beverage companies in the country came together to form this first-of-its kind foundation because they knew they could make a difference, and they have."

Additionally, HWCF has reported annually to the PHA on the progress that has been made toward this pledge.

RWJF, the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, is supporting a rigorous, independent evaluation to determine whether HWCF has met its calorie-reduction goal. That evaluation will be released in the fall. Follow-up studies supported by RWJF also will evaluate subsequent effects on children's diets.

"Today's report from the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF) offers further indication that consumer demand is shifting toward healthier choices. We are pleased that HWCF's participating companies are a key part of this transformation," said Larry Soler, president and CEO of the PHA. "HWCF was one of the first organizations to sign on with PHA, which is committed to working with the private sector to help end the childhood obesity crisis within a generation. Our partners know that a commitment made is a commitment kept it's part of what makes them leaders and worthy of praise. So while HWCF's numbers look positive, we look forward to the findings of the independent evaluation funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is available in the fall."

The HWCF participating[1] companies include:

Bumble Bee Foods, LLCCampbell Soup CompanyConAgra FoodsGeneral Mills, Inc.Kellogg CompanyKraft Foods, Inc.Mars, IncorporatedMcCormick & Company, Inc.Nestle USAPepsiCoPost Foods/Ralston Foods, LLCSara Lee CorporationThe Coca-Cola CompanyThe Hershey CompanyThe J.M. Smucker CompanyUnilever

About Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation

The , a CEO-led organization, is a national, multi-year effort designed to help reduce obesityespecially childhood obesityby 2015. It's a first-of-its kind coalition that brings together more than 230 retailers, food and beverage manufacturers, restaurants, sporting goods and insurance companies, trade associations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and professional sports organizations. The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF) promotes ways to help people achieve a healthy weight through energy balancecalories in and calories out. It focuses its efforts on two critical areasfamilies and schools through their campaign.

[1] Since signing the commitment in 2010, three of the original member companies have split into separate entitiesKraft Foods is now both Kraft Foods and Mondelz International, Sara Lee Corporation is now D.E. Master Blenders and Hillshire Brands Company and Ralston Foods/Post Food, LLC (Ralcorp Holdings, Inc.) is now Ralston Foods Brand (Ralcorp Holdings Inc.) and Post Foods, LLC. Each of these entities continues to work toward the broader calorie commitment.

The apparent mass abduction purportedly happened sometime between 10 a.m. and noon on Sunday morning just off the Paseo de la Reforma, the city's main boulevard, near the Angel of Independence monument and only about 1 blocks from the U.S. Embassy.

The incident was the second recent high-publicity blemish for the city's largely unregulated entertainment scene, coming 20 days after the grandson of American civil rights activist Malcolm X was beaten to death at another tough bar in the downtown area.

Calling for authorities to find their loved ones, family members marched Thursday morning from the Interior Department building to the Zocalo, the city's main square. Later they protested outside the bar, which bears a sign that reads Bicentenario Restaurante-Bar, and demanded to see the bar's surveillance video.

"How could so many people have disappeared, just like that, in broad daylight?" said Josefina Garcia, mother of Said Sanchez Garcia, 19, her only son. "The police say they don't have them, so what, the earth just opened up and swallowed them?"

She said her son wasn't involved in any criminal activity, and worked at a market stall selling beauty products.

City prosecutors said they had received 11 missing-person reports, but Garcia said residents of the tough downtown neighborhood of Tepito where the victims live thought as many as 15 or 16 people could have been abducted.

The known missing include six men, most in their 20s, a 16-year-old boy and four young women.

While no clear motives had been revealed in the attack, residents of Tepito said there has been a wave of abductions of neighborhood young people in recent months that could be related to organized crime activities. Tepito is the center of black market activities in the city, where guns, drugs, stolen goods and contraband are widely sold.

Mass abductions have been rare in Mexico City, but are common in parts of the country where drug cartels operate and are fighting with rival gangs over territory.

Prosecutors slapped closure stickers on the front doors of the Mexico City bar Thursday, with inscriptions saying the city's anti-kidnapping unit was investigating abductions at the site.

Late Thursday night, dozens of members of a special police intervention unit, many carrying automatic weapons and wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests, blocked off the street in front of the bar and searched inside. Officers would not comment on what they were looking for.

Isabel Fonseca, whose brother is among those missing, said a man who escaped told her that masked men arrived in several white SUVs and took the group away. She said her brother, Eulogio Fonseca, is a street vendor who sells cellphone accessories.

"We want them alive," Fonseca said. "They went out to have fun; they are not criminals."

Mexico City's chief prosecutor, Rodolfo Rios, said investigators had been able to glean very little information on the disappearances.

Relatives believe the youths were at the club, which they said is called "Heaven," around midmorning Sunday, when waiters and bar employees herded them out to the street and armed men bundled them into waiting vehicles and spirited them away.

Rios said police had not located any employees of the bar and no other witnesses had presented themselves.

"We aren't sure what exactly occurred," he said. "No witness has come forward to say anything about any armed gang."

The bar is down a side street from two high-rise office buildings that look out on Reforma and sits across the narrow road from beauty salons and a sushi restaurant.

Guillermo Bustamante, owner of one the beauty parlors, said the street bustles every Saturday morning with people coming and going from the bar.

"Every time we arrived on Saturdays, we would see weird people coming out of that bar," Bustamante said. "There would be many Hummers parked outside and men walking out with a woman on each arm."

Bars of questionable character are often allowed to continue operating, even though drugs may be sold inside and the businesses frequently violate rules governing closing times, parking and serving alcohol to minors.

Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of the late Malcolm X, died May 9 in a fight that erupted after he and a friend were presented with a $1,200 bill at a seedy bar near Plaza Garibaldi, a gathering place for mariachi bands in a rough neighborhood in the downtown area. Two waiters at the bar have been arrested in connection with Shabazz's death.

In June 2008, police raided another Mexico City bar to investigate drug and alcohol sales to minors. A stampede ensued as panicked youths rushed for the exits and police tried to stop them. A dozen young people died in the stampede.

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Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report.

House Speaker Michael Madigan adjourned his chamber's spring session, while a spokeswoman for Senate President John Cullerton said the upper chamber would not take any further action on either of two major pension reform bills before a midnight deadline.

But both leaders expressed a willingness to negotiate a fix to the state's nearly $100 billion unfunded pension liability.

"I don't think we should take our lack of success today as a reason to give up," Madigan said in his end-of-session address to the House. He referred to "huge problems" that remain without mentioning pensions by name.

In a statement, Cullerton said his chamber had passed several pension bills that never were called for a vote in the House.

"I am committed to staying at the table until a comprehensive solution is passed into law," Cullerton said.

Meanwhile, major credit rating agencies are closely following the path of pension reform in Illinois, which has the lowest credit ratings among states.

On Friday, Ted Hampton, a Moody's Investors Service analyst, reiterated that agency's warning that Illinois' A2 rating could be cut if pension reform stays elusive.

In the last action on major pension reform, the Senate late on Thursday soundly defeated a comprehensive bill passed by the House earlier in May.

Madigan and Cullerton are at odds over how to approach reform. Madigan's bill opts for unilateral cuts in retirement benefits for current and retired state workers, teachers, legislators, and college and university employees to reap the maximum cost savings.

Cullerton is pushing a bill passed by his chamber that would generally allow workers to retain access to state-sponsored healthcare in retirement if they opt for pension concessions.

(Reporting by Joanne von Alroth, additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago; Editing by Chris Reese and Lisa Shumaker)

(Reuters) - Un nuevo estudio demuestra que el dolor de rodilla disminuye hasta un ao despus de una "proloterapia", una serie de aplicaciones de agua azucarada en el sitio afectado.

Estudios previos haban sugerido que la terapia tena muchas fallas, pero el nuevo estudio seria ms confiable, segn dijo el doctor John D. Loeser, especialista en dolor y profesor emrito de University of Washington, Seattle.

"Es un ensayo clnico bien realizado sobre muchas de las cuestiones que haba opacado informes previos sobre la proloterapia", indic Loeser, que no particip del estudio, pero antes haba criticado el tratamiento.

La osteoartritis de rodilla es comn, en especial en los mayores de 65, y ninguna terapia haba mostrado beneficios. Cada sesin de proloterapia cuesta entre 200 y 1.000 dlares, y Medicare no la cubre. Se realizan varias sesiones, en las que se aplican pequeas dosis de una solucin azucarada en mltiples puntos (ligamentos y tendones) de la rodilla donde hay dolor. El objetivo es que una irritacin menor estimule al organismo para reparar los daos.

"La idea es estimular una reaccin curativa localizada", dijo el autor principal, doctor David Rabago, profesor asistente de University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Con su equipo organiz a 90 personas, de entre 40 y 76 aos, con osteoartritis de rodilla en tres grupos: uno recibi proloterapia, otro recibi inyecciones de solucin salina (placebo) y el tercero realiz ejercicios en el hogar.

Los dos primeros grupos recibieron las inyecciones tres veces por semana o ms, si as lo pedan, durante 17 semanas. El seguimiento dur un ao.

La funcionalidad de la rodilla mejor 16 puntos en una escala de gravedad de la osteoartritis con el agua azucarada, versus cinco puntos con el placebo y siete puntos con el ejercicio.

El grupo tratado con proloterapia percibi al ao una disminucin de la frecuencia y la gravedad del dolor, lo que se tradujo en una mejora de 14 puntos en la misma escala de evaluacin, comparado con una mejora de siete y nueve puntos, respectivamente, en el grupo tratado con placebo y ejercicio. El equipo dijo que el estudio es pequeo, pero no demasiado y que incluy el tipo de pacientes adecuado: las vctimas promedio de osteoartritis de rodilla.

"Lo mejor que podemos hacer para 'controlar' los efectos (detectados en estudios previos) es evaluar un producto versus una terapia similar y variar un solo elemento, como hicimos en este estudio", recomend Rabago.

Pero dado que los grupos tratados con placebo y ejercicio obtuvieron resultados similares, Loeser aclar que el beneficio no podra atribuirse a un efecto placebo.

"Este estudio proporciona resultados ms favorables que otros estudios controlados sobre la proloterapia en otras regiones", coment, pero advirti que an quedan muchas respuestas pendientes antes de generalizar el uso de esta terapia.

FUENTE: Annals of Family Medicine, online 1 de mayo del 2013.

One might assume that Oberlin is merely more generous in allotting grants to its students. While 82 percent receive some form of grant or scholarship, which does need to be paid back, the $34,797 figure of attendance is calculated after subtracting those grants from the total cost of tuition, lodging, fees, books, and other expenses.

Every school that participates in the federal loan program reports figures like these to the Department of Education. The following interactive plots every school with at least 1,000 undergraduates by these two values: net cost of attendance after grants on the x axis and the percentage of students with loans on the y axis.

After a four-month investigation, the Environmental Superintendent said all other construction work on Pascua-Lama must stop until Barrick builds the systems it promised to put in place beforehand for containing contaminated water.

The fines add up to 8 billion pesos about $16 million the highest possible under Chilean law.

Chile's regulator noted that while Barrick itself reported failures, a separate and intensive investigation already begun by the agency's own inspectors found that the company wasn't telling the full truth.

"We found that the acts described weren't correct, truthful or provable. And there were other failures of Pascua Lama's environmental permit as well," said the superintendent, Juan Carlos Monckeberg. "This the first sanction taken by this superintendency and it is the biggest one taken in the environmental history of this country."

Barrick said it accepts all aspects of the resolution.

"We deeply regret that Pascua Lama has suffered inconveniences in its construction and we'll do our best efforts to straighten the road ahead and meet the conditions stipulated in the approved project," said Eduardo Flores Zelaya, president of Barrick South America and Senior Vice President of Pascua Lama. "We respect the institutions of the countries where we operate therefore we will act according to the resolution."

Argentine authorities have insisted that Lama, their side of the bi-national project, will proceed with or without Chile, taking advantage of the infrastructure already in place for its Veladero mine, which is already producing ore just downhill.

But most of Pascua-Lama's 18 million ounces of gold and 676 million ounces of silver are in Chile, where Barrick warned shareholders earlier this year that it might abandon the project if production can't begin in 2013.

Monckeberg said the sanctions, the first since his agency gained enforcement power in December, were based on a thorough investigation by agency inspectors as well as government experts in mining, farming, and water

Pascua Lama was temporarily halted last month by an appeals court in the northern city of Copiapo after members of the Diaguita indigenous community complained that the project threatens their water supply and pollutes glaciers.

"This is what we have always been hoping for," said Maglene Campillay, a Diaguita Indian leader whose community downstream from the mine alleges that its river has been contaminated by the construction work. "Finally the state is showing its power. They never investigated this and now they're doing their job."

The regulator found 23 violations, and Barrick accepted all but one of them in a detailed response on April 29.

But the sanctions don't mean the end of Pascua-Lama far from it.

In its response, Barrick asked for permission to make $30 million in urgent repairs, saying "they turn out to be fundamental to keeping the first ice melts of this year from causing events that trigger effects or environmental contingencies." The environmental agency approved the remedial work on Friday, starting with temporary measures to contain any runoff while Barrick builds more permanent structures.

The violations include building some earthworks without prior approval, while failing to build others that were supposed to be in place before other construction began, so that rainfall wouldn't increase the runoff from mineral acids naturally released when rocks are broken. Instead, Barrick's bulldozers went ahead and moved mountaintops in preparation for a projected 25 years of gold and silver production.

The violations also include an "unjustified discharge coming from the acid treatment plant to the Estrecho river" that was "neither declared nor monitored," Barrick acknowledged.

Still, the Diaguita Indians, who live in small towns along rivers that flow down from the mine through an otherwise completely barren Atacama Desert, were feeling powerful on Friday.

"Even though we seem so small, we could beat Barrick, which is a giant," said Osvaldina Guzman Villegas, who lives in Diaguita community of Chipasse Tamaricunga. "And with the help of our ancestors, we're going to beat them."

President Sebastian Pinera's spokeswoman, Cecilia Perez, said the government is "very much in agreement" with the sanctions.

"What should happen is that until they remedy all the requirements of the environmental permit, fix all the issues that the Environmental Superintendent is asking for, and finally until this is decided by the Supreme Court, they cannot keep operating," she said.

The sanctions also were praised by independent mining experts, who noted that the containment structures Barrick failed to build were fundamental to obtaining environmental approval.

"Twenty years ago, maybe nobody would have required these fixes, and perhaps wouldn't even have required the canal to divert rainwater, but today it's necessary, more than anything because there's agriculture down below," said Gustavo Lagos, mining professor at Santiago's Universidad Catolica.

The strong sanctions show the mining industry that Chile's independent environmental regulator intends to use its new enforcement powers, he said: "This sets a tough example and I think it should show other companies, not just in mining but in all industries, that this is becoming serious."

How the ruling might affect the bottom lines of many other international mining companies in Chile also wasn't immediately clear, but Lagos said it sends a good message.

"It shouldn't be forgotten that new environmental institutions were required of Chile as a condition for its entry into the OECD," he said, referring to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which represents the world's leading economies. "It's a good signal to the world that in Chile there are controls, that there's a new institutionality that is working."

Environmentalists say regulators have been much less demanding on the Argentina side of the project, where mining is regulated at the provincial level. Barrick and other pro-mining groups obtained injunctions to block enforcement of a national glacier protection law passed in 2010 in response to the Pascua-Lama project.

"In Argentina, despite public statements that the house is in order, we are beginning to reveal serious environmental flaws regarding dozens and dozens of glaciers that have been unaccounted for in Barrick's environmental impact studies. The Glacier Law further complicates Pascua-Lama," said Jorge Daniel Taillant, director of the Center for Human Rights and the Environment, which tracks environmental compliance by mining companies.

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Associated Press Writers Michael Warren in Buenos Aires and Eva Vergara in Santiago contributed to this report.

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Luis Andres Henao on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LuisAndresHenao