In the Nation

WASHINGTON - For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to limit the quantity of toxic metals that coal-fired power plants release into waterways.

Equipment required to reduce pollution in the air has increased harmful contaminants in water discharged by power plants, particularly heavy metals such as selenium, cadmium, mercury, and lead, the EPA said yesterday. Current regulations do nothing to control metals and are not enough to protect water quality and wildlife, it said.

The agency said the new rules would be unveiled in 2012, but EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is pushing for an earlier target date.

The announcement comes a day after three environmental groups threatened to sue the EPA for failing to update its regulations, first put in place in 1982. - AP

WASHINGTON - Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) wrote Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. yesterday asking that the Justice Department investigate ACORN, a community organization under fire for several voter-registration fraud cases.

The Senate voted Monday in favor of an amendment by Johanns to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, which Johanns says has received more than $50 million in taxpayer funds since 1994.

Hidden-camera videos released by conservative activists posing as a prostitute and a pimp showed ACORN employees in Baltimore giving advice on home-buying and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. ACORN says it has fired the employees involved. Bertha Lewis, ACORN's chief organizer, said the tapes had been doctored and violated Maryland's wiretapping laws. - AP

WICHITA, Kan. - Operation Rescue, one of the nation's highest-profile groups in the antiabortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a "major financial crisis" and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon.

The group's president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a plea e-mailed Monday night to donors.

The Wichita-based group has also been under attack from both fringe antiabortion militants and abortion-rights supporters since the May 31 shooting death of Dr. George Tiller. - AP

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland ordered a weeklong reprieve for a condemned inmate, Romell Broom, 53, after the Ohio execution team had problems yesterday finding usable veins for lethal injection. The scene was reminiscent of problems that delayed executions in 2006 and 2007 and led to changes in Ohio's lethal-injection process.

Christopher Kelly, a former fund-raiser for ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, tried to commit suicide Sept. 8 after pleading guilty to fraud charges, four days before he died of an apparent overdose, police said yesterday. Kelly, 51, became part of a federal investigation of corruption in the ousted governor's administration. He was to begin a prison term this Friday.

Massachusetts legislators could vote as early as this week on changing the state's Senate succession law so the governor can temporarily fill vacancies like the one created with the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Attorney General Martha Coakley, the most prominent Democrat to declare candidacy in the special-election campaign to fill his seat permanently, said yesterday she supported the idea.