Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word investigation. 3 news.

GENEVA (AP) -- The World Trade Organization has opened an investigation into whether the United States is violating international commerce rules that limit subsidies to American farmers, officials said Monday, three days after the U.S. Senate approved a new $286 billion farm bill....

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- LDK Solar Co., the Xinyu City, China, producer of multicrystalline solar wafers, the raw material for solar cells, said that the audit committee's outside directors found no material errors in the company's report of its inventory of silicon feedstock at Aug. 31. A former staffer, Charley Situ, had said that the company incorrectly reported this inventory. Situ's "allegations of an inventory discrepancy were incorrect because he had not taken into account all locations in which the company stored its silicon feedstock," the company said in a statement on Monday. "The investigation further concluded that the company is using each of its various types of silicon feedstock" to produce solar wafers, "and that a provision for obsolete or excess silicon feedstock is not required." The inquiry was conducted by the audit committee's independent counsel, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP; a Big Four accounting and consulting firm other than LDK's external auditors, and outside experts, the company said.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has begun a market abuse investigation into all the companies involved in the recent takeover battle for Resolution, the financial services group.