On August 30, Veterans Administration (VA) Eric Shinseki announced on the White House Blog that the VA is issuing a new regulation creating presumptions that there is a service connection between exposure to Agent Orange and three diseases: Parkinson’s disease, hairy cell and other chronic B-cell leukemia, and ischemic heart disease. In the announcement, Secretary […]
On August 26, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke announced 14 proposed measures – especially focused on illegal import practices from non-market economies – that, according to the Secretary, “will strengthen trade enforcement and help keep U.S companies competitive.” The 14 measures, summarized in the release, are intended to help strengthen the administration of U.S. […]
On August 23, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), the independent fund administered by Kenneth Feinberg to handle the $20 billion being placed in escrow by BP PLC to address claims arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, began to receive claims applications at its 35 facilities across the Gulf Coast. The GCCF website contains […]
On August 20, the United Kingdom Office of Fair Trading (OFT) issued a proposed guide to its antitrust investigation procedures under the Competition Act 1988 as a consultation paper. The OFT webpage on the paper states that the guide “is intended to give interested parties the opportunity to provide views and comments on the proposed […]
On August 16, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued the Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations (IFSR) to implement subsections 104(c) and 104(d) of the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 (CISADA). According to Treasury, “CISADA requires the Secretary of the Treasury to issue regulations that prohibit, or impose strict conditions on, the […]
Two sets of recent actions by the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority (FSA) may be of interest to insurance and financial services practitioners. First, on August 17, the FSA banned five individuals for failings related to insurance fraud. The FSA also imposed one of its largest fines of £150,000 for insurance fraud on one of […]
An August 22 article in Federal Times reported on a pilot project that the Department of Transportation is running, in collaboration with the Cornell e-Rulemaking Institute, to increase public participation in the rulemaking process through electronic media. The project reportedly includes the creation of a website with the URL www.regulationroom.org, an online moderator to field […]
On August 19, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly announced their issuance of revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines that outline the principal analytical techniques, practices, and the enforcement policy of the DOJ and the FTC Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (the “Agencies”) with respect to mergers […]
On August 12, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it “is proposing two rules to ensure that businesses planning to build new, large facilities or make major expansions to existing ones will be able to obtain Clean Air Act permits that address their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In the spring of 2010, EPA finalized the […]
On August 13, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued two releases pertaining to swaps. First, the SEC and CFTC announced that their staffs “will hold a public roundtable on August 20 to discuss issues related to governance and conflicts of interest in the clearing and listing […]
On August 12th, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in Great Rivers Habitat Alliance v. FEMA, No. 09-3183, affirmed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri that the appellants had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and that the […]
On August 10, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Curency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision jointly issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) regarding alternatives to the use of credit ratings in the four agencies’ risk-based capital rules for banking organizations. A joint release […]
On August 10, the Federal Trade Commission published amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule, which prohibits certain unfair or deceptive telemarketing acts or practices. The FTC’s summary of the amendments states that they “define debt relief services, prohibit debt relief providers from collecting fees until after services have been provided, require specific disclosures of material […]
The U.S. Department of Energy announced that the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will hold an open meeting on August 25. The Commission, which was organized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, will meet from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade […]
In a little-noticed announcement on July 27, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary L. Schapiro announced that the SEC will make it easier for the public to provide comments as the SEC “sets out to make rules required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.” Under the SEC’s new process, “the […]