October 4, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This final rule makes inseason adjustments to commercial fishery management measures for several groundfish species taken in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. These actions, which are authorized by the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (FMP), are intended to allow fisheries to access more abundant groundfish stocks while protecting overfished and depleted stocks and to prevent exceeding 2010 optimum yields.

The Office seeks comment on whether a cable operator may receive refunds in situations where it has failed to pay for the carriage of distant signals on a system-wide basis under the Copyright Act, before it was amended to allow a cable system to calculate its royalty fees on a community-by-community basis.

The Coast Guard is establishing a Regulated Navigation Area (RNA) in Boston Harbor, Reserved Channel, the Boston Marine Industrial Park and a portion of the Boston Inner Harbor shipping channel, Boston, Massachusetts, for the offload of six cranes from the barge CHICAGO BRIDGE to Conley Terminal in South Boston. This rule is intended to control entry to the Reserved Channel, establish operating conditions for those vessels allowed entry into the Reserved Channel and control the speed of all vessels transiting within the RNA. The RNA is necessary to protect participants and vessels from the hazards associated with the offload of these cranes.

The OCC, Board, FDIC, and OTS (collectively, ``the Agencies'') are issuing this joint final rule, which revises our rules implementing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The rule implements the statutory requirement that the Agencies consider low-cost education loans provided by the financial institution to low-income borrowers as a factor when assessing an institution's record of meeting community credit needs. The final rule also incorporates the statutory provision that allows the Agencies to consider capital investment, loan participation, and other ventures undertaken by nonminority-owned and nonwomen-owned financial institutions in cooperation with minority- and women-owned financial institutions and low-income credit unions as a factor when assessing an institution's CRA record.

The Coast Guard is revising the operating schedule for the U.S. Highway 21, Sea Island Parkway Bridge at mile marker 536 over the Beaufort River (Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway). This bridge is also known as the Lady's Island Bridge. Due to ongoing construction on the McTeer Bridge, which is across the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway at mile 539.0 in Port Royal, South Carolina, vehicle traffic is currently being rerouted from the McTeer Bridge to the Lady's Island Bridge. This rerouting has resulted in increased vehicle traffic congestion on the Lady's Island Bridge. As a result of the increased vehicle traffic congestion, Beaufort County has requested a revision to the federal regulation setting forth the Lady's Island Bridge operating schedule. Such a revision will alleviate excessive vehicle congestion on the Lady's Island Bridge while permitting sufficient access for maritime passage underneath the bridge.

In this document, the Commission, via the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (Bureau), waives in part the requirement that video programming distributors (VPDs) place contact information for the pursuit of immediate closed captioning concerns and the filing of closed captioning complaints in telephone directories. Some VPDs do not use telephone directories to communicate with the public, and therefore the Bureau waives the rule in such situations, so long as the VPD makes the contact information available on its Web site or on billing statements. The waiver thus balances the goal of ensuring that consumers are readily able to locate VPD contact information, with preventing unduly burdensome compliance with the telephone directories provisions for VPDs that do not use telephone directories to communicate with the public.