Agencies and Commissions November 30, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC, or Commission) has determined that, beginning January 9, 2007, it will distribute Administrative Protective Order (APO) Release documents in electronic format on either a compact disc (CD) or digital versatile disc (DVD) to parties on the APO service list for Title VII and Safeguard investigations. Parties requiring paper copies will be accommodated based on receipt of a request made to the Secretary to the Commission. The request may be made at the time the party files its application for disclosure of business proprietary information (BPI) or confidential business information (CBI) under APO. It may also be made subsequent to filing of the application at which point it will be accommodated within three (3) business days of receipt of the request. Each CD/DVD will include APO Release documents in PDF format. In addition, it will include an ASCII text file with a table of contents listing all document files included on the CD/DVD, as well as the investigation number and phase of the investigation for which the documents were submitted. Each CD/DVD will be color coded and clearly marked as containing BPI or CBI. It will also be labeled with the investigation number, phase of the investigation, and date of release. Multiple CDs or DVDs will be used when the cumulative size of all document files exceeds the amount of space available on an individual CD or DVD. The ITC is instituting this practice as a means of addressing several cost and resource issues with paper distribution, including increasing paper costs, greater storage and handling requirements, and higher postal costs for mailing the documents. In addition, feedback from the Service List community also indicated a preference for receiving APO Release documents in electronic form via CD/DVD. All obligations imposed on recipients of APO releases by Commission rules and APOs continue in force with respect to the releases made on CD and DVD.

In accordance with Section 610(b)(2) of the Millennium Challenge Act of 2003 (Pub. L. 108-199, Division D), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is publishing a summary and the complete text of the Millennium Challenge Compact between the United States of America, acting through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the Government of the Republic of Mali. Representatives of the United States Government and the Government of the Republic of Mali executed the Compact documents on November 13, 2006.

The FDIC is improving and modernizing its operational systems for deposit insurance assessments in 12 CFR Part 327 to make the deposit insurance assessment system react more quickly and more accurately to changes in institutions' risk profiles and to ameliorate several causes for complaint by insured depository institutions. Under the amendments set out in this final rule, deposit insurance assessments will be collected after each quarter endswhich will allow for consideration of more current information than under the prior rule. Ratings changes will become effective when the rating change is transmitted to the institution. Although the FDIC will retain the existing assessment base as applied in practice with only minor modifications, the computation of institutions' assessment bases will change in the following significant ways: institutions with $1 billion or more in assets will determine their assessment bases using average daily deposit balances; existing smaller institutions will have the option of using average daily deposits to determine their assessment bases; and the float deductions used to determine the assessment base will be eliminated. In addition, the rules governing assessments of institutions that go out of business will be simpler; newly insured institutions will be assessed for the assessment period in which they become insured; prepayment and double payment options will be eliminated; institutions will have 90 days from each quarterly certified statement invoice to file requests for review of their risk assignment and requests for revision of the computation of their quarterly assessment payment; and the rules governing quarterly certified statement invoices will be adjusted for a quarterly assessment system and for a three-year retention period rather than the former five-year period.

Under the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) must by regulation set the Designated Reserve Ratio (DRR) for the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) within a range of 1.15 percent to 1.50 percent. In this rulemaking, the FDIC establishes the DRR for the DIF at 1.25 percent.