On July 11, 2011, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order requesting independent regulatory agencies to produce plans to reassess and streamline their regulations.

On August 29, the Commission approved a $350,000 settlement between the Grand River Dam Authority, NERC, and FERC to settle allegations of Reliability Standard violations by the Grand River Dam Authority, an Oklahoma state agency.

In a move that will save the industry about $400,000 each year, on January 19, 2012, FERC eliminated the semiannual storage reporting requirements for (i) interstate pipelines transacting under the Natural Gas Act.

On July 19, 2011, following a lengthy consideration of the smart grid interoperability standards proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), FERC terminated its consideration of the five "families" of proposed interoperability standards, concluding that there was a lack of consensus regarding the standards.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Wall Street Reform Act) was signed into law by President Obama on July 21, 2010.

Individuals in the United States applying for visas to India should expect processing delays in the coming weeks and months as India transitions to a new visa services vendor.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the E-Verify Program, which is run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is not expected to be operational if there is a government shutdown.

L visas may be issued for a maximum period of 60 months; new interview waiver program and new visa processing procedures at the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Japan.

On June 13, 2010, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will launch a redesigned E-Verify program that will contain enhancements to the system's usability, security, accuracy, and efficiency.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has released a redesigned Form I-766, Employment Authorization Document, commonly referred to as an "EAD card."

The strict Massachusetts data privacy and security regulations (201 C.M.R. 17) that took effect March 1, 2010 are designed to protect personal information of Massachusetts residents (including the combination of an individual’s name with financial, bank or credit card account, driver’s license, or social security numbers).

Long-awaited notice allows individual and corporate donations made directly to a single-member LLC to be treated as donations made to the parent 501(c)(3) organization.

On September 17, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published in the Federal Register a request for comments on National Futures Association’s (NFA’s) petition for rulemaking (the Petition), to revise the exclusions from the definition of a commodity pool operator (CPO) under CFTC Rule 4.5.

The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced rule changes, effective January 1, 2011, that require all applicants claiming priority to another earlier filed application to submit the search results from the patent office of first filing (the priority application) at the time of filing or upon entering the European regional phase of application.

On May 2, 2013, FERC issued an order conditionally accepting in part, and rejecting in part, tariff revisions filed by PJM Interconnection, L.L.C.

Exception to the law allows certain discounts or rebates on prescription drugs.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the H-1B cap was reached and that all capsubject H-1B petitions received after November 22, 2011 will be rejected.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced the discontinuation of its recently implemented practice of sending original Form I-797 Notices of Approval directly to petitioning employers and individual applicants, with courtesy copies of these notices sent to attorneys or authorized representatives.

On September 23, the U.S. International Trade Commission announced that Sandra Lord will join the ITC as an Administrative Law Judge, replacing Judge Robert K. Rogers, who retired from the ITC in June 2013.