Administration

Oil-and-gas companies are concerned about reporting requirements for doing business with Burma now that the United States has established relations with the country.

Companies are lobbying the State Department on the reporting issue as the administration works to build diplomatic ties. President Obama on Monday hosted Burmese President Thein Sein at the White House in the latest sign of growing cooperation.

Oil-and gas-firms are interested in buying blocs in the resource-rich Bay of Bengal off of Burma’s western coast. Burma has offered up several plots to European Union bidders in recent auctions, and U.S. firms are also beginning to show interest.

A consortium of agencies are piloting a grant program that is intended to guide children receiving federal disability benefits to better life “outcomes,” according to the Department of Education.

The Promoting the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income (PROMISE) aims to disburse about $100 million in fiscal 2013 for two and possibly three years. After that, funding depends on states’ matching funds.

A federal judge in Arizona declined to reconsider an earlier ruling affirming the Interior Department’s authority to block new hard-rock mining on public lands.

U.S. District Judge David Campbell shut down a request for a rehearing by mining industry groups on Thursday. They’re protesting whether the federal government can unilaterally withdraw public lands from mining claims, according to The Associated Press.

At issue is an action by former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in which the ex-Interior chief banned mining on more than 1 million acres of uranium-rich land near the Grand Canyon.

The president will announce a new executive order in Baltimore, the latest stop in a campaign-style jobs tour.

The Security and Exchange Commission recently picked up an attorney who counsels businesses on complying with federal regulations and helped companies like Dunkin’ Brands go public.

Keith F. Higgins, a partner in of Ropes & Gray’s Boston office, will become the director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance next month. He has worked in the private sector for three decades and specializes in corporate securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions and executive compensation.

“The commission has an ambitious rulemaking agenda that will be my first priority, and I look forward to continuing to move that agenda forward,” he said in a statement released by the agency.

Three more chemical mixtures of synthetic marijuana will be outlawed as of Thursday, following the latest in a series of actions by the Justice Department to the drug’s use. 

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) issued new guidance Wednesday designed to cut down on exorbitant spending on annual conferences.

A new government-issued report finds hundreds more final rules were published in President Obama’s first term than were issued in George W. Bush’s second, RegWatch reports.

Regulators have seized their 13th bank this year, according to The Washington Post reports. The number represents a huge drop from 2010, when bank failures related to the Great Recession peaked at 157.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering the military to re-train tens of thousands of military recruiters amid widespread reports of sexual assaults, the Post reports.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is pressing regulators to fix a housing sector quirk that brands some short sales of under water homes as foreclosures, a “kiss of death” for the sellers, according to The Tampa Bay Times.

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The administration published more “major" rules in its first term than the George W. Bush administration did in its second.

President Obama's nominee for second in command of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) pledged to create an orderly and more streamlined government.

In a hearing on Monday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Brian Deese promised that a priority of the OMB "has got to be making our government more efficient and more effective and showing the American people how we can do more effectively with less."

In a hearing that focused largely on deficit reduction and the federal budget, Deese characterized himself as a practical team player committed to accountability and high performance standards. He answered questions on improper payments and duplicative efforts of the federal government.