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

Two financial services companies based in the United Arab Emirates will be frozen out of the U.S. financial market for helping Iran to evade economic sanctions.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on an exchange house and a trading company for ignoring sanctions on Iranian banks and helping them access foreign currency.

According to the department, the financial service companies conducted millions of dollars of transactions with the Iranian banks.

“As Iran’s access to the international banking sector comes under increasing pressure, we have seen it turn increasingly to exchange houses and trading companies in its attempts to evade international sanctions and maintain its access to foreign exchange,” said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen in a statement. 

A whole host of agencies and their advisory boards will hold public meetings in coming weeks. Here are the new announcements:

The board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid for low-income Americans, is holding a conference call on May 21 to discuss an upcoming report to Congress. 

A bunch of new regulations and guidances will come out in Thursday's Federal Register, covering everything from liquor to radioactive material. Here are the highlights:

Food and Drugs:
The Treasury Department is issuing standards requiring that only Peru- or Chile-manufactured pisco, a type of brandy, can be labeled as such in the United States. 

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.

Legislators and regulators pledged to increase their support for the organic food industry on Tuesday, as representatives from the sector pushed for friendly policies.

As members of the House and Senate mark up the farm bill, organic farmers, handlers and manufacturers came to Washington to make their case for the burgeoning industry at the annual Washington policy conference of the Organic Trade Association, which represents the sector.

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An appeals court on Tuesday denied complaints from environmental groups that said federal regulators are ignoring the lessons from Japan’s Fukushima meltdown when approving the first U.S. nuclear construction project since 1978.

The Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on an imprisoned Mexican drug trafficker who smuggled tons of drugs into the United States on behalf of the Los Zetas cartel.

Alfredo Andrade Parra, 39, is responsible for bringing thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the country from Mexico every month, the department alleges, and is also wanted in Texas for multiple counts of trafficking and money laundering.

He was arrested by Mexican authorities in April.