Friday, August 14, 2009Last Update: 9:39 PM PT

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Securities and Exchange Commission hopes to crack down on "pay to play" practices by investment advisers through a proposed new rule under the Investment Advisers that would prohibit investment advisers who have donated to politicians from paid employment with a government client for two years.
     The new rule also would prohibit advisers from providing payment to any third party for a solicitation of advisory business from any government entity on behalf of the advisor. Additionally, the new rule would prevent an adviser from soliciting from others, or coordinating, contributions to certain elected officials or candidates or payments to political parties where the adviser is providing or seeking government business.
     Click on the document icon beneath "Days Are Limited for Netting Pacific Tuna" and "CPSC Names Toy Parts Without Lead Limits," for additional regulations.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Department of Veterans Affairs plans stop collection of certain debts arising from a VA benefit program when "the indebted individual is a member of the Armed Forces or a veteran who dies as a result of injury incurred or aggravated in the line of duty while serving in a theater of combat operations in a war or in combat against a hostile force during a period of hostilities after Sept. 11, 2001," and to refund amounts collected after the individual's death.
     The same proposed rule also would suspend or terminate collection of debts owed to the VA by those who died while serving on active duty as a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard during a period when the Coast Guard is operating as a service in the Navy, and to refund amounts collected after the individual's death.
     This action implements certain provisions of the Combat Veterans Debt Elimination Act of 2008 and of the Veterans' Benefits Improvement Act of 2008.
     Click on the document icon beneath "Days Are Limited for Netting Pacific Tuna" and "CPSC Names Toy Parts Without Lead Limits," for additional regulations.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Consumer Product Safety Commission has released a document regarding what product components are considered to be "inaccessible" to children. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act provides that the lead limits do not apply to any component part of a children's product that is not accessible to a child through normal and reasonably foreseeable use and abuse.
     Click the document icon for this and other new regulations.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The National Marine Fisheries Service has placed new restrictions on the number of allowable fishing days for purse seine boats in the western and central Pacific Ocean to catch tuna. The new limit is 7,764 fishing days (a fishing day is an eight hour shift for each boat licensed in the fishery) for the entire three-year 2009-2011 period.
           A purse seine is a large fishing net that hangs vertically in the water by attaching weights along the bottom edge and floats along the top and has a closure at the bottom to prevent fish from swimming below the net to escape. The nets are used to encircle a school of fish, with the fishing boat driving around the school.
           Although the purse seine is an effective method of catching fish that gather in large schools, it also results in unintended by catch, especially of sea turtles that become entangled in the net. For this reason boats in the fishery are required to carry special equipment to free sea turtles from the nets without injuring them.
     Click the document icon for this and other regulations.