Wednesday, March 10, 2010Last Update: 3:20 PM PT

     WASHINGTON (CN) - Worker protections for foreign nurses hired under the Nursing Relief for Disadvantaged Areas program are still in place, according to a Labor Department regulation.
     Nurses remaining in the U.S. who are employed under an H-1C visa still must be paid appropriately and must not be moved from one worksite to another or be made to work at a worksite not under the control of the facility that requested the nurse from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
     The nursing relief program was established in 1999 to respond to the need for qualified nursing professionals in understaffed facilities serving mostly poor patients in certain inner cities and rural areas.
     The program allowed certain health care facilities to file, and the Department of Labor to review, approve and enforce, attestation applications to employ foreign workers as registered nurses in health professional shortage areas on a temporary basis under the H-1C visa. Facilities filed these forms with the DOL as a condition for petitioning the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for H-1C nurses.
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     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Defense Department plans to address requirements for safeguarding unclassified defense industry information.
     Proposed changes to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement would add a new subpart and associated contract clauses for the safeguarding, proper handling and cyber intrusion reporting of unclassified Defense Department information within industries that contract to supply the military.
     One clause would require contractors to protect defense information from unauthorized disclosure, loss, or exfiltration by employing basic information technology security measures. The other would require enhanced information technology security measures applicable to encryption of data for storage and transmission, network protection and intrusion detection, and cyber intrusion reporting.
     The department requests input from government and industry regarding "best practices" for protecting networks and data, experience with any of the proposed safeguards, and an evaluation of its value. A public meeting is planned for April.

     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Social Security Administration has proposed to allow disability examiners in state agencies to make temporary "fully favorable" determinations on certain claims for disability benefits, without approval by a medical or psychological consultant. The proposed changes would only apply to Quick Disability Determinations and compassionate allowances.
     The agency states that the rule is meant to approve cases that should be approved "as quickly as possible," and that it also should allow consultants more time to work on complex cases.
     Quick Disability Determinations or compassionate allowances are used in cases in which there is a high probability that the SSA will find the claimant disabled.
     With Quick Disability Determinations a computer model identifies claims in which there is a high potential that the claimant is disabled and in which the SSA may quickly and easily obtain evidence supporting the claimant's allegations. Under the compassionate allowance initiative, the agency uses a list of conditions to quickly identify diseases and other medical conditions that invariably qualify under the Listing of Impairments in SSA regulations, based on minimal, but sufficient, objective medical information.
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     WASHINGTON (CN) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected a petition from the nuclear energy industry to delay the March 31 implementation deadline for the construction of physical barriers and installation of intruder detection systems. The barriers and systems are mandated by the "Requirements for Physical Protection of Licensed Activities in Nuclear Power Reactors Against Radiological Sabotage" regulations.
     In its petition, the Nuclear Energy Institute had stated that 24 plants will not be able to meet the March 2010 compliance date and that nine other plants also probably will fail to meet the deadline. The institute argues that the costs of engineering and construction of the barriers to meet the deadline would divert resources needed to meet other more critical provisions of anti-sabotage rules.
     The Institute's petition argues that since 2001, the industry has made so many improvements in the security of nuclear power facilities that they are recognized as the most protected and secure domestic sites and that a delay in the implementation deadline would not drastically alter the resistance of the plants to sabotage.
     In its decision to reject the petition, the commission noted that less than half of the nation's nuclear facilities would not make the deadline and that a facility by facility decision on exemptions would be less disruptive than a blanket amnesty.
     The commission also noted that the petition came so close to the implementation deadline that it did not have sufficient time to conduct the rulemaking process which would be required to implement such a sweeping exemption.