U.S. explains truckers' hours exemption
A federal agency on Monday further explained how an hours-of-service exemption applies to haulers of perishable goods or livestock as the trucking industry enters into an era of electronic logging of driving and resting hours.
Some in the industry fear new rules requiring electronic monitoring of time spent driving will cause problems for customers, because the the electronic logs make it more difficult for drivers to break hours-of-service rules.
In a post on the Federal Register site on Wednesday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said drivers whose trucks are unloaded, during either the delivery or return trips, are exempt from the hours-of-service rules, so long as no other cargo is picked up after the delivery.
The policy enunciation was needed, the safety agency said, because several carriers and law enforcement agencies weren't sure how the agriculture exemption applies under the new hours and mileage logging rules, which took effect Monday.
-- Dalton LaFerney
USDA asks about bees, honey in state
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service is seeking information from bee and honey producers in Arkansas as part of its annual survey.
The statistics service is conducting three concurrent surveys of the Delta of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. The Bee and Honey Inquiry and January Colony Loss questionnaires ask questions of bee and honey operations with five or more colonies, while the Bee and Honey Production and Loss questionnaire asks about operations with fewer than five colonies, according to a release.
In Arkansas, about 170 beekeepers will be part of the survey. Information provided to the statistics service is confidential by law and the information is published only as aggregate data, according to the service.
The survey results will be published in the statistic service's annual Honey Report in March and the Honey Bee Colonies Report in early August. All reports from the National Agricultural Statistics Services are available online at www.nass.usda.gov.
-- John Magsam
KATV's parent company fined $13.4M
The FCC has leveled a $13.4 million fine against Sinclair Broadcast Group for failing to identify sponsored content that aired on its TV stations.
The fine announced Thursday is the largest ever proposed by the commission for such a violation and comes at a delicate time for the Baltimore-based company, which is seeking Justice Department and FCC approvals for its proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media.
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., one of the country's largest owners of TV stations, owns Little Rock's KATV, an ABC affiliate.
The FCC said Sinclair created 60-second and 90-second spots that promoted the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah and aired them on its local newscasts, or as free-standing half-hour programs. The segments and programs were shown more than 1,700 times, according to the FCC.
"Any absence of sponsorship identification in these public service segments was unintended and a result of simple human error," Sinclair said in a statement.
-- Los Angeles Times
Study of offshore-drilling safety halted
Two months after proposing to open an area of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies for offshore drilling, the administration of President Donald Trump has halted a study that aimed to make drilling safer.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine announced Thursday that the Interior Department suspended a $580,000 study to update and enhance the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement's oil and gas inspection program. "The stop work order, dated Dec. 7, says that within 90 days [it] will either be lifted or work on the study can resume, or the contract to perform the study will be terminated."
It was the second time in four months that the administration has blocked a National Academies study. In August, a study of health effects related to mountaintop removal to extract coal in West Virginia was abruptly curtailed "largely as a result of the Department's changing budget situation," the Interior Department said.
-- The Washington Post
Business on 12/22/2017