The Obama administration is opening U.S. skies to more commercial drones with long-awaited regulations that the government hopes will spawn new businesses inspecting bridges, monitoring crops and taking aerial photography.
In the most comprehensive set of rules yet for the burgeoning unmanned aircraft industry, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday went far beyond its original restrictive proposal issued last year. Drone operators will be able to petition the agency to fly beyond the horizon, at night and over people if they can show such flights are safe.
"We are in the early days of an aviation revolution that will change the way we do business, keep people safe, and gather information about our world,” President Barack Obama said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “This is just a first step, but this is the kind of innovative thinking that helps make change work for us -- not only to grow the economy, but to improve the lives of the American people."
Constitution Daily: Federal appeals court upholds ‘net neutrality’ rules.
On June 14, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit made a two-to-one decision to uphold the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce the principle of net neutrality. However, the road leading to the recent decision was fraught with conflict and the aftermath is likely to be the same.
The battle over net neutrality has been a long one fought primarily between the FCC and large internet service providers. The term itself was coined in a paper by Columbia University law professor Tim Wu in 2003 but was little more than just a term until 2010, when the FCC passed the Open Internet Order. The order called for ISPs to honor the principle of net neutrality through transparency on network management practices, refraining from blocking content on their networks, and avoiding unreasonable discrimination against (or favorable treatment towards) content on their networks.
Business News Daily: What You Need to Know About the New Federal Overtime Rules.
A rule change announced May 18 by the U.S. Department of Labor (U.S. DOL) would expand overtime protections to an estimated 4.2 million workers, extending the rule to cover those making less than $47,476 per year and removing long-standing exemptions in the law. Business News Daily dug into the specifics of the new regulation and spoke with labor policy experts and human resources professionals about the anticipated effects of the change, for both employers and workers.
Scheduled to go into effect Dec. 1, 2016, the new rule changes overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act's minimum wage and overtime protections. Previously, employees were excluded if they were salaried, earned at least $455 per week ($23,660 per year) or were in positions considered executive, administrative or professional. Now, those exemptions will be lifted and the pay threshold for overtime protections will be raised to $913 per week, or an annual salary of $47,476. That pay threshold will be updated once every three years, indexed to wage growth over time.
