LightSquared Fiasco & Sage Grouse Listing

LightSquared Fiasco & Sage Grouse Listing plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

LightSquared had good intentions of providing wireless service to rural areas but concerns recently were expressed because the signals are much larger than signals used by GPS. Todd Neely with DTN says a large coalition including ag groups and airline companies is now working against the project and at this point he wouldn’t be a surprise if the project goes away.

NEELY: The influence that’s come out against this project maybe such that it’s going to be hard for LightSquared to get anywhere. They’ve weighed a very aggressive public relations campaign in trying to tell their side of the story but clearly there’s not a lot they can do at this point other than wait and see if FCC is going to maybe take a closer look at how the testing was done, whether it’s really valid and those kinds of things.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a challenge from environmental groups seeking to force the federal government to take immediate action to increase protections for the sage grouse. Had their request been granted, it could have curtailed new energy production on public lands across the West. The sage grouse is a chicken-sized bird known for its elaborate mating display. It's found across most of the western and northwest states.The Interior Department is under a separate federal court order to decide by the end of 2015 whether the birds ultimately should receive Endangered Species Act protections.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

Since September of 2011, when the Department of Labor announced proposed changes to the agricultural child labor regulations, the agency has been deluged with comments and letters of concern from those in the agricultural industry as well as many Congressmen advocating reconsideration of proposed rules which substantially restricted the parental exemption. Those public comments and concerns seem to have been successful in as far as getting DOL officials to re-propose the ‘parental exemption’ portion of the child labor in agriculture rule which has been in existence for forty years. An agency official stated the DOL will discontinue its current enforcement practice as proposed in September and will revert to its earlier enforcement practice, and that “that approach is consistent with guidance the Wage and Hour Division has provided to the public on its website for the past several years”. Until the re-proposed portion of the rule is published sometime this summer the DOL says it will continue to review public comments already received on the proposed rule’s remaining portions. They should come to the conclusion, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.