On January 2, 2015, in response to North Korea's "ongoing provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies, particularly its destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment," President Obama signed a new Executive Order imposing additional sanctions against the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, North Korea's ruling party. The Executive Order authorizes the Treasury Department, in consultation with the State Department, to designate individuals or entities with ties to the North Korean government or the Workers' Party of Korea for

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") announced it will hold a workshop regarding available transfer capability standards for wholesale electric transmission services. The workshop will focus on actions FERC could take to ensure that transmission providers continue to calculate and post available transfer capability in a manner that ensures nondiscriminatory access to wholesale electric transmission services. The workshop is scheduled to be held on March 5, 2015. See: Advanced Registration; Workshop Notice; Event Details.

The CFTC issued a clarification and notice regarding the reopened comment periods for two Position Limit rulemakings. In order to provide commenters with sufficient time to respond to questions raised and points made at the December 9, 2014 Agricultural Advisory Committee meeting, the CFTC reopened the comment periods for an additional 45 days, from December 9, 2014 to January 22, 2015. The notice provides interested parties an opportunity to comment on issues addressed at the meeting or in associated materials posted to the Commission's website, as they pertain to agricultural commodities

The SEC-proposed amendments to revise rules regarding thresholds for issuer registration, termination of registration, and suspension of reporting under Exchange Act Section 12(g) ("Registration of securities by issuer; exemptions") were published in the Federal Register. The proposal would implement the JOBS Act by: amending Exchange Act Rules 12g-1 through 12g-4 and 12h-3 which govern the procedures relating to issuer registration, termination of registration under Section 12(g) and suspension of reporting obligations under Exchange Act Section 15(d) ("Registration and regulation of brokers

The SEC announced the launch of a pilot program to facilitate investor analysis and comparisons of public company financial statement data. The new program will combine and structure data provided by companies into formats that can be downloaded in bulk from the SEC's website. According to the SEC, the data sets will contain financial statement data from eXtensible Business Reporting Language ("XBRL") exhibits as filed with the SEC. In 2015, the data sets will be expanded to include data in footnotes to the financial statements. The pilot program builds on the SEC's efforts to utilize