Hedge Funds Watching Drug Makers
By Randy E. Miller, Law Street, Feb. 15, 2024
Financial firms are continuing to monitor many of the pharmaceutical manufacturers we’ve reported on in recent months, including Krystal Biotech, Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Establishment Labs, Catalent and Astellas. That’s according to a review of Freedom of Information Act requests made to the Food and Drug Administration during December 2023 and January 2024.
Read more here.
On February 12, 2024, the National Institutes of Health announced a vacancy for a Supervisory Government Information Specialist within the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). The position is fully remote at the GS 14 level. The application deadline is February 16, 2024, or whenever 100 applications are received, whichever occurs first. This vacancy is not open to the public.
[Update: link is here, but the vacancy was closed on 2/14/24].
Inst. for Energy Research v. FERC (D.D.C.) -- holding that: (1) FERC conducted an adequate search for calendars of two Commissioners; (2) with respect to FERC’s deliberative process privilege claims, the agency “failed to provide any details or explanation as to why each (or any) of the policy proposals, internal meetings, and external meetings redacted from the calendar concern predecisional material or what sort of “definable decision-making process” the agency aims to protect”; and (3) FERC properly withheld some records pursuant to Exemption 6, but it did not justify withholding the name of a lobbyist who met with a Commissioner or the names of “lower-level staff” on a categorical basis.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.
Feb. 7, 2024
Bahrampour v. Nat'l Sec. Agency (D. Md.) -- ruling that: (1) NSA properly relied on Exemptions 1 and 3 in refusing to confirm or deny whether it maintained intelligence records about plaintiff; and (2) plaintiff failed to reasonably describe his request for 50 year’s worth of five categories of records unrelated to agency’s work, such as electromagnetic radiation and microwave pulses.
Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.
In case you’ve missed it, the blog “eDiscovery Today” is running a five-part article entitled “Processing Freedom of Information Act Requests and Utilizing eDiscovery.” The co-authors are Michael Sarich, the Director of FOIA at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and Nicholas Wittenberg, Corporate Counsel and Senior Advisor for Legal Technology and Innovation at Armedia.
Part 1 , Feb. 5, 2024.
Part 2, Feb. 7, 2024.
Part 3, Feb. 9, 2024.
Part 4 , Feb. 12, 2024.
The March 1st deadline for agencies to post their annual reports is quickly approaching. Here are reports that we’ve located since we last posted on February 4th.
Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency
Department of Education (2816 requests received; 2385 processed)
Here are the reports we posted on January 31st and Feb. 4th:
Jan. 31, 2024
Securities and Exchange Commission (9481 requests received; 9022 processed)
U.S. Postal Service (4168 requests received; 4104 processed)
Feb. 4, 2024
Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (197 requests received; only 61 processed).
Social Security Administration (10130 requests received; 10305 processed)
The federal positions listed below are open to the public unless indicated otherwise.
Federal positions closing in next 10 days
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Transp./FAA, multiple locations, FV 1, closes 2/13/24 (non-public).
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Transp./FAA, multiple locations, FV 1, closes 2/13/24.
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Envtl. Prot. Agency, multiple locations, GS 13, closes 2/13/24 (non-public).
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Gen. Serv. Admin., location negotiable, GS 12-13, closes 2/15/24.
Supervisory Att’y Advisor, Dep’t of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, D.C., GS 15, closes 2/16/24.
Att’y Advisor, Dep’t of Justice, OIP, Washington, D.C., GS 12-14, closes 2/19/24.
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VHA, Illinois, GS-12, closes 2/19/24 (non-public).
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Veterans Affairs/VBA, Overland, MO, GS 13, closes 2/20/24 (non-public).
Att’y-Advisor, Dep’t of the Interior/Solicitor, Washington, D.C., GS 12-14, closes 2/21/24.
Supervisory Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Def./Army, Fort Belvoir, VA, GS 14, closes 2/21/24 (non-public).
Federal positions announced in past 7 days and closing after 2/22/24
Gov’t Info. Specialist, Dep’t of Ed./Sec’y, Washington, D.C., GS-13, closes 2/27/24 (non-public).
Private sector positions
Manager, FOIA Programs, OPEXUS (formerly AINS, LLC), Washington, D.C., salary and closing date not indicated.
The International Boundary and Water Commission: United States and Mexico has a vacancy for an Attorney-Advisor in El Paso, Texas to administer its FOIA program and assists with its ethics and privacy programs. The deadline to apply is Feb. 12, 2024.
FBI Issues Redacted ‘Vexsome Filer’ List, Marking Departure from Past Transparency Practices
By John Greenwald, Black Vault, Feb. 7, 2024
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently released a significantly redacted version of its latest ‘Vexsome Filer’ list, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The Black Vault on August 7, 2023, under FBI FOIA case number 1600755-000. Initially, the request was met with a response stating no records existed. This prompted an appeal, case A-2023-01949, wherein the Department of Justice (DOJ) remanded the request, leading to the release of this latest, albeit heavily redacted, document.
Read more here.
In response to the FBI’s disclosure, the Cato Institute—the only requester whose name was not redacted— claimed it was a badge of honor.