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France’s trade minister said on Tuesday that Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations should not continue. Matthias Fekl said that his government will seek to bring talks to a halt. The deal is currently being hammered out by European Union and US officials. “France is asking for an end to TTIP negotiations,” he said on Twitter. Fekl later explained in a radio interview that “there is no political support from France” for the talks. “The Americans give nothing, or just crumbs,” he said, according…

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A troubled for-profit college has stopped accepting new applicants, after the Department of Education ruled last week that its students would be ineligible for federally-funded aid. ITT Tech notes simply on its website that it is “not enrolling new students.” Those currently taking courses at ITT can transfer or finish their education, Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell said Thursday, in a blog post. If enrollees fail to do that before the school shuts down, Mitchell noted, students “will likely be eligible to discharge” their federal…

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President Obama will not have a chance to finalize the approval of his signature trade initiative, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that he will not bring up the controversial agreement for consideration this year. “But it will still be around. It can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration. So, I hope America will stay in the trade business,” McConnell said, according to Reuters. At a breakfast event in Kentucky, McConnell mentioned his staunch…

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Mylan, the maker of the EpiPen, announced on Thursday that it would offer 50 percent-discounts to some patients who depend on the life-saving allergy shot. The move comes after the company received attention for jacking up the price of the device by 500-percent since 2009. Mylan executives have been met with widespread public ridicule as a result–criticism that has reverberated around Congressional offices amid the summer recess. “As a mother, I can assure you, the last thing that we would ever want is no one to have…

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Federal appellate judges in Boston affirmed a lower court’s ruling striking down a tax in Puerto Rico that targeted the crisis-stricken island’s largest businesses—one that would have exclusively impacted Walmart. The First Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that a Federal District Judge in Puerto Rico was correct earlier this year, when he declared the levy to be unconstitutionally discriminatory. The tax at the heart of dispute was passed by the Puerto Rican government in 2015, as part of efforts to raise money amid a…

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a law boosting the minimum wage for some hotel workers in the City of Los Angeles. A three-judge panel on the circuit said on Monday that a District Court had been correct last year, when dismissing the challenge to the initiative. The suit was brought by two industry groups: the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. Passed in October 2014, the measure raised the minimum wage in L.A. this year to…

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Companies seeking to do business with the federal government will now have to verify their workplace safety track record, according to new regulations finalized on Wednesday. The rule could block firms that flout labor regulations from securing lucrative government contracts in the future. Under the new regulations, businesses working to procure contracts over $500,000 will have to inform the government of any labor violations they have incurred over the previous three years. Those include any non-compliance of the department’s 14 basic workplace protections, such as…

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The Environmental Protection Agency has told Texas to improve its regulation of fracking, saying the energy extraction method has been linked to seismic activity in the state. An annual agency report to the Texas Railroad Commission, the state body that oversees fracking, concluded that “there is a significant possibility that North Texas earthquake activity is associated with disposal wells.” EPA said the study was based on “findings from several researchers, its own analysis of some cases and the fact that earthquakes diminished in some areas…

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