A vote to confirm Hilary Tompkins '90 as solicitor of the Department of the Interior was delayed on Thursday by Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah. Bennett requested that Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar clarify the administration's position on the Utah Wilderness Settlement Agreement, which states that the Interior Department cannot create new wilderness study areas in the state, according to a press release from Bennett's office. "I am deeply concerned that some in the department are coordinating with certain members of the environmental community to undermine the settlement agreement between the United States and the state of Utah," Bennett said in a letter to Salazar. President Barack Obama nominated Tompkins for the position on March 25. Tompkins' responsibilities may include overseeing all of the lawyers in the Interior Department and advising the secretary on legal matters, according to department spokesman Hugh Vickery.
Google's tentative settlement with several publishing groups to make books available online is now being scrutinized by the Department of Justice because of antitrust concerns, the San Francisco Business Times reported on Wednesday. Some institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley, have avoided working with for-profit businesses to provide access to texts online, and instead have joined non-profit digital book archives, such as the Hathi Trust. Other universities have worked with Google in the interest of protecting and promoting old and out-of-print works online. Google has promised to put $125 million into a fund for book rights, which will be used to pay authors and publishers.
