1) There is supposed to an announcement this week as to when the claims process will start. As to what "begin shortly" means, well.........................
2) Actually the answer to this and all other questions you may have has been provided by the poster 1938ford. Look for his posts of the last week or so and you should be up to speed.
3) Nobody has received any email notices up to this point.
Hopefully when they make the announcement this week, fingers crossed, they will also give more detail but they may not till the process starts. The general timeline is that once the process starts you will have 3 months to file a claim. Then payments will go out. Since they have enough money to cover all claims you would think that the payments would happen "shortly" after the claims period closes. 1938ford has researched remissions processes similar to the FTP case and it has taken close to a year for the payments to go out if I remember correctly. Again read his posts.
In other news the reason I am up at this hour is that I did not sleep as I have been up with Sugar all night. It does not look like any sleep will be forthcoming. Also Sam's brother Nick is quite sick so now I have 2 ankle bracelets.