A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the 1990s, the United States operated a program in Colombia and Peru called Air Bridge Denial (ABD). The ABD program targeted drug traffickers that transport illicit drugs through the air by forcing down suspicious aircraft, using lethal force if necessary. The program was suspended in April 2001 when a legitimate civilian aircraft was shot down in Peru and two U.S. citizens were killed. The program was restarted in Colombia in August 2003 after additional safeguards were established. To date, the United States has provided about $68 million in support and plans to provide about $26 million in fiscal year 2006. We examined whether the ABD program's new safeguards were being implemented and its progress in attaining U.S. and Colombian objectives."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Training flight and cabin crew members to handle potential threats against domestic aircraft is an important element in securing our nation's aviation system. The responsibility for ensuring that crew members are prepared to handle these threats is a shared responsibility between the private sector--air carriers--and the federal government, primarily the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This report addresses (1) actions TSA has taken to develop guidance and standards for flight and cabin crew member security training and to measure the effectiveness of the training, (2) how TSA ensures domestic air carriers comply with the training guidance and standards, and (3) efforts TSA has taken to develop and assess the effectiveness of its voluntary self-defense training program."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Issuing a U.S. visa to a foreign citizen in exchange for money or something of value is a crime that can facilitate entry into the United States of unqualified persons, including those who may wish to do our country harm. Internal controls make it difficult for an employee to commit visa malfeasance without being detected, but, despite these safeguards, visa malfeasance does occur. GAO examined (1) State's internal controls to prevent nonimmigrant visa malfeasance and if they are being implemented and (2) visa malfeasance cases from 2001-2004 and factors cited by State and the Department of Justice (Justice) that contributed to visa malfeasance and affected investigations and prosecutions."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Currently there are more than 1,260 species listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. While few species have gone extinct since 1973, only 9 have been "recovered" or removed from the list because they no longer need the act's protection. This has raised questions about how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) allocates its recovery funds. Proponents of the act believe that the Service's recovery funds are only a small fraction of what is needed to make greater recovery progress. The act and agency guidelines require the Service to prioritize species to guide recovery fund allocation. In fiscal year 2000 through 2003, the Service spent $127 million dollars in recovery funds attributable to individual species. In this report, GAO analyzed (1) the extent to which the Service's allocation of recovery funds compares with its recovery priority guidelines and (2) what factors influence the Service's recovery allocation decisions."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Park Service routinely issues permits for special park uses, such as special events or commercial filming and still photography. However, the National Football League's use of the National Mall to launch its 2003 season raised questions about whether permitting such events was consistent with existing policies and law and whether all applicable fees for permitting special park uses were being collected. GAO (1) identified applicable policy guidance for issuing special uses permits for special events and for commercial filming and still photography, (2) assessed the extent to which this guidance was applied during fiscal year 2003, and (3) determined the extent to which the Park Service implemented the requirement to collect location fees for commercial filming and still photography."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has a unique role in coordinating trade policy, resolving disagreements, and framing issues for presidential decision through an interagency trade policy process. In recent years, USTR's increased workload from numerous new regional and bilateral free trade agreement negotiations and a new round of multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization has raised concerns about its human capital strategy. GAO examined whether USTR is pursuing an effective human capital strategy that supports the ability of its workforce to accomplish its mission. Specifically, GAO (1) reviewed USTR's commitment to strategic human capital leadership and planning and (2) analyzed to what extent USTR has used human capital tools to address its workforce challenges."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Oil is one of Colombia's principal exports. The Cano Limon-Covenas oil pipeline transports almost 20 percent of Colombia's oil production. The pipeline originates in the Department of Arauca in northeast Colombia. It carries oil nearly 500 miles to the Caribbean port of Covenas. The pipeline has been a principal infrastructure target for terrorist attacks by Colombia's insurgent groups. During 2001, attacks on the pipeline cost the Colombian government an estimated $500 million in lost revenues for the year. The United States agreed to assist Colombia in protecting the first 110 miles of the pipeline where most of the attacks were occurring. We examined how the U.S. funding and resources provided to Colombia have been used, and what challenges remain in securing the pipeline."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks, amended U.S. anti-money laundering laws and imposed new requirements on financial institutions. Section 326 of the act required the development of minimum standards for verifying the identity of financial institution customers. Section 314 required the development of regulations encouraging the further sharing of information between law enforcement agencies and the financial industry and between the institutions themselves. Because of concerns about the implementation of these new provisions, GAO determined how (1) the government developed the regulations, educated the financial industry on them, and challenges it encountered; (2) regulators have updated guidance, trained examiners, and examined firms for compliance; and (3) the new regulations have affected law enforcement investigations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since its introduction in 1994, direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service has grown dramatically, and this service is now the principal competitor to cable television service. Although DBS service has traditionally been a rural service, passage of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999 enhanced the competitiveness of DBS service in suburban and urban markets. GAO agreed to examine (1) how DBS subscribership changed since 2001; (2) how DBS penetration rates differ across urban, suburban, and rural areas; (3) how DBS penetration rates differ across markets based on the degree and type of competition provided by cable operators; and (4) the factors that appear to influence DBS penetration rates across cable franchise areas. To complete this report, GAO prepared descriptive statistics and an econometric model using data from the Federal Communications Commission's annual Cable Price Survey and the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association's subscriber count database."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2002, the Department of Defense (DOD) implemented a new acquisition model to develop a Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) that included all major missile defense acquisitions, some of which were being developed by the military services. The model called for the management and funding responsibility for production, operation, and sustainment of a capability to be transferred to a military service when a BMDS element or major component is technically mature and plans for production are well developed. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was given responsibility for developing the BMDS and recommending the transfer of management and funding responsibilities to the services. In 2004, MDA emplaced an initial missile defense capability, but DOD did not transfer management and funding responsibility for that capability. Because a formal transfer did not occur, GAO was asked to (1) identify DOD's criteria for deciding when a missile defense capability should be transferred to a service and (2) determine how DOD is managing the costs of fielding a BMDS capability."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The importance of prepositioned stocks to the U.S. military was highlighted during recent operations in Iraq, as much of the equipment and supplies stored at land sites in the region and aboard prepositioning ships were used to support operations. Long-standing problems in the Department of Defense's (DOD) prepositioning program are systematic of the inventory management issues, and more recently supply chain management issues, that GAO has considered as high-risk areas since 1990. GAO was asked to review the risks facing DOD's prepositioning programs, including an assessment of (1) the near-term operational risk given the continuing use of these stocks, (2) the sufficiency of DOD and service-level oversight of these prepositioning programs, and (3) whether DOD has developed a coordinated plan for the future of the department's prepositioning programs that would meet the goals of the recently published defense strategy."

The goal of the EZturb mix model in KULL is to predict the turbulent mixing process as it evolves from Rayleigh-Taylor, Richtmyer-Meshkov, or Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. In this report we focus on an example of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (which occurs when a shock hits an interface between fluids of different densities) with the additional complication of reshock. The experiment by Vetter & Sturtevant (VS) [1], involving a Mach 1.50 incident shock striking an air/SF{sub 6} interface, is a good one to model, now that we understand how the model performs for the Benjamin shock tube [2] and a prototypical incompressible Rayleigh-Taylor problem [3]. The x-t diagram for the VS shock tube is quite complicated, since the transmitted shock hits the far wall at {approx}2 millisec, reshocks the mixing zone slightly after 3 millisec (which sets up a release wave that hits the wall at {approx}4 millisec), and then the interface is hit with this expansion wave around 5 millisec. Needless to say, this problem is much more difficult to model than the Bejamin shock tube.

This report deals with the impact of fabrication processes on the localized corrosion behavior of Alloy 22 (N06022). The four fabrication processes that were analyzed are: (1) Surface stress mitigation of final closure weld, (2) Manufacturing of the mockup container, (3) Black annealing of the container and (4) Use of different heats of Alloy 22 for container fabrication. Immersion and Electrochemical tests performed in the laboratory are generally aggressive and do not represent actual repository environments in Yucca Mountain. For example, to determine the intergranular attack in the heat affected zone of a weldment, tests are conducted in boiling acidic and oxidizing solutions according to ASTM standards. These solutions are used to compare the behavior of differently treated metallic coupons. Similarly for electrochemical tests many times pure sodium chloride or calcium chloride solutions are used. Pure chloride solutions are not representative of the repository environment. (1) Surface Stress Mitigation--When metallic plates are welded, for example using the Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW) method, residual tensile stresses may develop in the vicinity of the weld seam. Processes such as Low Plasticity Burnishing (LPB) and Laser Shock Peening (LSP) could be applied locally to eliminate the residual stresses produced by welding. In …

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This report discusses trends in poverty in the United States. In 2004, 37 million people were found poor under the official poverty definition — a 1.1 million increase from 2003. The poverty rate, or percent of the population considered poor, increased for the fourth straight year, to 12.7% in 2004 — up from 12.5% in 2003, and 11.3% in 2000, its most recent low.

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This report examines the history of the federal excise tax on tires. The excise tax on tires was first levied in 1918 mainly because of revenue needs brought about by World War I. The tax was reduced after the war, and then repealed in 1926. The levy was reintroduced during the Great Depression at a time when federal individual income tax revenues were plummeting, and was increased to help finance World War II. Today, the premise for the excise tax on tires is that heavier vehicles cause greater damage to both roadways and bridges, and that the excise tax on tires resembles a pricing mechanism that is a proxy for highway wear-and-tear charges.

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