This report provides background information on Libya and U.S.-Libyan relations; profiles Libyan leader Muammar al Qadhafi; discusses Libya’s political and economic reform efforts; and reviews current issues of potential congressional interest.

This report is a research aid, which lists the DOD authorization bills (Table 1) and appropriations bills (Table 2). This report includes all the pertinent information on the passage of these bills through the legislative process: bill numbers, report numbers, dates reported and passed, recorded vote numbers and vote tallies, dates of passage of the conference reports with their numbers and votes, vetoes, substitutions, dates of final passage, and public law numbers. Table 3 shows real growth or decline in national defense funding for FY1940-FY2009. Table 4 gives a more detailed picture of both regular and supplemental defense appropriations from the 103rd Congress to the present (FY1993-FY2005). Table 5 shows the President’s DOD appropriations budget requests for FY1950-FY2005 vs. final amount enacted.

This report is a research aid, which lists the DOD authorization bills (Table 1) and appropriations bills (Table 2). This report includes all the pertinent information on the passage of these bills through the legislative process: bill numbers, report numbers, dates reported and passed, recorded vote numbers and vote tallies, dates of passage of the conference reports with their numbers and votes, vetoes, substitutions, dates of final passage, and public law numbers. Table 3 shows real growth or decline in national defense funding for FY1940-FY2009. Table 4 gives a more detailed picture of both regular and supplemental defense appropriations from the 103rd Congress to the present (FY1993-FY2005). Table 5 shows the President’s DOD appropriations budget requests for FY1950-FY2005 vs. final amount enacted.

The future of the U.S. human space flight program is dominating debate about NASA. Pursuant to the "Vision for Space Exploration" announced by President Bush in January 2004, the shuttle program is to be terminated in 2010. The Vision directs NASA to focus its activities on returning humans to the Moon by 2020 and eventually sending them to Mars. How to manage Department of Defense (DOD) space programs to avoid the cost growth and schedule delays that have characterized several recent projects is a key issue facing DOD. The appropriate role of the government in facilitating commercial space businesses is an ongoing debate.

On May 15, 2006, the Bush Administration announced its intention to restore full diplomatic relations with Libya and to rescind Libya's listing as a state sponsor of terrorism and a country not fully cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The announcements mark the culmination of a period of improvement and rapprochement in U.S.-Libyan relations that begin in December 2003. Observers expect that these changes will usher in a new era in the U.S.-Libyan relationship, which has been strained and hostile for much of the last 35 years. This report provides background information on Libya and U.S.-Libyan relations; profile Libyan leader Muammar Al Qadhafi; discusses Libya's political and economic reform efforts; and reviews current issues of potential congressional interest.

How to safely dispose of wastes from producing nuclear weapons has been an ongoing issue. The most radioactive portion of these wastes is stored in underground tanks at Department of Energy (DOE) sites in Idaho, South Carolina, and Washington State. There have been concerns about soil and groundwater contamination from some of the tanks that have leaked. This report provides background information on the disposal of radioactive tank waste, analyzes waste disposal authority in P.L. 108-375, and examines potential implications for environmental cleanup.

Iran's influence over the post-Saddam government in Iraq is substantial because the predominant parties in that government have long enjoyed Tehran's sponsorship. An emerging concern is that Iran's influence has extended to support for militant groups in Iraq. U.S. officials say that sophisticated explosive devices are entering Iraq from Iran, suggesting that Iran, or factions within Iran, are backing Iraqi factions that use violence to oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Corporate income taxes are expected to bring in about $277 billion in 2006 to help fund the activities of the federal government. Besides raising revenue, the tax alters investment decisions and raises concerns about competitiveness in an environment of increasing global interdependency. The complexity of the tax breeds tax avoidance, including an estimated $32 billion of noncompliance detected by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This testimony provides information on trends in corporate taxes and opportunities to improve corporate tax compliance. Congress also asked that GAO discuss recent work on the misreporting of capital gains income from securities sales and options to improve compliance. This statement is based largely on previously published GAO work."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO was asked to address (1) the extent to which coordination between the U.S. military and private security providers has improved since GAO's 2005 report, (2) the ability of private security providers and the Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct comprehensive background screenings of employees, and (3) the extent to which U.S. or international standards exist for establishing private security provider and employee qualifications. For this testimony, GAO drew from its July 2005 report on private security providers, and its preliminary observations from an ongoing engagement examining contractor screening practices."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Of the 25 areas on GAO's 2005 high-risk list of federal programs or activities that are at risk for waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, 8 are Department of Defense (DOD) programs or operations and 6 are governmentwide high-risk areas for which DOD shares some responsibility. These high-risk areas relate to DOD's major business operations. DOD's failure to effectively resolve these high-risk areas results in billions of dollars of waste each year, ineffective performance, and inadequate accountability. At a time when DOD is competing for resources in an increasingly fiscally constrained environment, it is critically important that DOD get the most from every defense dollar. DOD has taken several positive steps and devoted substantial resources toward establishing key management structures and processes to successfully transform its business operations and address its high-risk areas, but overall progress by area varies widely and huge challenges remain. This testimony addresses (1) DOD's progress in developing a strategic, integrated, enterprise-wide business transformation plan and its related leadership approach, (2) the extent to which DOD has complied with legislation that addresses business systems modernization and improving financial management accountability, and (3) selected additional DOD …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "After the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2003, two legacy enforcement agencies--the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the U.S. Customs Service (USCS)--were among the 22 federal agencies brought together within DHS. This transformation in turn merged the legacy INS and USCS investigators into the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Investigations (OI), and legacy INS and USCS inspectors, among others, into Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It has been nearly 3 years since the merger and efforts to integrate thousands of federal employees within ICE and CBP continue. Congress raised questions about ongoing human capital challenges brought about by the integration of legacy enforcement employees within ICE and CBP. In prior work, we have reported on the management and human capital challenges DHS faces as it merges the workforces of legacy agencies, including the need to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the new agencies, the difficulty of legacy staff operating from separate locations, and how it decides to allocate investigative resources. This report addresses the following objectives: (1) How many investigative work years were dedicated to immigration enforcement …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For tax year 2001, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimated a tax gap of at least $11 billion from individual taxpayers misreporting income from capital assets (generally those owned for investment or personal purposes). IRS did not estimate the portion of this gap from securities (e.g., stocks, bonds, and mutual fund capital gains distributions). GAO was asked for information on (1) the extent and types of noncompliance for individual taxpayers that misreport securities capital gains, (2) actions IRS takes to reduce the securities tax gap, and (3) options with the potential to improve taxpayer voluntary compliance and IRS's ability to address noncompliant taxpayers. For estimates of noncompliance, GAO analyzed a probability sample of examination cases for tax year 2001 from the most recent IRS study of individual tax compliance."

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The report describes provisions of House rules that pertain to hearings; citations to these rules are included for reference. While House rules generally apply to committees and subcommittees, it is House Rule XI that contains many provisions specific to hearings. House rules set the general framework in which committees hold hearings.

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Solubility studies of uranium and plutonium in a caustic, radioactive Savannah River Site tank waste solution revealed the existence of uranium supersaturation in the as-received sample. Comparison of the results to predictions generated from previously published models for solubility in these waste types revealed that the U model poorly predicts solubility while Pu model predictions are quite consistent with experimental observations. Separate studies using simulated Savannah River Site evaporator feed solution revealed that the known formation of sodium aluminosilicate solids in waste evaporators can promote rapid precipitation of uranium from supersaturated solutions.

From our work at the University of Minnesota prior to 2000, we knew that buffer-layer-assisted growth could be used to produce abrupt interfaces where reactions were constrained by the fact that particles derived from tens to millions of atoms were brought into contact with substrates that ranged from GaAs(110) to BiSrCaCuO superconductors. In situ scanning tunneling microscopy had demonstrated that the particles increased in size with the thickness of the buffer layer, and we postulated that buffer desorption somehow ‘tossed the particles around’ so that aggregation was possible. Through access to transmission electron microscopy in the MRL at the University of Illinois, we have been able to determine the distribution of particles delivered to amorphous carbon as a function of buffer thickness, buffer material, particle material, and warm up rate so as to reveal the physics underlying diffusion, aggregation, and coalescence. Significantly, this enhanced understanding makes it possible to design experiments that produce sizes and distributions of nanoparticles of a very wide range of materials.

The SSPX spheromak experiment has achieved electron temperatures of 350eV and confinement consistent with closed magnetic surfaces. In addition, there is evidence that the experiment may be up against an operational beta limit for Ohmic heating. To test this barrier, there are firm plans to add two 0.9MW Neutral Beam (NB) sources to the experiment. A question is whether the limit is due to instability. Since the deposited Ohmic power in the core is relatively small the additional power from the beams is sufficient to significantly increase the electron temperature. Here we present results of computations that will support this contention. We have developed a new NB module to calculate the orbits of the injected fast fast-ions. The previous computation made heavy use of tokamak ordering which fails for a tight-aspect-ratio device, where B{sub tor} {approx} B{sub pol}. The model calculates the deposition from the NFREYA package [1]. The neutral from the CX deposition is assumed to be ionized in place, a high-density approximation. The fast ions are then assumed to fill a constant angular momentum orbit. And finally, the fast ions immediately assume the form of a dragged down distribution. Transfer rates are then calculated from this distribution function …

We present a compact and accurate representation of a whole-program abstract syntax tree, and use it to detect a specific security vulnerability in C++ programs known as a One-Definition Rule (ODR) violation. The ODR states that types and functions appearing in multiple compilation units must be defined identically. However, no current compiler can enforce ODR because doing so requires the ability to see the full application source at once; where ODR is violated, the program is incorrect. Moreover, a lack of ODR enforcement makes a program vulnerable to the so-called VPTR exploit, in which an object's virtual function table is replaced by malicious code. Our representation of the whole program preserves all features of the source for analysis and transformation, and permits a million-line application to fit entirely in the memory of a workstation with 1 GB of RAM.

The reaction of [W(=NAr)(=CHtBu)(CH2tBu)2](1; Ar =2,6-iPrC6H3) with a silica partially dehydroxylated at 700oC, SiO2-(700),gives syn-[(_SiO)W(=NAr)(=CHtBu)(CH2tBu)](2) as a major surface species,which was fully characterized by mass balance analysis, IR, NMR, EXAFS,and DFT periodic calculations. Similarly, complex 1 reacts with[(c-C5H9)7Si7O12SiOH]to give [(SiO)W(=NAr)(=CHtBu)(CH2tBu)](2m), whichshows similar spectroscopic properties. Surface complex 2 is a highlyactive propene metathesis catalyst, which can achieve a TON of 16000within 100 h, with only a slow deactivation.