Administrative subpoena authority is the power vested in various administrative agencies to compel testimony or the production of documents or both in aid of the agencies’ performance of their duties. As a constitutional matter, the Fourth Amendment only demands that administrative subpoenas be "reasonable." Although more extensive proposals were offered in the 108th Congress, the law enforcement related administrative subpoena proposals in the 109th Congress appear in S. 600, relating to the Secretary of State’s responsibilities to protect U.S. foreign missions and foreign dignitaries visiting this country; in H.R. 3726, relating to federal obscenity investigations; and in H.R. 4170, relating to the apprehension of fugitives charged with, or convicted of, federal or state felonies. This report is available abridged – without footnotes, appendices, and most of the citations to authority – as CRS Report RS22407, Administrative Subpoenas in Criminal Investigations: A Sketch, by Charles Doyle.

Administrative subpoena authority is the power vested in various administrative agencies to compel testimony or the production of documents or both in aid of the agencies’ performance of their duties. Proposals in the 109th Congress for greater use of administrative subpoenas in a law enforcement context appear in S. 600, relating to the Secretary of State’s responsibilities to protect U.S. foreign missions and foreign dignitaries visiting this country; in H.R. 3726, relating to federal obscenity investigations; and in H.R. 4170, relating to the apprehension of fugitives charged with, or convicted of, federal or state felonies. This is an abridged version — without footnotes, appendices, quotation marks and most citations to authority — of CRS Report RL33321, Administrative Subpoenas in Criminal Investigations: Background and Proposed Adjustments, by Charles Doyle.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is an x-ray free-electron laser (FEL) project based on the SLAC linac. The LCLS Photoinjector beamline has been designed to deliver 10-ps long electron bunches of 1 nC with a normalized projected transverse emittance smaller than 1.2 mm-mrad at 135 MeV. Tolerances and regulation requirements are tight for this tuning. Half of the total emittance at the end of the injector comes from the ''cathode emittance'' which is 0.7 mm-mrad for our nominal 1nC tuning. As the ''cathode emittance'' scales linearly with laser spot radius, the emittance will be dramatically reduced for smaller radius, but this is only possible at lower charge. In particular, for a 0.2 nC charge, we believe we can achieve an emittance closer to 0.4 mm-mrad. This working point will be easier to tune and the beam quality should be much easier to maintain than for the 1 nC case. In the second half of this paper, we discuss optimum laser pulse shapes. We demonstrate that the benefits of the ellipsoidal shapes seem to be important enough so that serious investigations should be carried out in the production of such pulses.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

As part of the effort to understand the flow and transport characteristics downgradient from the proposed high-level radioactive waste geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, single- and cross-hole tracer tests were conducted from December 2004 through October 2005 in boreholes at the Nye County 22 well complex. The results were analyzed for transport properties using both numerical and analytical solutions of the governing advection dispersion equation. Preliminary results indicate effective flow porosity values ranging from 1.0 x 10{sup -2} for an individual flow path to 2.0 x 10{sup -1} for composite flow paths, longitudinal dispersivity ranging from 0.3 to 3 m, and a transverse horizontal dispersivity of 0.03 m. Individual flow paths identified from the cross-hole testing indicate some solute diffusion into the stagnant portion of the alluvial aquifer.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The SURIYA project at the Fast Neutron Research Facility (FNRF) has been established and is being commissioning to generate femtosecond (fs) electron bunches. Theses short bunches are produced by a system consisting of an S-band thermionic cathode RF-gun, an alpha magnet (a-magnet) serving as a magnetic bunch compressor, and a SLAC-type linear accelerator (linac). The characteristics of its major components and the beam characterizations as well as the preliminary experimental results will be presented and discussed in this paper.

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Manhattan Project was initiated to develop nuclear weapons for use in World War II. The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was established in eastern Washington State as a production complex for the Manhattan Project. A major product of the HEW was plutonium. The buildings and process equipment used in the early phases of nuclear weapons development are historically significant because of the new and unique work that was performed. When environmental cleanup became Hanford's central mission in 1991, the Department of Energy (DOE) prepared for the deactivation and decommissioning of many of the old process facilities. In many cases, the process facilities were so contaminated, they faced demolition. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) requires federal agencies to evaluate the historic significance of properties under their jurisdiction for eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places before altering or demolishing them so that mitigation through documentation of the properties can occur. Specifically, federal agencies are required to evaluate their proposed actions against the effect the actions may have on districts, sites, buildings or structures that ere included or eligible for inclusion in the National Register. In an agreement between the DOE'S Richland Operations Office (RL), the Washington State …

This report explores various aspects of the Chinese economy, including specific policies that some Members of Congress consider a form of currency manipulation, the U.S.-China economic relationship, and the state of the Chinese economy with respect to the current global economic crisis.

China’s economy continues to be a concern to U.S. policymakers. On the one hand, China’s economic growth presents huge opportunities for U.S. exporters. On the other hand, the surge in Chinese exports to the United States has put competitive pressures on many U.S. industries. Many U.S. policymakers have argued that greater efforts should be made to pressure China to fully implement its WTO commitments and to change various economic policies deemed harmful to U.S. economic interests, such as its currency peg and its use of subsidies to support its SOEs. In addition, recent bids by Chinese state-owned firms to purchase various U.S. firms have raised concerns among Members over the impact such acquisitions could have on U.S. national and economic security.

Weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been seeking congressional approval for a $1.1 billion multi-year program to both construct five projects that would help to restore specified sites in the coastal wetland ecosystem in Louisiana, and to continue planning several other related projects. The state of Louisiana and several federal agencies have participated in the development of this program. This report introduces this program and restoration options that are being discussed in the wake of the hurricanes. It also discusses whether this program, if completed, might have muted the impacts of these hurricanes.

Model evolution and improvement is complicated by the lack of high quality observational data. To address a major limitation of these measurements the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program was formed. For the second quarter ARM metric we will make use of new water vapor data that has become available, and called the 'Merged-sounding' value added product (referred to as OBS, within the text) at three sites: the North Slope of Alaska (NSA), Darwin Australia (DAR) and the Southern Great Plains (SGP) and compare these observations to model forecast data. Two time periods will be analyzed March 2000 for the SGP and October 2004 for both DAR and NSA. The merged-sounding data have been interpolated to 37 pressure levels (e.g., from 1000hPa to 100hPa at 25hPa increments) and time averaged to 3 hourly data for direct comparison to our model output.

The ability of wetted cathodes of limited area to support localized corrosion sites on passive materials exposed to atmospheric conditions was studied computationally. The analysis pertains to conditions where metal surfaces are covered by thin layers of moisture in contrast to conditions of full immersion. The moisture may be a continuous layer or in patches with and without particulate on the surface. These conditions are of interest for the surfaces of the waste packages at the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository where waste packages are supported in air. The cathode capacity was characterized by the total net cathodic current, I{sub net}, which the surface surrounding a localized corrosion site (i.e., a pit or crevice) could supply. The cathode capacity increases with increasing cathode area, but it saturates at finite cathode sizes due to the resistance of the thin electrolyte layer. The magnitude of the capacity depends on the water layer thickness, the solution conductivity, and the electrochemical reaction kinetics. The presence of particulates is treated by considering both volume and surface coverage effects. The limited electrolyte volume under thin film conditions can lead to rapid pH changes which decrease the cathode capacity due to the slower electrochemical kinetics at elevated pH. …

Article discussing research on the correlation consistent composite approach (ccCA) and an alternative to the Gaussian-n methods.

U.S. real GDP growth has been positive for 17 consecutive quarters, and the economy is considered to be in an "expansion" phase. As of the fourth quarter of 2005, real or inflation-adjusted growth was nearly 12% above its previous high near the end of the 1991-2001 expansion. This report contains information on current economic conditions, the posture of fiscal and monetary policy, economic forecasts, and related information.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

The Yucca Mountain Performance Confirmation program consists of tests, monitoring activities, experiments, and analyses to evaluate the adequacy of assumptions, data, and analyses that form the basis of the conceptual and numerical models of flow and transport associated with a proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Performance Confirmation program uses an eight-stage risk-informed, performance-based approach. Selection of the Performance Confirmation activities (a parameter and a test method) for inclusion in the Performance Confirmation program was done using a risk-informed performance-based decision analysis. The result of this analysis and review was a Performance Confirmation base portfolio that consists of 20 activities. The 20 Performance Confirmation activities include geologic, hydrologic, and construction/engineering testing. Several of the activities were initiated during site characterization and are ongoing. Others activities will commence during construction and/or post emplacement and will continue until repository closure.

The Yucca Mountain Performance Confirmation program consists of tests, monitoring activities, experiments, and analyses to evaluate the adequacy of assumptions, data, and analyses that form the basis of the conceptual and numerical models of flow and transport associated with a proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Performance Confirmation program uses an eight-stage risk-informed, performance-based approach. Selection of the Performance Confirmation activities (a parameter and a test method) for inclusion in the Performance Confirmation program was done using a risk-informed performance-based decision analysis. The result of this analysis and review was a Performance Confirmation base portfolio that consists of 20 activities. The 20 Performance Confirmation activities include geologic, hydrologic, and construction/engineering testing. Several of the activities were initiated during site characterization and are ongoing. Others activities will commence during construction and/or post emplacement and will continue until repository closure.

The purpose of this research was to develop a radiation detection device so sensitive that a decay rate of only one atom per 11.57 days per kilogram of material could be detected. Such a detector is needed for screening materials that will be used in exotic high energy physics experiments currently being planned for the near future. The research was performed deep underground at the Underground Mine State Park in Soudan, Minnesota. The overburden there is ~1800 meters water equivalent. The reason for performing the research at such depth was to vastly reduce the effects of cosmic radiation. The flux of muons and fast neutrons is about 100,000 times lower than at the surface. A small clean room quality lab building was constructed so that work could be performed in such a manner that radioactive contamination could be kept at a minimum. Glove boxes filled with dry nitrogen gas were used to further reduce contamination from dirt and also help reduce the concentration of the radioactive gas 222Ra and daughter radionuclides which are normally present in air. A massive lead shield (about 20 tons) was constructed in such a manner that an eight inch cube of space in the center …

Two spectrometers have been added to the LCLS photoinjector beamline. The first one will be located close to the exit of the Photoinjector RF gun. With this diagnostic, we will measure beam energy, energy spread (correlated and uncorrelated), possibly deleterious structure in the longitudinal phase space induced by longitudinal space charge force, and slice thermal emittance ... This extensive characterization of the 5MeV electron bunch will be made possible by combining this spectrometer with other diagnostics (YAG screens and Cerenkov Radiator). A second spectrometer located at the end of the beamline has been designed to characterize the 6 dimensional phase space of the 135MeV beam to be injected in the main accelerator. At that second spectrometer station, we will measure energy, energy spread (correlated and uncorrelated), longitudinal phase space, slice emittances ... Those last two measurements require using this spectrometer in combination with the transverse RF deflecting cavity and with the quadrupole scan emittance station. The designs of these two spectrometers have been supported by simulations from MAD and PARMELA.

{sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I are important contributors to risk assessment due to their long half-lives and high mobility as aqueous anionic species. We analyzed {sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I in groundwater samples in and near 11 underground nuclear tests and in melt glass and rock samples retrieved from the Chancellor test cavity, Nevada Test Site. The {sup 129}I/{sup 127}I ratio ranges from 10{sup -3} to 10{sup -6} in cavity water and 10{sup -4} to 10{sup -9} in satellite wells. The {sup 99}Tc concentration ranges from 3 to 10{sup -4} Bq/L in cavity waters and from 0.3 to 10{sup -4} Bq/L in satellite wells. Downstream migration is apparent for both radionuclides. However, it is affected by both retardation and initial distribution. In-situ {sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I K{sub d}s calculated using rubble and water concentrations are 3 to 22 mL/g and 0 to 0.12 mL/g, respectively and are suggestive of mildly reducing conditions. {sup 129}I distribution in the melt glass, rubble and groundwater of the Chancellor test cavity is 28%, 24% and 48%, respectively; for {sup 99}Tc, it is 65%, 35% and 0.3%, respectively. Our partitioning estimates differ from those of underground tests in French Polynesia, implying that fission product …