A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Increases in the number and intensity of wildland fires have led the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to place greater emphasis on thinning forests and rangelands to reduce the buildup of potentially hazardous vegetation that can fuel wildland fires. The public generally has an opportunity to challenge agency hazardous fuel reduction decisions with which it disagrees. Depending on the type of project being undertaken, the public can file a formal objection to a proposed decision, or can appeal a decision the agency has already made. Appeals and objections must be reviewed by the Forest Service within prescribed time frames. Final decisions may also generally be challenged in federal court. GAO was asked, among other things, to determine, for fiscal years 2006-2008, (1) the number of Forest Service fuel reduction decisions and the associated acreage; (2) the number of decisions subject to appeal and objection, the number appealed, objected to, and litigated, and the associated acreage; and (3) the outcomes of appeals, objections, and litigation, and the extent to which appeals and objections were processed within prescribed time frames. In doing so, GAO conducted a nationwide survey …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act)--initially estimated to cost $787 billion in spending and tax provisions--aims to promote economic recovery, make investments, and minimize or avoid reductions in state and local government services. The Recovery Act provided the Department of Energy (DOE) more than $43.2 billion, including $36.7 billion for projects and activities and $6.5 billion in borrowing authority, in areas such as energy efficiency and renewable energy, nuclear waste clean-up, and electric grid modernization. This testimony discusses (1) the extent to which DOE has obligated and spent its Recovery Act funds, and (2) the factors that have affected DOE's ability to select and start Recovery Act projects. In addition, GAO includes information on ongoing work related to DOE Recovery Act programs. This testimony is based on prior work and updated with data from DOE."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Counties containing federal lands have historically received a percentage of the receipts generated by the sale or use of natural resources on the federal lands. A steep decline in federal timber sales during the 1990s, however, resulted in a significant decrease in federal payments to counties that previously depended on timber receipts. The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, reauthorized in 2008, was enacted, in part, to address this decline by stabilizing payments to counties that depended on revenues from timber sales on Forest Service and certain Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands. Under the aceach county may continue to receive a portion of the revenues generated from the sale or use of resources from these lands or may choose instead to receive annual payments based in part on historical revenue payments to the county. Among other things, the act provides for the Forest Service and BLM to implement certain land management projects, known as Title II projects, using a portion of these funds. The act mandates that a certain percentage of Title II projects involving the sale of merchantable timber be carried out under …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1995, the United States banned exports to Iran of most U.S. goods without a Treasury Department license. In 2008, the U.S. media, citing U.S. government statistics, reported that U.S. firms were exporting numerous goods to Iran. The statistics are maintained by the Census Bureau and are based on data filed by exporters or their agents. The United States has also generally banned unlicensed transshipments of U.S. goods to Iran via other nations. In this report, GAO assesses the extent to which (1) U.S. trade statistics accurately depict exports to Iran, (2) Treasury licenses exports to Iran in accordance with the trade restrictions and provides licensing data to enforcement agencies and Congress, and (3) Iran obtains U.S. military and dual-use goods through transshipment. GAO analyzed Census export data, a randomly selected sample of Treasury export licenses, Treasury licensing information systems, and U.S. government transshipment data. It also interviewed relevant U.S. government officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses our work on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) actions to enforce the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1978 (HMSA), as amended, which prohibits the inhumane treatment of livestock in slaughter plants and generally requires that animals be rendered insensible--that is, unable to feel pain--before being slaughtered. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for enforcing HMSA. Concerns about the humane handling and slaughter of livestock have increased in recent years, particularly after possible HMSA violations were revealed at a slaughter plant in California in 2008 and one in Vermont in 2009. This statement summarizes our report being released today that (1) evaluates USDA's efforts to enforce HMSA, (2) identifies the extent to which FSIS tracks recent trends in FSIS inspection resources for enforcing HMSA, and (3) evaluates FSIS's efforts to develop a strategy to guide HMSA enforcement. To perform this work we, among other things, conducted a survey of inspectors-in-charge--those responsible for reporting on humane handling enforcement in the plants--from a random sample of inspectors-in-charge at 257 livestock slaughter plants from May 2009 through July 2009. Our sample allowed us to …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. government's reliance on contractors, including the State Department's and Department of Defense's (DOD) use of private security contractors in Iraq, has been well documented. We and others have examined many of the challenges the government faces using contractors in Iraq, including issues related to the scope of private security contractors' activities, the challenges in providing sufficient oversight, the appropriate accountability processes, and difficulties in conducting background screenings of foreign national contractor employees. What has not been so well examined is the comparative cost of using civilian employees or military members versus the cost of using contractors, particularly private security contractors, during contingency operations such as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Generally, when costs have been discussed, the focus has been on the daily rate paid to contractor employees, rather than on the total costs of using State Department or DOD personnel. However, in October 2005, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a study that compared the cost of using military personnel, federal civilians, or contractors to provide logistic support for overseas operations. The study concluded that over a 20-year period, using Army military units would cost roughly 90 …

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Bastrop, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

This report discusses the MultiPollutant approaches to controlling Powerplant emissions regarding Clean Air after the Clean Air Interstate Rule(CAIR) decision.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Drum type packages are routinely used to transport radioactive material (RAM) in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex. These packages are designed to meet the federal regulations described in 10 CFR Part 71. The packages are transported in specially designed vehicles like Safe Secure Transport (SST) for safety and security. In the transport vehicles, the packages are placed close to each other to maximize the number of units in the vehicle. Since the RAM contents in the packagings produce decay heat, it is important that they are spaced sufficiently apart to prevent overheating of the containment vessel (CV) seals and the impact limiter to ensure the structural integrity of the package. This paper presents a simple methodology to assess thermal performance of a typical 9975 packaging in a transport configuration.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Specification 6M packaging was in extensive use for more than 40 years for in-commerce shipments of Type B quantities of fissile and radioactive material (RAM) across the USA, among the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and between facilities in the DOE production complex. In January 2004, the DOT Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) Agency issued a final rule in the Federal Register to ammend requirements in the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) pertaining to the transportation of radioactive materials. The final rule became effective on October 1, 2004. One of those changes discontinued the use of the DOT specification 6M, along with other DOT specification packagings, on October 1, 2008. A main driver for the change was due to the fact that 6M specification packagings were not supported by a Safety Analysis Report for Packagings (SARP) that was compliant with Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 71 (10 CFR 71). The regulatory rules for the discontinued use have been edited in Title 49 of the CFR Parts 100-185, 2004 edition and thereafter. Prior to October 1, 2008, the use of the 6M within the boundaries of the Savannah River Site …

Global deep-penetration transport problems are difficult to solve using traditional Monte Carlo techniques. In these problems, the scalar flux distribution is desired at all points in the spatial domain (global nature), and the scalar flux typically drops by several orders of magnitude across the problem (deep-penetration nature). As a result, few particle histories may reach certain regions of the domain, producing a relatively large variance in tallies in those regions. Implicit capture (also known as survival biasing or absorption suppression) can be used to increase the efficiency of the Monte Carlo transport algorithm to some degree. A hybrid Monte Carlo-deterministic technique has previously been developed by Cooper and Larsen to reduce variance in global problems by distributing particles more evenly throughout the spatial domain. This hybrid method uses an approximate deterministic estimate of the forward scalar flux distribution to automatically generate weight windows for the Monte Carlo transport simulation, avoiding the necessity for the code user to specify the weight window parameters. In a binary stochastic medium, the material properties at a given spatial location are known only statistically. The most common approach to solving particle transport problems involving binary stochastic media is to use the atomic mix (AM) approximation …

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

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

This report examines logistical support contracts for troop support services in Iraq and Afghanistan administered through the U.S. Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). LOGCAP is an initiative designed to manage the use of civilian contractors that perform services during times of war and other military mobilizations.

The United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991; it entered into force in December 1994 and expired in December 2009. This report provides background information about the START Treaty and reviews the discussions about a possible successor to START. It also presents a range of alternatives that the United States and Russia might consider if they choose to follow START with a new framework for the arms control process.

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