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This report discusses issues involving fruits and vegetables in Congress, including food safety, Farm Bills, and trade issues.

This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

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Among the current issues in U.S.-Egyptian relations are the shared concerns over the terrorist attacks against Egyptian police, religious, government, and tourist facilities, and what those attacks maysignal for Egypt’s domestic stability. The two nations may disagree over Egypt’s interpretation of applying human rights practices to Islamic terrorists. The two countries disagree over the speed and depth, but not the need for some of Egypt’s economic reforms. Egypt and the United States agree on the importance of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the need to continue current Arab-Israel peace talks, and the need for regional stability. The two nations agree on Egypt’s determination to introduce democratic reforms to Egypt.

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.

Weekly student newspaper from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Rio Grande City, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

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

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is responsible for implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the use of chemical weapons and requires their elimination. The United States and other member states have raised concerns that a number of management weaknesses may prevent the organization from fulfilling its mandate. As requested, GAO assessed the accuracy of the organization's budget and the impact of budget shortfalls on program activities. GAO also reviewed efforts to improve the organization's budget planning."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO was asked by the Department of Defense (DOD) to identify ways to improve DOD's availability of high-quality spare parts for aircraft, ships, vehicles, and weapons systems. DOD's recent reports do not provide an accurate and complete picture of spare parts funding as required by financial management regulation. As a result, the reports do not provide Congress with reasonable assurance about the amount of funds being spent on spare parts. Furthermore, the reports are of limited use to Congress as it makes decisions on how best to spend resources to reduce spare parts shortages and improve military readiness."

Weekly newspaper published in Duncanville, Texas that includes local Cedar Hill, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.

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

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

This is the ninth Quarterly Technical Report for DOE Cooperative Agreement No: DE-FC26-00NT40753. The goal of the project is to develop cost effective analysis tools and techniques for demonstrating and evaluating low NOx control strategies and their possible impact on boiler performance for firing US coals. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is providing cofunding for this program. This program contains multiple tasks and good progress is being made on all fronts. Various subsystems of BYU's Catalyst Characterization System (CCS) were upgraded this quarter. Work on the CCS hardware and software will continue in the coming quarter. A preliminary test matrix of poisoning experiments in the CCS has been drafted that will explore the effects of at least three poisons: sodium, potassium and calcium. During this quarter, we attempted to resolve discrepancies in previous in situ measurements of catalyst sulfation. Modifications were made to the XPS analysis procedure that allowed analyses of uncrushed samples. Although the XPS and FTIR results are now more consistent in that both indicate that the surface is sulfating (unlike the results reported last quarter), they disagree with respect to which species sulfates. The CEM system for the multi-catalyst slipstream reactor arrived this quarter. Minor modifications …

The current work continues a project completed in 1999 by ReMaxCo Technologies in which a novel, microwave based, VLS Silicon Carbide Fibrils concept was verified. This project continues the process development of a pilot scale commercial reactor. Success will lead to sufficient quantities of fibrils to expand work by ORNL and others on heat exchanger tube development. A semi-continuous, microwave heated, vacuum reactor was designed, fabricated and tested in these experiments. Cylindrical aluminum oxide reaction boats are coated, on the inner surface, with a catalyst and placed into the reactor under a light vacuum. A series of reaction boats are then moved, one at a time, through the reactor. Each boat is first preheated with resistance heaters to 850 C to 900 C. Each reaction boat is then moved, in turn, to the microwave heated section. The catalyst is heated to the required temperature of 1200 C to 1300 C while a mixture of MTS (methyl trichlorosilane) and hydrogen are introduced into the annulus of the boat. The MTS is dissociated to allow the carbon and silicon components to be dissolved into the catalyst. The catalyst saturates and precipitates silicon carbide onto the surface of the reaction boat to grow …

This fifth quarterly technical report discusses the progress made on a machine vision technique for determining coal content and ore grades. Recent work has been devoted to implementing new hardware and examining defects in titanium sponge, a new application for the machine vision system. With the improvements in hardware and software, the data collection is much improved. Early results from data taken on titanium sponge defects indicate that some defects will be relatively easy to identify, but others will be much more difficult. Consequently, additional work is required with software algorithms for target recognition. Ongoing work will be divided into several fronts, which include data collection and analysis, improving the target recognition capabilities, and improving the electronic interface.

Micro-SRIXE (synchrotron-radiation-induced X-ray emission) and micro-XAS (X-ray absorption spectroscopy) were used to probe the uptake of exogenous metals by cells. The high flux and the sub-micron resolution of the hard X-ray microprobe, offer the experimenter the ability to obtain highly sensitive spatial and structural information of cellular elements. In this work the uptake of carcinogenic Cr(VI) was compared with that of a relatively non-toxic Cr(III) complex by micro-SRIXE mapping of whole cells. High intracellular Cr concentrations were observed in Cr(VI)-treated cells, while no significant Cr uptake was observed for Cr(III)-treated cells, as is consistent with uptake studies performed by other techniques. Micro-XANES analysis of Cr(V)- and Cr(VI)-treated cells showed that the predominant oxidation product following cellular metabolism was Cr(III). As shown by X-ray microscopic analysis of thin-sectioned cells, however, the reduction of Cr(VI) to Cr(III) did not occur at a fast enough rate to exclude Cr entry into the cell nucleus.

The Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) conducted four reflectance and thermal vicarious calibrations for the MTI satellite at Ivanpah Playa, California since July 2000. The vicarious reflectance campaigns held on July and September 2000 were a joint effort between SRTC and the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) of the University of Arizona. The campaign conducted on May 2001 at Ivanpah Playa and Roach Lake was a joint effort between SRTC and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). An additional campaign was conducted on March 2002. The results presented here are a summary of our reflectance and thermal campaigns and interpretation of the satellite imagery.

The electron cooling project requires a high current electron beam with high reliability to provide the consistent cooling required by Fermilab's physics program. We are using a 5URE-2 Pelletron to provide this beam. The program is developing a high current DC recirculating electron beam with high recovery efficiency. The present layout uses 2 sets of tubes with acceleration, a 180{sup o} bend, and deceleration for a total of about 10 meters of beam line. The project's nominal operating parameters are .5 A at 4.3 MeV with the emission cathode immersed in a 200-600 G magnetic field.

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