Africa's Great Lakes region is slowly becoming more stable after almost a decade of conflicts. The region remains vulnerable, however, since armed rebel groups are active in eastern Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and northern Uganda. This report discusses conflicts in these areas in detail, as well as U.S.-led efforts to reach peaceful resolutions.

None

This is one report in the series of reports that discuss the campaign finance practices and related issues. Concerns over financing federal elections have become a seemingly perennial aspect of our political system, centered on the enduring issues of high campaign costs and reliance on interest groups for needed campaign funds. The report talks about the today’s paramount issues such as perceived loopholes in current law and the longstanding issues: overall costs, funding sources, and competition.

The 108th Congress has acted on a variety of disparate environmental measures; some of these represent proposals or issues that had been under consideration in the 107th Congress and earlier. Environmental issues considered by Congress tend to fall into several major categories: (1) funding issues — whether funding levels are adequate and focused on appropriate priorities; (2) expanding, renewing, or refocusing specific environment programs; (3) environmental issues that are important “subsets” of other major areas of concern, such as energy, defense, or transportation programs; and more recently, (4) terrorism and infrastructure protection in areas such as wastewater and chemical facilities.

None

None

None

None

None

None

None

Title I, Part A, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) authorizes federal aid to local educational agencies (LEAs) for the education of disadvantaged children. Title I-A grants provide supplementary educational and related services to low-achieving and other pupils attending schools with relatively high concentrations of pupils from low-income families in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. Title I-A is the largest federal elementary and secondary education assistance program, with services provided to (a) over 90% of all LEAs; (b) approximately 45,000 (58% of all) public schools; and (c) approximately 11 million (22% of all) pupils, including approximately 167,000 pupils attending private schools. Four-fifths of all pupils served are in pre-kindergarten through grade 6, while only 5% of pupils served are in grades 10-12.

None

None

None

None

On September 4th, 2005 Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Leavitt declared a federal public health emergency for Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Texas, and waived certain requirements under Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to allow health care providers in affected areas to care for patients without violating certain provisions of those laws. The Secretary waived sanctions and penalties arising from noncompliance with certain provisions of the HIPAA privacy regulations.

In FY2005, six states faced the prospect of running out of federal funds in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This was the first time since the program’s creation in 1997 that multiple states faced such a shortfall. The shortfalls were avoided by the redistribution of funds from other states’ original SCHIP allotments that had not been spent by the end of the three-year period of availability. To address this, the reconciliation proposal approved by the Senate Finance Committee would reduce the period of availability for original allotments from three years to two.

None

This report covers recent events in Liberia and related U.S. policy. In 2003, Liberia began a post-conflict transition process to achieve enduring peace, socio-economic reconstruction and democratic governance.

This report discusses the Domain Name System (DNS), which is the distributed set of databases residing in computers around the world that contain address numbers mapped to corresponding domain names, making it possible to send and receive messages and to access information from computers anywhere on the Internet.

This report presents perspectives on African economic trends and provides an overview of U.S. trade and investment flows with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It discusses the provisions of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the changes that have occurred since its enactment. It concludes with a brief discussion of issues of congressional interest.

This report provides an overview of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and describes its background, objectives, and structure, including the role of the Convention's monitoring body, the CEDAW Committee. It examines U.S. policy and issues in the U.S. ratification debate, including the Convention's possible impact on U.S. sovereignty, its effectiveness in combating discrimination, and its role as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy.

The recent financial crisis contained a number of systemic risk episodes, or episodes that caused instability for large parts of the financial system. The lesson some policymakers have taken from this crisis is that a systemic risk or "macroprudential" regulator is needed to prevent similar episodes in the future. This report defines the potential duties and responsibilities of a systemic risk regulator, relating those duties to events that potentially contributed to the recent crisis. It then identifies the powers that would need to be given to a regulator to perform those duties, and compares those powers and responsibilities to the Fed's existing powers and responsibilities. It discusses advantages and disadvantages of giving those responsibilities to the Fed or the executive branch. The report also includes a brief overview of major elements of the Administration's proposal, H.R. 4173, which passed the House on December 11, 2009, and the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, which was ordered to be reported out of the Senate Banking Committee on March 22, 2010.