The African Development Bank Group, including the Bank itself (AfDB) and its "soft-loan" affiliate, the African Development Fund (AfDF), is a development finance institution based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. The Bank has 53 African members, as well as 24 non-regional members, including the United States. In the mid-1990s, the Bank faced management problems and difficulties arising from non-performing loans, but reforms launched in 1995 by a new Bank president, Omar Kabbaj, brought new pledges of support from the non-regionals. U.S. contributions to the Bank resumed in FY2000. This report will be updated as events warrant.

This report considers the fall in agricultural exports between 1996 and 1999 in the United States. To solve this issue, much of the debate surrounds changing U.S. trade policies. The problem with this solution is that countries have not always honored existing trade agreements.

This report discusses aircraft noise regulations as they relate to hushkits, which is a combination of strategies designed to reduce aircraft noise. These strategies can include new technologies, redesigned engine enclosures, replacement engine components, entirely new engines, or a combination of any of the above. This report dicusses the new EU regulation limiting hushkitted commercial jet aircraft in the EU, the United States' response to this regulation, and the effect this could have on international air travel relations.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Treasury, Postal Service, Executive Office of the President, and General Government.

Proposals for a two-year budget cycle have previously been reported in the Senate in 1988, 1990, 1994, and 1997. Another such proposal, S. 92, was reported by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on March 10, 1999 (S.Rept. 106-12). S. 92 calls for the House and Senate to use the first year of each Congress to consider a two-year budget resolution and two-year appropriation bills, and the second year to consider multiyear authorizations and conduct oversight. More recently, biennial budgeting has also been a topic of interest in the House where the Rules Committee conducted a series of hearings on February 16, March 10, and March 16, 2000.

This report examines military airstrikes and ground operations that Russia launched against its Chechnya region in late September 1999. It provides background information on earlier Chechen guerrilla attacks on the neighboring Dagestan region of Russia and on the unsolved terrorist bombing of several apartment buildings in Russia. Current problems of governance in Chechnya are discussed, as well as Chechnya’s response to the Russian offensive. The concerns of the United States and other Western governments about the conflict are examined. A map is included. This report supersedes CRS Report RS20358, Chechnya Conflict.

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Farmers enrolling their land in the Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) receive payments for refraining from farming their property and for engaging in certain conservation practices mandated by the Department of Agriculture. These payments are described in the contract with the Department of Agriculture as "rental payments." Farmers would like to treat the income as "rental income" because it would not be subject to self-employment taxes, but the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) insists that under certain conditions, the payments are income from the trade or business of farming and thus subject to self-employment taxes.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enacted in 1985, enables producers to retire highly erodible or environmentally sensitive cropland, usually for 10 years. Congress reauthorized and amended the CRP in the 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act (P.L. 104-127; 16 U.S.C. 3811, et seq.). The law caps enrollment at 36.4 million acres and makes funding mandatory through the commodity Credit Corporation.

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The Administration initiative to shift federal emergency management policy away from a "response and recovery" emphasis has generated little congressional controversy, although some have raised concerns about the cost effectiveness of implementing a mitigation strategy. Greater attention, it is generally argued, should be given to mitigation (loss reduction) efforts before disasters occur in order to reduce future losses. Legislation (H.R. 707, S. 1691) pending before the 106th Congress would amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act) which authorizes federal assistance when the President declares that a catastrophe has overwhelmed state and local resources.

This report talks about Electricity regulation and transmission issues. It also includes the history of the California Electricity Crisis.

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A general tax cut (H.R. 2488), costing $792 billion over 10 years, was vetoed in September 1999. A more narrowly focused bill (H.R. 1180) extending certain expiring provisions was adopted in December. Several tax proposals have been or are likely to be considered in 2000. The largest of these was marriage penalty legislation (H.R. 6 and S. 2346). Tax provisions are also included in health care legislation and minimum wage legislation; the latter passed the House on March 9 and included distressed communities legislation and a repeal of the installment sales provision included in the extenders bill. A number of separate tax bills are also under consideration. The general tax cut proposal included across-the-board tax cuts, benefits for married couples, phase-out of the alternative minimum tax, a reduction in capital gains taxes, a phase-out of the estate tax and provisions relating to education and health.

The report describes provisions of House rules that pertain to hearings, and citations to these rules are included for reference.

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This report will discuss the Supreme Court's decision, subsequent lower court decisions, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) letter, and selected legislation.

The Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) was the source of $18 billion of oil and natural gas during 1998. This amounted to 25% of the nation's natural gas production and nearly 20% of the nation's crude oil. Nearly all of this output comes from the Central and Western Gulf of Mexico, where supporting infrastructure is already in place and there is little environmental opposition. Except for one sale in Alaska, no leases have been auctioned since 1991 in any other OCS region. The deep waters off Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas are the current focus of producer interest in the OCS.

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On December 17, 1999, President Clinton signed the Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999 (H.R. 1180; P.L. 106-170). This Act contained revenue provisions extending several popular tax benefits such as the work opportunity tax credit, the welfare to work tax credit, and the applicability of the nonrefundable personal tax credits to the individual alternative minimum tax. To pay for the extension of these tax benefits the Act also included several tax changes that increased revenue. Among these revenue offset provisions was a modification and limitation on the use of the installment method of reporting asset sales for taxpayers who normally use the accrual method of accounting.

A number of legislative proposals to restructure or eliminate the Department of Energy (DOE) and the DOE laboratories have been introduced since the end of the Cold War, especially since the beginning of the 104th Congress. This legislation has been introduced because of perceived major problems with DOE, including its overall mission. Sponsors state, for example, that about 85% of DOE's budget is for non-energy programs, even though the nation's dependency on foreign energy sources has increased since the establishment of the department. Also of concern is the department's failure to go far enough, in their view, in solving its long-term management problems, downsizing, and reducing budgets.