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New “fast track” (or, trade promotion) authority (TPA) is at issue in the 107th Congress. Such authority could enable the Administration to submit negotiated foreign trade agreements to Congress for consideration under expedited procedures. Efforts to renew this authority, which expired in 1994, have not succeeded since then. Many agricultural and food industry interests are among the export-oriented enterprises that support TPA, arguing that foreign trading partners will not seriously negotiate with an Administration that lacks it. However, some farm groups argue that fast track ultimately will lead to new agreements that could have adverse effects on U.S. producers, at least in some commodity sectors.

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This report provides information on and analysis of the current situation in Afghanistan, taking into consideration the country’s essential characteristics and political developments since about the time of the overthrow of the last Afghan King, Zahir Shah, in 1973, and sketches out four possible scenarios for Afghanistan’s future. Finally, the report identifies and analyzes factors that will influence Afghanistan’s political future, and discusses three policy areas in particular in which actions by the United States could be crucial to the achievement of the U.S. goal of a peaceful, stable, democratic, and terrorist-free Afghanistan. An appendix contains key documents relating to the December 2001 Bonn Agreement, which is the framework for current efforts to create a stable and democratic Afghanistan.

Trade agreements such asthe NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round agreements have been approved by majority vote of each House of Congress rather than by twothirds vote of the Senate — that is, they have been treated as congressional-executive agreements rather than astreaties. The congressional-executive agreement has been the vehicle for implementingCongress' long-standing policy ofseeking trade benefitsfor the United States through reciprocal trade negotiations. In a succession of statutes, Congress has authorized the President to negotiate and enter into tariff and nontariff barrier (NTB) agreements for limited periods, while mandating that NTB and free trade area agreements negotiated under this authority could enter into force for the United States only if approved by both Houses in a bill enacted into public law and other statutory conditions were met.

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A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Improperly defined intellectual property rights in a government contract can result in the loss of an entity's critical assets or limit the development of applications critical to public health or safety. Conversely, successful contracts can spur economic development, innovation, and growth, and dramatically improve the quality of delivered goods and services. Contracting for intellectual property rights is difficult. The stakes are high, and negotiating positions are frequently ill-defined. Moreover, the concerns raised must be tempered with the understanding that government contracting can be challenging even without the complexities of intellectual property rights. Further, contractors often have reasons for not wanting to contract with the government, including concerns over profitability, capacity, accounting and administrative requirements, and opportunity costs. Within the commercial sector, companies identified a number of specific intellectual property concerns that affected their willingness to contract with the government. These included perceived poor definitions of what technical data is needed by the government, issues with the government's ability to protect proprietary data adequately, and unwillingness on the part of government officials to exercise the flexibilities available concerning intellectual property rights. Some of these concerns were on perception rather …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under welfare reform, American Indian tribes have the option to run Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs either alone or as part of a consortium of other tribes rather than receiving benefits and services from state TANF programs. Because of the difficult economic circumstances on many reservations, the law also gives tribal TANF programs more flexibility to design their programs than it gives to states. Tribes have used various strategies to stimulate economic development; however, unemployment and poverty rates remain high on reservations, and prospects for economic growth are limited. Nationally, the number of American Indian families receiving TANF assistance has declined significantly in recent years. On some reservations, however, caseloads have remained the same or increased. American Indians represent an increasing proportion of the total TANF caseload in some states. To date, 172 tribes, either alone or as part of a consortium, have used the act's flexibility to design and administer their own TANF programs. Tribes face challenges in implementing tribal TANF programs, including a lack of (1) reliable data on the number of American Indian TANF recipients; (2) infrastructure support, such as information systems; and …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Nearly 450,000 elderly and other households depend on federal assistance to live in multifamily rural rental properties that were constructed with subsidized federal loans. Because the properties were built in areas when and where privately financed housing units, affordable by lower income households, were not considered economically feasible, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service (RHS) has made direct loans available to developers of affordable multifamily housing under its section 515 program. RHS has funded many more new properties than the portfolio has lost through prepayment. The number of new properties added to the portfolio exceeded the number that left the program after prepayment in every year except 2001. If the statutory requirement restricting prepayment for loans made before December 1989, were changed to allow prepayment without restrictions after 20 years from the date of the loan, prepayment could be an option for the owners of 3,900 of all section 515 properties over the next eight years. RHS field staff routinely inspect properties, complete and retain detailed descriptions of noted deficiencies, and transmit the summaries of the deficiencies identified to a central database. Only current …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy is required to establish a technology infrastructure pilot program to improve technology partnership activities. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in April 2002, reported that it was unable to implement the technology infrastructure pilot program in fiscal year 2001, because of other programming priorities. NNSA also said that it did not have any immediate plans to implement the pilot program in fiscal year 2002. Although it has not funded the pilot program, NNSA stated that it supports technology partnerships with private entities that fulfill mission requirements and agreed that the "cluster" type of infrastructure that the pilot program would promote is important for its facilities because community and economic development are enhanced."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This letter answers several questions that arose from a recent GAO testimony (GAO-02-528T) on human capital management. GAO discusses (1) early retirement and early separation incentives, (2) expanded management flexibilities, (3) federal financial management, (4) hiring processes, (5) what federal managers must do to motivate and empower their employees, and (6) what the federal government must do to be competitive as an employer of choice."

Concrete and asbestos-containing materials were widely used in DOE building construction in the 1940s and 1950s. Over the years, many of these porous materials have been contaminated with radioactive sources, on and below the surface. To improve current practice in identifying hazardous materials and in characterizing radioactive contamination, an interdisciplinary team from Rensselaer has conducted research in two aspects: (1) to develop terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and imaging system that can be used to analyze environmental samples such as asbestos in the field, and (2) to develop algorithms for characterizing the radioactive contamination depth profiles in real-time in the field using gamma spectroscopy. The basic research focused on the following: (1) mechanism of generating of broadband pulsed radiation in terahertz region, (2) optimal free-space electro-optic sampling for asbestos, (3) absorption and transmission mechanisms of asbestos in THz region, (4) the role of asbestos sample conditions on the temporal and spectral distributions, (5) real-time identification and mapping of asbestos using THz imaging, (7) Monte Carlo modeling of distributed contamination from diffusion of radioactive materials into porous concrete and asbestos materials, (8) development of unfolding algorithms for gamma spectroscopy, and (9) portable and integrated spectroscopy systems for field testing in DOE. Final results …

The objective of this work was to characterize the physical properties (rheology and calorimetry) of actual tank wastes at various stages of the River Protection Project treatment process.

Savannah River Site has received approval from SCDHEC for disposal of radioactively contaminated equipment with lead shielding or counterweights. The objective of this analysis was to document the technical basis for the administrative limit of 100,000 pounds approved by SCDHEC under alternative disposal strategies.

The use of long shaft vertical pumps is common practice in the nuclear waste processing industry. Unfortunately, when such pumps employ plain cylindrical journal bearings, they tend to suffer from rotordynamic instability problems due to the inherent lightly-loaded condition that the vertical orientation places on the bearings. This paper describes a case study in which the authors utilized rotordynamic analysis and experimental vibration analysis to diagnose such a problem and designed replacement tilting-pad bearings to solve the problem.

During the 2001 Fiscal year, funds from the DOE Matching Grant Program, along with matching funds from the industrial sponsors have been used to support both research (in the area of thermal-hydraulics) and educational missions. Experimental research has been performed in the area of axial offset anomaly in pressurized water reactors. Numerical research has also been performed in the area of multi-fluid modeling of two-phase flow. Details of activities in these two areas are given below. As for the educational component, funds were used to support the Georgia Tech Nuclear and Radiological Engineering (NRE) Scholarship Program. This Scholarship Program has allowed Georgia Tech to substantially increase the freshman class size and to populate it with outstanding students.

An estimated 330 metric tons of uranium have been buried in the radioactive waste Subsurface Disposal Area (SDA) at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). An assessment of uranium transport parameters is being performed to decrease the uncertainty in risk and dose predictions derived from computer simulations of uranium fate and transport to the underlying Snake River Plain Aquifer. Uranium adsorption isotherms have been measured in the laboratory and fit with a Freundlich isotherm. The Freundlich n parameter was statistically identical for 14 sediment samples. The Freundlich Kf for seven samples, where material properties have been measured, is correlated to sediment surface area. Based on these empirical observations, a model has been derived for adsorption of uranium on INEEL sedimentary materials using surface complexation theory. The model was then used to predict the range of adsorption conditions to be expected at the SDA. Adsorption in the deep vadose zone is predicted to be stronger than in near-surface sediments because the total dissolved carbonate decreases with depth.

The concept for the system described herein is an active/passive Nuclear Materials Identification System{sup 2} (NMIS) that incorporates gamma ray spectrometry{sup 3}. This incorporation of gamma ray spectrometry would add existing capability into this system. This Multiple Attribute System can determine a wide variety of attributes for Pu and highly enriched uranium (HEU) of which a selected subset could be chosen. This system can be built using commercial off the shelf (COTS) components. NMIS systems are at All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) and Russian Federal Nuclear Center Institute of Technical Physics, (VNIITF) and measurements with Pu have been performed at VNIIEF and analyzed successfully for mass and thickness of Pu. NMIS systems are being used successfully for HEU at the Y-12 National Security Complex. The use of active gamma ray spectrometry for high explosive HE and chemical agent detection is a well known activation analysis technique, and it is incorporated here. This report describes the system, explains the attribute determination methods for fissile materials, discusses technical issues to be resolved, discusses additional development needs, presents a schedule for building from COTS components, and assembly with existing components, and discusses implementation issues such as lack of need for …