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In January 2005, Viktor Yushchenko became Ukraine’s new President, after massive demonstrations helped to overturn the former regime’s electoral fraud, in what has been dubbed the “Orange Revolution,” after Yushchenko’s campaign color? The “Orange Revolution” has sparked a great deal of interest in Congress and elsewhere. Some hope that Ukraine may finally embark on a path of comprehensive reforms and Euro-Atlantic integration after nearly 15 years of half-measures and false starts. Others are interested in the geopolitical implications of a pro-Western Ukraine in the former Soviet region and in relations between Russia and the West. Some analysts detect a new wave of democracy sweeping the post-Soviet region.

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In 2003, 12.3 million children lived in families with incomes below the poverty line (a 17.2% child poverty rate). Research has shown that poverty can have negative consequences on a child’s development. Children depend upon their parents for support, and most of the recent policy attention has focused on initiatives to move poor parents (mostly single mothers) from welfare to work and on reducing welfare dependency.

Wetlands, in a wide variety of forms, are found throughout the country. The various values of these areas have been increasingly recognized in recent years, but the remaining acreage has been disappearing rapidly. When European settlers first arrived, total wetland acreage was more than 220 million acres in the lower 48 states, according to estimates by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1980, total wetland acreage was estimated to be 104 million acres. Losses continue, although the rate of loss hasslowed considerably during the past decade. Recent losses have been concentrated in the lower Mississippi River Valley, the upper Midwest, and the Southeast.