This report discusses issues for Congress regarding foreign policy toward Iran. According to the Administration’s “National Security Strategy” document released on March 16, 2006, the United States “may face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran.”

This report provides background on U.S. civil aviation agreements, updates the current status of U.S. “Open Skies” negotiations with the EU, and addresses the status of the legal debate concerning both the foreign ownership and control rules and the cabotage laws.

The potential of terrorist attacks against agricultural targets (agroterrorism) is increasingly recognized as a national security threat, especially after the events of September 11, 2001. This report focuses primarily on biological weapons (rather than chemical weapons) because biological weapons generally are considered the more potent agroterrorism threat. This report also focuses more on the threat of agroterrorism against agricultural production, rather than on food processing and distribution, although the latter is discussed.

This report discusses the debate over U.S. policy toward Iran, much of which has centered on the nature of the current regime. Some experts believe that Iran, a country of almost 70 million people, is a threat to U.S. interests because hardliners in Iran’s regime dominate and set a policy direction intended to challenge U.S. influence and allies in the region. President Bush, in his January 29, 2002, State of the Union message, labeled Iran part of an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea.

Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not identified any terrorist acts targeting agricultural production (i.e., agroterrorism) in the United States to date, the events of September 11, 2001 have awakened the nation to their possibility. Some experts estimate that a single agroterrorist attack using a highly contagious livestock disease could cost between $10 billion and $30 billion to the U.S. economy. This report addresses the use of biological weapons against agriculture, rather than the threat of terrorists using agricultural inputs for other purposes. It also focuses more on agricultural production than food processing and distribution.

According to an Administration national security strategy document released on March 16, 2006, the United States "may face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran." The Bush Administration announced May 31, 2006, that it would negotiate with Iran in concert with U.S. allies. If diplomacy and sanctions do not succeed, some advocate military action against Iran's nuclear infrastructure rather than acquiescence to a nuclear-armed Iran. U.S. concerns regarding Iran include Iran's nuclear program, Iran's influence on Iraq by way of providing arms and other material assistance to Shiite Islamist militias, and Iran's human rights practices, which include strict limits on free expression and repression of ethnic and religious minorities.

The potential of terrorist attacks against agricultural targets (agroterrorism) is increasingly recognized as a national security threat, especially after the events of September 11, 2001. Agroterrorism is a subset of bioterrorism, and is defined as the deliberate introduction of an animal or plant disease with the goal of generating fear, causing economic losses, and/or undermining social stability. This report outlines the probable strategic reasoning behind agroterrorism, the vulnerabilities of the agriculture industry, and the funding and legislation behind several preventive Congressional measures.

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.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Between 1998 and 2004, Congress appropriated over $1.2 billion to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) for the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. The campaign aimed to prevent the initiation of or curtail the use of drugs among the nation's youth. In 2005, Westat, Inc., completed a multiyear national evaluation of the campaign. GAO has been mandated to review various aspects of the campaign, including Westat's evaluation which is the subject of this report. Applying generally accepted social science research standards, GAO assessed (1) how Westat provided credible support for its findings and Westat's findings about (2) attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of youth and parents toward drug use and (3) youth self-reported drug use."

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This report supplies brief answers to some frequently asked questions regarding recess appointments. When the Senate is in recess, the President may make a temporary appointment, called a recess appointment, to any such position without Senate approval (Article II, Section 2, Clause 3).

Previous analyses in which flavor SU(3) was used to constrain the coefficients of sin {Delta}mt and cos {Delta}mt in the time-dependent CP asymmetries of B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}'K{sub S} and B{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup 0} K{sub S} are updated using new rate measurements of B{sup 0} decays into {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}, {pi}{sup 0},{eta}, {pi}{sup 0}{eta}', {eta}{eta}, {eta}{eta}', {eta}'{eta}' and K{sup +}K{sup -}.

Determine feasibility of using an incineration-type device to accomplish the required reduction in vent steam H{sub 2}S content to meet ICAPCO rules. This approach is to be the only method considered in this feasibility study.

Rotating mirror cameras have been the mainstay of mega-frame per second imaging for decades. There is still no electronic camera that can match a film based rotary mirror camera for the combination of frame count, speed, resolution and dynamic range. The rotary mirror cameras are predominantly used in the range of 0.1 to 100 micro-seconds per frame, for 25 to more than a hundred frames. Electron tube gated cameras dominate the sub microsecond regime but are frame count limited. Video cameras are pushing into the microsecond regime but are resolution limited by the high data rates. An all solid state architecture, dubbed ''In-situ Storage Image Sensor'' or ''ISIS'', by Prof. Goji Etoh, has made its first appearance into the market and its evaluation is discussed. Recent work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has concentrated both on evaluation of the presently available technologies and exploring the capabilities of the ISIS architecture. It is clear though there is presently no single chip camera that can simultaneously match the rotary mirror cameras, the ISIS architecture has the potential to approach their performance.

Twin City Die Castings Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Twin City Die Castings Company was awarded project No. DE-FG36-05GO15097 to perform plant wide assessments of ten (10) die casting facilities that produce zinc and magnesium alloy castings in order to determine improvements and potential cost savings in energy use. Mr. Heider filled the role of team leader for the project and utilized the North American Die Casting Association (NADCA) to conduct audits at team participant plants so as to hold findings specific to each plant proprietary. The intended benefits of the project were to improve energy use through higher operational and process efficiency for the plants assessed. An improvement in energy efficiency of 5 – 15% was targeted. The primary objectives of the project was to: 1) Expand an energy and technology tool developed by the NADCA under a previous DOE project titled, “Energy and Technology Assessment for Die Casting Plants” for assessing aluminum die casting plants to be more specifically applicable to zinc and magnesium die casting facilities. 2) Conduct ten (10) assessments of zinc and magnesium die casting plants, within eight (8) companies, utilizing the assessment tool to identify, evaluate and recommend opportunities to enhance energy efficiency, minimize waste, …

In planning for long-duration spaceflight, it will beimportant to accurately model the exposure of astronauts to heavy ions inthe Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR). As part of an ongoing effort to improveheavy-ion transport codes that will be used in designing futurespacecraft and habitats, fragmentation cross sections of 28Si have beenmeasured using beams with extracted energies from 290A MeV to 1200A MeV,spanning most of the peak region of the energy distribution of siliconions in the GCR. Results were obtained for six elemental targets:hydrogen, carbon, aluminum, copper, tin, and lead. The charge-changingcross sections are found to be energy-independent within the experimentaluncertainties, except for those on the hydrogen target. Cross sectionsfor the heaviest fragments are found to decrease slightly with increasingenergy for lighter targets, but increase with energy for tin and leadtargets. The cross sections are compared to previous measurements atsimilar energies, and to predictions of the NUCFRG2 model used by NASA toevaluate radiation exposures in flight. For charge-changing crosssections, reasonable agreement is found between the present experimentand those of Webber, et al. and Flesch, et al., and NUCFRG2 agrees withthe data to within 3 percent in most cases. Fragment cross sections showless agreement between experiments, and there are substantial differencesbetween NUCFRG2 predictions andthe …

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The 100-F-33, 146-F Aquatice Biology Fish Ponds waste site was an area with six small rectangular ponds and one large circular pond used to conduct tests on fish using various mixtures of river and reactor effluent water. The current site conditions achieve the remedial action objectives specified in the Remaining Sites ROD. The results of verification and applicable confirmatory sampling show that residual contaminant concentrations do not preclude any future uses and allow for unrestricted use of shallow zone soils. The results also demonstrate that residual contaminant concentrations are protective of groundwater and the Columbia River.

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A second phase of a highfield dipole technology developmenthas been tested. A Nb3Sn block-coil model dipole was fabricated, usingmagnetic mirror geometry and wind/react coil technology. The primaryobjective of this phase was to make a first experimental test of thestress-management strategy pioneered at Texas A&M. In this strategy ahigh-strength support matrix is integrated with the windings to interceptLorentz stress from the inner winding so that it does not accumulate inthe outer winding. The magnet attained a field that was consistent withshort sample limit on the first quench; there was no training. Thedecoupling of Lorentz stress between inner and outer windings wasvalidated. In ramp rate studies the magnet exhibited a remarkablerobustness in rapid ramping operation. It reached 85 percent of shortsample(ss) current even while ramping 2-3 T/s. This robustness isattributed to the orientation of the Rutherford cables parallel to thefield in the windings, instead of the transverse orientation thatcharacterizes common dipole designs. Test results are presented and thenext development phase plans are discussed.