"International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. An international day to celebrate freshwater was recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day. Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater. UN-Water is dedicating World Water Day 2010 to the theme of water quality, reflecting its importance alongside quantity of the resource in water management. The World Water Day 2010 and its campaign is envisaged to:

• Raise awareness about sustaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being through addressing the increasing water quality challenges in water management and
  
• Raise the profile of water quality by encouraging governments, organizations, communities, and individuals around the world to actively engage in proactively addressing water quality e.g. in pollution prevention, clean up and restoration,"

News release: Ceres has released the 21st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap to Sustainability as a vision and practical roadmap for integrating sustainability into the DNA of business—from the boardroom to the copy room. It analyzes the drivers, risks and opportunities involved in making the shift to sustainability, and details strategies and results from companies who are taking on these challenges. This Roadmap is designed to provide a comprehensive platform for sustainable business strategy and for accelerating best practices and performance....It calls for significant performance improvements from companies by 2020. Among the report's 20 key expectations for companies:

• make energy efficiency and renewable energy the foundation for company operations;
  
• design and implement closed-loop systems so that air and wastewater emissions are eliminated and zero waste is produced;
  
• require 75 percent of top tier suppliers to meet company sustainability performance standards;
  
• dedicate 50 percent of R&D investment to developing sustainability solutions;
  
• compensate and provide incentives for top executives and other employees to drive sustainability into the business."

Oversight of the National Organic Program, Report No: 01601-03-HY, Issued March 2010

A Very Inconvenient Truth, By Charles H. Greene, D. James Baker, and Daniel H. Miller. Oceanography March 2010 Vol.23, No.1

News release: "U.S. businesses spent $1.38 trillion on new and used structures and equipment in 2008, of which $1.29 trillion, or 93.7 percent, was spent on new structures and equipment, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These figures were nearly the same in 2007. These findings come from the Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES), which measures capital investment in new and used structures and equipment by nonfarm businesses. The data for 2008, as in all years ending in “3” or “8,” provide additional information for companies with employees by types of structures and equipment (i.e., machinery, furniture and computers)."

Broken Politics, Issues in Governance Studies | Number 33. Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution: "With numerous examples over an extended period of broken politics leading to broken policies, we need to think about ways to reform our political system in ways that enhance our capacity for innovation, leadership, coalition-building, problem-solving, and implementation. We have to understand that failed governance is a problem for people of all political persuasions. While certain elements achieve short-term advantage from gridlock, stalemate, and hyper-partisanship, the system as a whole suffers and Americans grow more cynical. We must get serious about improving institutional performance, administrative infrastructure, and governance processes if we wish to address our policy problems."

"Making the Most of Social Media is written for local governments—cities, counties, townships and their affiliates—that are beginning to experiment with social media and would like to get more out of them. Its emphasis is on the use of specific applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, by government managers and communications directors. More than two dozen “early adopters” were interviewed for this report. Their experiences offer some lessons to local governments about what sorts of tools social media offer, how to integrate them into a busy office, and how to use them creatively to be more effective...Social media command a large and fast-increasing audience. Half of American adults have used at least one of these services, up from just 8% four years ago. Social media users still tend to be young but are growing more representative of the general population each year, and the majority of all adult users are now over the age of 35. These users are creating and sharing a tremendous amount of information: 500 million pieces of content on Facebook every day and 200,000 new blog posts on the Wordpress platform alone. In sum, a broad cross-section of Americans have moved to social media sites in the past half decade and this trend is still accelerating. Social media applications are now main stream."

The Cost of Failure to Enact Health Reform: 2010 - 2020 (Updated). Bowen Garrett, Matthew Buettgens, Lan Doan, Irene Headen, John Holahan, March 15, 2010

News release: "The Judicial Conference of the United States approved key steps to improve public access to federal courts by increasing the availability of court opinions and expanding the services and reducing the costs for many users of the Public Access to Electronic Court Records (PACER) system. At its biannual meeting in Washington, D.C., the Conference voted to:

• Allow courts, at the discretion of the presiding judge, to make digital audio recordings of court hearings available online to the public through PACER, for $2.40 per audio file.
  
• Adjust the Electronic Public Access fee schedule so that users are not billed unless they accrue charges of more than $10 of PACER usage in a quarterly billing cycle, in effect quadrupling the amount of data available without charge. Currently, users are not billed until their accounts total at least $10 in a one-year period.
  
• Approve a pilot in up to 12 courts to publish federal district and bankruptcy court opinions via the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) so members of the public can more easily search across opinions and across courts."

Bloomberg: "The Federal Reserve Board must disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever, a federal appeals court said. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled today that the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched primarily after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The ruling upholds a decision of a lower-court judge, who in August ordered that the information be released."

UK TimesOnline: "Hitwise, the internet industry tracker, announced that Facebook had dethroned Google as the world’s most popular website. For the week ending March 13, the social networking site set up by wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg got more traffic than Google in America. It was a milestone likely to be revisited as Facebook and Google limber up for what looks set to be this decade’s defining technology battle."

Danny Werfel, Controller, March 18, 2010 - Update on the Financial Systems Integration Office

The Crisis, Alan Greenspan, Second Draft: March 9, 2010

News release: "Federal Trade Commission staff has filed comments with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) supporting a measure designed to protect consumers from deceptive claims and to help them make better-informed decisions about whether to obtain a reverse mortgage. Reverse mortgages, typically available only to borrowers age 62 or older, allow them to “spend down” the equity in their home while they live there. A reverse mortgage is a home-secured loan that becomes due when the homeowner moves, sells the home, dies, or fails to meet loan terms such as paying property tax or homeowners insurance. Although reverse mortgages have assisted many elderly consumers in drawing on the equity in their homes, some consumers may not fully understand these complex products or may be deceived by advertising claims made about them."

U.S. Economic and Social Trends Since 2000 by Linda A. Jacobsen and Mark Mather (February 2010)