10 Years After Bonn, Human Rights Situation Remains Critical: “The Afghan government and its allies abroad have failed to make human rights a top priority in the decade since the fall of the Taliban government, leaving Afghans to face an uncertain future, Human Rights Watch said today. The Bonn Agreement, signed on December 5, 2001, created a transitional government under President Hamid Karzai and laid the groundwork for elections and a new Afghan constitution…Human rights, and in particular womens rights, were cited as a key benefit of the defeat of Taliban rule in 2001, said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. But ten years later, many basic rights are still ignored or downplayed. While there have been improvements, the rights situation is still dominated by poor governance, lack of rule of law, impunity for militias and police, laws and policies that harm women, and conflict-related abuses.
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Daily Archives: December 4, 2011
Audit of Retention Incentives For Veterans Health Administration and VA Central Office Employees
Department of Veterans Affairs Audit of Retention Incentives for Veterans Health Administration and VA Central Office Employees, November 14, 2011 “VA uses retention incentives to retain employees in hard-to-fill positions and employees who possess high-level or unique qualifications the Department does not want to lose. In FY 2010, VA paid nearly $111 million in retention… Continue Reading
Economic Freedom of North America 2011
Economic Freedom of North America 2011 – Nathan J. Ashby, Avilia Bueno, and Fred McMahon with Deborah Martinez, November 2011. Fraser Institute. “The index published in Economic Freedom of North America rates economic freedom on a 10-point scale at two levels, the subnational and the all-government. At the all government level, the index captures the… Continue Reading
Report – Resource Adequacy Implications of Forthcoming EPA Air Quality Regulations
Resource Adequacy Implications of Forthcoming EPA Air Quality Regulations, December 2011 “This report presents the results of an independent assessment by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) of the adequacy of U.S. electric generation resources under air pollution regulations being finalized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This report does not estimate the economic… Continue Reading
IMF – How Costly Are Debt Crises?
How Costly Are Debt Crises? Davide Furceri and Aleksandra Zdzienicka, December 01, 2011 “The aim of this paper is to assess the short- and medium-term impact of debt crises on GDP. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1970 to 2008, the paper shows that debt crises produce significant and long-lasting output losses, reducing… Continue Reading
Numbers of Doctorates Awarded in the United States Declined in 2010
Numbers of Doctorates Awarded in the United States Declined in 2010, by Mark K. Fiegener, November 2011, National Science Foundation. “U.S. academic institutions awarded 48,069 research doctorates in 2010, down from 49,554 awards in 2009 and the first decline in doctorates awarded since 2002. The 2010 decline was magnified by the recent reclassification of many… Continue Reading
NIST Cloud Computing Program
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service,… Continue Reading
Harvard Law/Computer Scientist Declares PCs Dead
“The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared in the Nov. 30 edition of the Technology Review – The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don’t merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we’re seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on… Continue Reading
The EPA Food Recovery Initiative and the WasteWise Program
EPA WasteWise Program – Food Recovery Challenge – “Why Food Waste Reduction and Recovery?: In 2010, just under 35 million tons of food waste was generated. Of that, almost 34 million tons (97%) was thrown away into landfills or incinerators. When excess food, leftover food, and food scraps are disposed of in a landfill, they… Continue Reading
Pew: Unauthorized Immigrants: Length of Residency, Patterns of Parenthood
Unauthorized Immigrants: Length of Residency, Patterns of Parenthood, by Paul Taylor, Mark Hugo Lopez, Jeffrey Passel, and Seth Motel, December 1, 2011 “This report focuses on the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates the unauthorized immigrant population using the residual method, a well-developed and widely accepted technique that is… Continue Reading
The Forbes 400 – The Richest People in America
“The Forbes 400 is the definitive list of wealth in America, profiling and ranking the country’s richest citizens by their estimated net worths.” Also via Forbes, The World’s Most Powerful People and With Vaccines, Bill Gates Changes The World Again – “Gates currently has two of historys greatest scourges in his sights: malaria, the mosquito-borne… Continue Reading
Changes to Federal Court Rules Take Effect
“Amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence took effect December 1, 2011. Congress took no action after the changes were approved by Supreme Court more than seven months earlier. That means new amendments to these rules are now in effect: Appellate Rules 4 and 40 Bankruptcy Rules 2003, 2019, 3001,… Continue Reading
