Congress has again blocked the transfer of the National Intelligence Program outside the Department of Defense budget, rejecting a move that had been urged by the 9/11 Commission. The transfer was specifically prohibited in the 2013 continuing appropriations conference bill passed by the House yesterday. “None of the funds appropriated in this or any other […]
Congress has directed the Secretary of Defense to report on the handling of surveillance data collected by military unmanned aerial systems operating in domestic airspace. A provision in the 2013 continuing appropriations conference bill approved by the House yesterday explained: “The conferees are aware of concerns that have been raised regarding the use of unmanned […]
The latest products from the Congressional Research Service include these reports: Gun Control Proposals in the 113th Congress: Universal Background Checks, Gun Trafficking, and Military Style Firearms, March 1, 2013 Party Leaders in the United States Congress, 1789-2013, March 4, 2013 Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs: Status of the Integrated Electronic Health Record (iEHR), […]
The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus poses a public health threat in many regions of the world. Approximately 600 human cases have been reported since 2003, with a laboratory-confirmed case fatality rate of up to 60% according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The recent death of a woman from southwest China, attributed to H5N1, has […]
The hourly minimum wage reached its peak value in 1968, when it was worth $10.57 in real terms, the Congressional Research Service calculated in a new report. But although the nominal value of the minimum wage has increased over the years, it has not kept pace with the increase in consumer prices, and so its […]
Senator Sam Nunn has often underscored that humanity is in “a race between cooperation and catastrophe.” As co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, he has urged greater and faster international action on reducing nuclear dangers. He has also joined with former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Secretary […]
Several members of the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this month to ask the Court to prepare summaries of classified opinions that represent significant interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to facilitate their declassification and public release. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs challenging the […]
“The average age of Members of the 113th Congress is among the highest of any Congress in recent U.S. history,” according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service. The average age of Members of the House of Representatives is 57 years, while the average age of Senators is 62 years. “The overwhelming majority […]
.By Hans M. Kristensen Tonight I’ll be debating additional nuclear weapons reductions with former Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker at a PONI event at CSIS. I will argue (prepared remarks here) that the United States could make more unilateral nuclear arms reductions in the future, as it has safely done in the past, as […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The United States has quietly reduced its nuclear weapons stockpile by nearly 500 warheads since 2009. The current stockpile size represents an approximate 85-percent reduction compared with the peak size in 1967, according to information provided to FAS by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The reduction is unilateral and not […]
The across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration that are expected to take effect on March 1 could impede the government’s ability to respond to WikiLeaks and to rectify the flaws in information security that it exposed, a Pentagon official told Congress recently. Zachary J. Lemnios, the assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering, was […]
Government-sponsored scientific research published in expensive journals should become more readily accessible to the public under an initiative announced by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday. Federal agencies that fund at least $100 million per year in scientific research were directed by White House science advisor John Holdren to develop […]