In response to a question about the Buy American policy posed at a press conference in Canada, Secretary of State Clinton stated that the Buy American provision is not being enforced in any way that is inconsistent with U.S. international trade obligations. She acknowledged the concerns that there may be elements of the international trade obligations or absences of agreements that should be looked at so that the U.S. can promote more procurement and other kinds of trade interactions and assured Canadian officials that the U.S. will take a very close look at that. (Press briefing, dated 06/13/09, available at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/06/124717.htm.)
Heavy R&D investors nearly spent as much on research and development during a economic crisis as they did before, experts said in interviews. But officials urged focusing R&D spending on basic research and long-term projects.
The first half of Friday’s DTV switch brought few technical problems for stations, cable operators and satellite TV companies, and little viewer confusion about what was happening, said broadcasters in many of the FCC “hot spot” markets. As of 4 p.m. Friday, only one station had gone off-air entirely: KLTS-TV Shreveport, La., a Public Broadcasting Service affiliate. Service was likely to be restored as soon as an out-of-town technician, delayed on his way there, made it to the station, said Phillip Blucas, an engineer at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.
The U.S.-China Business Council has posted a press release noting that despite the global economic downturn, 85% of congressional districts increased their exports to China in 2008. The council also posted a mapthat shows U.S. exports to China by state and district (must scroll down). (Press Release, dated 06/11/09, available at http://www.uschina.org/public/documents/2009/06/congressional-district-exports.html)
The first half of Friday’s DTV switch brought few technical problems for stations, cable operators and satellite TV companies, and little viewer confusion about what was happening, said broadcasters in many of the FCC “hot spot” markets. As of 4 p.m. Friday, only one station had gone off-air entirely: KSLA-TV Shreveport, La., a Public Broadcasting Service affiliate. Service was likely to be restored as soon as an out-of-town technician, delayed on his way there, made it to the station, said Phillip Blucas, an engineer at Louisiana Public Broadcasting.
When top-down social networking mandates crashed and burned at the CIA, quiet diplomacy on a personal level took over, leading to the success of the intelligence community’s Intellipedia, the wiki’s official “evangelist” said in a discussion at Google’s Washington headquarters on Friday. The military, with a string of successful interactive Web tools used in Iraq and Afghanistan, is slowly adopting the ethos of Web 2.0, said the founder of an early online forum for sharing combat data. Emerging policy difficulties include how to treat potentially classified data delivered to mobile devices in the field, they said.
Potential federal cybersecurity coordinators are being interviewed now, and the coordinator should be in place within the next few weeks, said Obama administration cybersecurity reviewer Melissa Hathaway. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, she outlined her team’s approach to the president’s 60-day review of cybersecurity policy. A civil liberties and privacy officer should also be in place, perhaps in July, she said. The coordinator position has “yet to be defined,” she said, but the report recommends the coordinator have the ability to affect budgets by working with the Office of Management and Budget. The coordinator would also be the lead for policy development.
A group of associations representing U.S. business interests have written the U.S. Trade Representative to recommend he "closely review Ecuador's eligibility to continue to receive preferences" under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA).
China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has issued a notice announcing an annual supervision examination on designated accreditation bodies, labs and factory inspectors, as well as spot tests on CCC licensed products which include toys, household appliances, information technical products, motorcycles, lighting, latex products, coffers against theft and plant protection machineries. (Notice, dated 06/11/09, available at http://english.aqsiq.gov.cn/NewsRelease/NewsUpdates/200906/t20090611_118033.htm)
David Boyd, director of the Command, Control and Interoperability Division of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, said Wednesday the department is close to final decisions on how an emergency alert system for wireless devices will work. “Right now all of the major carriers have opted in and are working with us,” Boyd told the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s governing board. Two issues still must be worked through, he said. “How do you build a message 96 characters long that gets the reaction you want without causing reactions you don’t want,” Boyd said. The second is: “How do you go about aggregating this information so if the alert comes from a county or some other authorized source that you know who it is and know that they're authorized to make that alert.”