Day archives: July 20th, 2011

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act approved by the Uniform Law Commission

Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Law – approved and recommended for enactment, July 18, 2011 “A new act approved [July 12, 2011] by a national law group establishes an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online legal material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by …

Subjects: Legal Research, Libraries

FTC Returns Nearly $108M to 450,000 Homeowners Overcharged by Countrywide for Loan Servicing Fees

News release: “The Federal Trade Commission is mailing 450,177 refund checks worth almost $108 million to homeowners who were allegedly overcharged by Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. As part of the FTC’s efforts to protect financially distressed homeowners, the FTC reached a settlement with Countrywide last year over allegations that the company collected excessive fees from …

Subjects: Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research

Office of Thrift Supervision Integration; Dodd-Frank Act Implementation

“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is adopting amendments to its regulations governing organization and functions, availability and release of information, post-employment restrictions for senior examiners, and assessment of fees to incorporate the transfer of certain functions of the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) to the OCC pursuant to Title III of …

Subjects: Government Documents, Legislation

The Spillover Report and Selected Issues on China

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA SPILLOVER REPORT FOR THE 2011 ARTICLE IV CONSULTATION AND SELECTED ISSUES “Issues. Spillover reports explore the external effects of policies in systemic economies, focusing on issues raised by key partners. In the case of China, these partners saw benefits from its growth, especially during the crisis, but were also concerned to …

Subjects: Government Documents

NYT: U.S. to Close 800 Computer Data Centers

NYT: “The federal government plans to shut 40 percent of its computer centers over the next four years to reduce its hefty technology budget and modernize the way it uses computers to manage data and provide services to citizens. Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the government, said cloud computing could save the country billions …

Subjects: E-Government

BEA Survey of Current Business July 2011

GDP and the Economy: Third Estimates for the First Quarter of 2011 – Real GDP rose 1.9 percent after rising 3.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010. Imports turned up, consumer spending and nonresidential investment slowed, and federal government spending decreased more. Real Inventories, Sales, and Inventory-Sales Ratios for Manufacturing and Trade for the …

Subjects: Government Documents

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips – Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745, Published Online 14 July 2011. See also Google’s Effects on Memory, PBS NewsHour via YouTube. “The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines

The Cost Structure of the Postal Service: Facts, Trends, and Policy Implications

The Cost Structure of the Postal Service: Facts, Trends, and Policy Implications, “a recently released white paper by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center, examines significant trends and cost drivers for the major cost categories of the U.S. Postal Service, which include labor, non-labor and capital. The paper also presents insights with implications for the …

Subjects: Government Documents