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Daily Archives: July 23, 2014

Census Bureau Updates Interactive HIV/AIDS Database

“The U.S. Census Bureau today released its annually updated interactive global resource on the prevalence of HIV infection and AIDS cases and deaths. First developed in 1987, the database now holds more than 164,000 statistics, an increase of approximately 5,900 new estimates in the last year, and is the most comprehensive resource of its kind in the world. The Census Bureau database is maintained with funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). “The Census Bureau’s HIV/AIDS database is the world’s only resource that consolidates HIV/AIDS information for policymakers, academics and health care professionals who conduct research to help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson said. “The Census Bureau continues to add new data, making this an ever more valuable resource.”..The tool consists of a library of statistics from more than 14,900 sources in international scientific and medical journals, individual countries’ annual HIV/AIDS surveillance reports, and papers and posters presented at international conferences. China represents 28 percent of the new records in the database, the largest increase by a single country. The menu-driven access tool enables users to search for statistical information in countries and territories across the world, as well as by subpopulation, geographic subarea (such as urban and rural), age, sex and year from the 1960s to 2013. HIV-related statistics for the United States are available separately from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

International banking statistics at end-March 2014

“The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) today released international banking statistics at end-March 2014. Between end-December 2013 and end-March 2014, the cross-border claims of BIS reporting banks rose by $580 billion. This marked the first substantial quarterly increase since late 2011. The overall increase was broadly spread across countries and sectors. The largest increase in… Continue Reading

NARA houses master database cataloging JFK assassination records in Top Secret area

Aliya Sternstein – Nextgov: “The master database cataloging material related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has always been housed in a Top Secret vault, much of the time on a personal computer, according to National Archives and Records Administration officials.  The index — which does not hold physical artifacts — was set… Continue Reading

DOT Proposes Rulemaking for Safe Rail Transportation of Flammable Materials

“The U.S. Department of Transportation today released the details of its comprehensive rulemaking proposal to improve the safe transportation of large quantities of flammable materials by rail – particularly crude oil and ethanol – in the form of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and a companion Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). The NPRM proposes… Continue Reading

Mapbox – interactive map of no fly zones for unmanned aerial vehicles

Wired – “To help with the question of where it is legal to fly a drone, Mapbox has put together an interactive map of all the no-fly zones for UAVs they could find. Most of the red zones on the map are near airports, military sites and national parks. But as WIRED’s former Editor-in-Chief, Chris Anderson, now… Continue Reading

ACSI: Customer Satisfaction with E-Business Rebounds as Social Media, Search Engines and News Sites Improve

News release: ” Customer satisfaction with social media, search engines and online news and opinion websites is up, according to the E-Business Report released today by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The latest results reveal a 2.9 percent rise in user satisfaction with e-business websites to 73.4 on ACSI’s 100-point scale. “Even with improvements across… Continue Reading

The Rhyme of History: Lessons of the Great War – Brookings

Margaret MacMillan, author of The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (Random House, 2013) – an essay from the book – snipped – “The one-hundredth anniversary of 1914 should make us reflect anew on our vulnerability to human error, sudden catastrophes, and sheer accident. So we have good reason to glance over our shoulders even… Continue Reading

New GAO Reports – Aviation Safety, Fair Labor Standards, Indian Gaming, NTIS, Patient Protection, Small Business, Space Launch System

AVIATION SAFETY: FAA’s Efforts to Implement Recommendations to Improve Certification and Regulatory Consistency Face Some Challenges, GAO-14-728T: Published: Jul 23, 2014. Publicly Released: Jul 23, 2014. FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT: Department of Labor Needs a More Systematic Approach to Developing Its Guidance, GAO-14-629T: Published: Jul 23, 2014. Publicly Released: Jul 23, 2014. INDIAN GAMING: Preliminary Observations on the Regulation and Oversight of… Continue Reading

Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of The 9/11 Commission Report

Bipartisan Policy Center: “Ten years ago today, we issued The 9/11 Commission Report, the official report of the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001. As we wrote in that report, we were acutely mindful of the responsibility we bore to the American people—and the families of the victims—to provide the most complete account possible of the… Continue Reading

Government review of the balance of competences between the UK and the EU

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer: “Following previous consultation (see Daily news 22 October 2013), the Government has published a report on the balance of competences between the UK and the EU in the field of financial services and the free movement of capital.  The report states that evidence received indicates that, whilst the balance of competences is broadly… Continue Reading