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Monthly Archives: February 2015

Amnesty International Annual Report 2014-2015

This has been a devastating year for those seeking to stand up for human rights and for those caught up in the suffering of war zones. By Salil Shetty, Secretary General at Amnesty International “Governments pay lip service to the importance of protecting civilians. And yet the world’s politicians have miserably failed to protect those… Continue Reading

Pew – Latest Trends in Religious Restrictions and Hostilities

Overall Decline in Social Hostilities in 2013, Though Harassment of Jews Worldwide Reached a Seven-Year High: “Worldwide, social hostilities involving religion declined somewhat in 2013 after reaching a six-year peak the previous year, but roughly a quarter of the world’s countries are still grappling with high levels of religious hostilities within their borders, according to… Continue Reading

The U.S. Interstate Highways, Ranked

Mapquest – “Ranking the Lower 48’s two-digit, primary interstates—66 in all, 47,000 miles (and counting)—is a subjective business. What do you make of an I-70? In parts it’s bumper-to-bumper with commuters, elsewhere isolated fields of corn. To help, we turned to algebra, and created a “traffic rating” based on vehicle travel miles per mile of… Continue Reading

Implementation monitoring of PFMIs: Level 2 assessment report for central counterparties and trade repositories – United States

“The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) continue to closely monitor the implementation of the Principles for financial market infrastructures (PFMI). The principles within the PFMI (the Principles) set expectations for the design and operation of key financial market infrastructures to enhance their safety and efficiency… Continue Reading

Public quantitative disclosure standards for central counterparties

Public quantitative disclosure standards for central counterparties: “To help ensure that the risks of using central counterparties (CCPs) are properly understood, CCPs need to make relevant information publicly available, as stated in the CPSS-IOSCO Principles for financial market infrastructures, published in April 2012. The CPSS and IOSCO published a Disclosure framework in December 2012 to… Continue Reading

Financial Audit: U.S. Government’s Fiscal Years 2014 and 2013 Consolidated Financial Statements

Financial Audit: U.S. Government’s Fiscal Years 2014 and 2013 Consolidated Financial Statements, GAO-15-341R: Published: Feb 26, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015. “To operate as effectively and efficiently as possible and to make difficult decisions to address the federal government’s fiscal challenges, Congress, the administration, and federal managers must have ready access to reliable and… Continue Reading

New GAO Reports – Defense Logistics, Defense Major Automated Information Systems, DHS, FAA, Private Pensions, Transportation Safety

Defense Logistics: Improvements Needed to Accurately Assess the Performance of DOD’s Materiel Distribution Pipeline, GAO-15-226: Published: Feb 26, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015. Defense Major Automated Information Systems: Cost and Schedule Commitments Need to Be Established Earlier, GAO-15-282: Published: Feb 26, 2015. Publicly Released: Feb 26, 2015. Department of Homeland Security: Progress Made, but… Continue Reading

Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning

Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning. Nature 518, 529–533 (26 February 2015) doi:10.1038/nature14236. Received 10 July 2014, Accepted 16 January 2015, Published online 25 February 201. “The theory of reinforcement learning provides a normative account, deeply rooted in psychological and neuroscientific perspectives on animal behaviour, of how agents may optimize their control of an environment.… Continue Reading

Resistance Songs: Mobilizing the Law and Politics of Community

Alfieri, Anthony Victor, Resistance Songs: Mobilizing the Law and Politics of Community (February 24, 2015). University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-09; Texas Law Review, Vol. 93, Forthcoming. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2569159 “In 1925, the City of Miami built a trash incinerator in the de jure segregated Afro-Caribbean-American community of Coconut… Continue Reading