Government news

• NYPD's Big Artificial-Intelligence Reveal

  27-03-2019 22:11 via feedproxy.google.com
  Governing: The details of the crime were uniquely specific: Wielding a hypodermic syringe as a weapon, a man in New York City attempted to steal a power drill from a Home Depot in the Bronx. After police arrested him, they quickly ascertained that he'd done the same thing before, a few weeks earlier at another Home Depot, seven miles away in Manhattan.It wasn't a detective who linked the two crimes. It was a new technology called Patternizr, an algorithmic machine-learning software that sifts th
  
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• Shedding More Light on Fees a State Pension Fund Pays Wall Street

  27-03-2019 22:10 via feedproxy.google.com
  Route Fifty: Maryland lawmakers are considering a bill that would impose added requirements on the state’s pension fund to disclose certain fees for investments like hedge funds and private equity.These fees have totalled upwards of one hundred million dollars for the retirement system in some recent years, but representatives for the fund emphasize that they are tied to the size of investment profits and grow as the fund itself sees greater returns.
  
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• Emergency Radio Project in California Delayed Three Years

  27-03-2019 22:10 via feedproxy.google.com
  Government Technology: The planned $40 million overhaul of Marin County, Calif.’s outdated emergency radio system, which is set to close coverage gaps for firefighters in some of the county’s wildlands, is at least three years behind schedule, officials said.Rollout of the new system was initially scheduled for this year. But several setbacks have pushed the project’s completion to 2022 at the soonest, said Richard Pearce, board president for the Marin Emergency Radio Authority
  
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• Gov. Bevin signs tax cut bill that will reduce state revenue by $106 million a year

  27-03-2019 22:09 via feedproxy.google.com
  Lexington Herald-Leader: Gov. Matt Bevin on Tuesday signed into law a measure that that will cost Kentucky’s $11 billion General Fund an estimated $106.6 million a year once fully implemented.House Bill 354 contains changes to parts of the tax code that will mean less revenue for the state in coming years in exchange for tax cuts for banks, among others. It also includes an exemption to the state’s Open Records Act, sought by the Kentucky Department of Revenue, so the public no longe
  
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• Massachusetts Cities Tackle Pedestrian Safety with Data

  27-03-2019 22:08 via feedproxy.google.com
  Government Technology: Cities in the greater Boston area want to eliminate pedestrian deaths and they are taking a data analytics approach to achieve their goal.
  A much-traveled corridor linking Cambridge and Somerville will receive high-tech traffic analytics to understand the risk cars, buses and other vehicles pose to pedestrians and cyclists as they use the street. Traffic officials will use the data to experiment with interventions to help make the street safer.
  
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• A 2nd Judge Blocks Parts of Wisconsin GOP's Lame-Duck Power Grab

  27-03-2019 22:08 via feedproxy.google.com
  Governing: In the second judicial rebuke to state Republican legislators in less than a week, another judge has blocked parts of GOP laws limiting the powers of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul.Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank D. Remington issued the ruling Tuesday.
  
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• Phoenix CIO says city’s phone upgrade includes enough cable to reach Las Vegas

  27-03-2019 22:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  StateScoop: Since moving to Phoenix in January 2017, the city’s chief information officer, Matthew Arvay, has mostly kept his head down. But Arvay told StateScoop last week that the past two years have been focused on major overhauls to the growing city’s information technology infrastructure and the culture that that drives its IT governance.Among those projects, Arvay said in a phone interview, is a complete replacement of the Phoenix government’s 30-year-old telephone system
  
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• Bump stocks are now illegal. And Washington state's program to buy them back was so popular it ran out of money

  27-03-2019 22:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  CNN: Washington's four-day bump stock buyback program was so successful state officials ran out of money.
  Starting Tuesday, bump stocks are illegal in the United States. In hopes of prompting people to turn them over before the ban began, the Legislature allocated $150,000 for the buyback program, to be managed by the Washington State Patrol.
  
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• Phishing Attack Leaves Oregon State Employees Unable to Email

  27-03-2019 22:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  Government Technology: For the third time in a year, state of Oregon employees are unable to send emails to many people they would otherwise correspond with for work.The problem originated when an employee’s email account was “compromised,” according to a memorandum sent by the state’s Chief Information Officer Terrence Woods on Thursday.
  
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• Cracking Down on Deadly Force: How 3 California Police Departments Overhauled Their Policies

  27-03-2019 22:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  Governing: In Los Angeles, police can't always shoot at moving vehicles. San Francisco banned choke holds. Stockton officers are required to intervene if their colleagues use excessive force.They are among the California police departments that cracked down on deadly force policies following controversies similar to Stephon Clark's death in Sacramento in March 2018.
  
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• Verma says CMS is working to fix inappropriate lab test billing

  27-03-2019 22:04
  Modern Healthcare: CMS Administrator Seema Verma told Senate Finance Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) the agency is scrutinizing lab test bills submitted to Medicare to make sure the government hasn't been overpaying laboratories because of inappropriate coding.In a letter to Grassley, Verma noted that Medicare is required to pay a separate amount for each clinical diagnostic test under law. That rate has to be equal to the "weighted median of the private payer rates" for each test, based on the da
  
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• UPS uses drones to deliver medical samples

  27-03-2019 22:03
  Healthcare IT News: Delivery service UPS has teamed up with drone logistics specialist Matternet on medical sample delivery service at WakeMed’s hospital and campus in Raleigh, North Carolina.Drone transport has the potential to improve speed of deliveries at a lower cost and enhance access to care, with the aim of creating healthier communities.
  
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• Device-Safety Experts To FDA: Make Data Public

  27-03-2019 22:03
  Kaiser Health News: Medical device safety researchers are calling on the Food and Drug Administration to release hundreds of thousands of hidden injury and malfunction reports related to about 100 medical devices.A recent Kaiser Health News investigation revealed that the FDA granted device makers numerous “exemptions” from the standard rules of publicly reporting harm related to devices.
  
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• Real-time location systems save Wake Forest Baptist $3.5M

  27-03-2019 22:02
  Healthcare IT News: Wake Forest Baptist Health is a prominent academic medical system known for innovation and the delivery of quality care, along with a reputation for distinguished medical research.This reputation drives the health system to continually seek new and more efficient ways to deliver care to the more than 1 million patients who visit the organization each year. And on its agenda? The use of real-time technologies such as real-time location systems.
  
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• Patrick Shanahan Says ‘Of Course’ He Wants to Be Defense Secretary

  27-03-2019 21:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  Government Executive: Patrick Shanahan, the acting defense secretary whose bid to formally replace Jim Mattis is in limbo, answers without hesitation when asked if he wants the job.“Of course,” the Boeing executive-turned-Pentagon No. 2 said with a smile Tuesday, after a House Armed Services Committee hearing.
  
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• Disaster aid package includes $2B for military. How much would each branch get?

  27-03-2019 21:54 via feedproxy.google.com
  Defense News: Senate Republican appropriators announced a proposed $13.45 billion aid package Tuesday that would include more than $2 billion to help the military respond to damage wrought by hurricanes Michael and Florence last fall.Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., released the text of the bill, meant to address damage from various natural disasters across the country — some related to recent catastrophic flooding in the Midwest and some related to events i
  
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• Trump tells Russia to get its troops out of Venezuela

  27-03-2019 21:53 via feedproxy.google.com
  Reuters: U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on Russia to pull its troops from Venezuela and said that “all options” were open to make that happen.The arrival of two Russian air force planes outside Caracas on Saturday believed to be carrying nearly 100 Russian special forces and cybersecurity personnel has escalated the political crisis in Venezuela.
  
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• Bloated war fund will sink Trump’s budget, Dems say

  27-03-2019 21:52 via feedproxy.google.com
  Defense News: Key House Democrats are slamming the Trump administration’s plan to offset defense-spending limits by inflating a war fund and its plan to divert military funding to a controversial wall on the southern border.The Trump administration’s decision to propose a $164 billion war budget with $98 billion in base budget needs for 2020 is a “patently dishonest budget maneuver” to avoid statutory budget caps, House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said
  
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• Carter Page says real Russian probe starts now

  27-03-2019 21:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Hill: The "real Russia investigation" starts now, according to Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide who was caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of the 2016 presidential election."What happened this past weekend is really just a sideshow," Page told Hill.TV's "Rising" hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on Wednesday, referring to the summary of Mueller's conclusions delivered by Attorney General William Barr to Congress.
  
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• Interior faces questions on reorg, NPS backlog during budget hearing

  27-03-2019 21:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  Federal News Network: A theme emerged Tuesday during a hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies. Lawmakers described a lack of response from Interior Department on several funding issues.DOI faced the committee to present its $12.5 billion discretionary funding request for fiscal 2020, a $1.5 billion or 10.9 percent decrease from the FY 2019 estimated allocation of $14 billion, according to the president’s budget.
  
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• FAA Head Will Face Grilling From Senators Over His Agency's Ties To Boeing

  27-03-2019 21:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  NPR: The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration will appear Wednesday before a Senate subcommittee, where he's expected to face tough questions about the agency's actions following two plane crashes off the cost of Indonesia and in Ethiopia.Daniel Elwell will testify before the aviation subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee about the agency's relationship with Boeing, the manufacturer of the plane involved in both crashes, the 737 Max.
  
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• State Approves Law to Protect Feds in Future Shutdowns, and OPM Clarifies Leave Donations

  27-03-2019 21:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  Government Executive: As Congress continues to consider an array of bills aimed at preventing future government shutdowns or providing aid to workers impacted by lapses in appropriations, Maryland officials have stepped into the breach with their own protections for federal workers.On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan signed the Federal Shutdown Paycheck Protection Act, which was passed out of the Maryland General Assembly earlier this month.
  
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• U.S. International Transactions, 4th quarter and Year 2018

  27-03-2019 15:00
  The U.S. current-account deficit increased to $134.4 billion (preliminary) in the fourth quarter of 2018 from $126.6 billion (revised) in the third quarter of 2018. As a percentage of U.S. GDP, the deficit increased to 2.6 percent from 2.5 percent. The previously published current-account deficit for the third quarter was $124.8 billion.Full Text
  
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• U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, January 2019

  27-03-2019 13:30
  The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $51.1 billion in January, down $8.8 billion from $59.9 billion in December, revised. January exports were $207.3 billion, $1.9 billion more than December exports. January imports were $258.5 billion, $6.8 billion less than December imports. Full Text
  
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