The international educational organization, Limmud FSU (former Soviet Union) celebrated its bat-mitzvah – 12 years of educational activities in Israel with a three-day festival which this year took place for the first time in the city of Ashdod.

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The Shelby Star awarded First Place for Best Law Firm to Teddy, Meekins & Talbert, and Best Lawyers in America - U.S. News & World Report bestowed 'Best Law Firms' honors, including specific distinction for DUI/DWI defense defense in Charlotte.

The Connecticut law firm was honored in the personal injury and medical malpractice fields by the prestigious U.S. News - Best Lawyers 'Best Law Firms' publication.

The publication challenges you to start rethinking your strategies during today's economic phase, and highlights the importance of staying true to your vision in both good and bad economic times.

In this publication (co-sponsored by Zurich), you'll find FMI's top-ten articles of the past decade. Most of these topics are still relevant in today's E&C business environment and cover a broad range of industry issues.

In this report, authors present results that they gathered from more than 150 E&C executives who shared their experiences and strategies from the last downturn, how they focused their energy, and what key lessons they learned.

Bid Desk Publishes Online List to Help Consumers Create Healthier Work from Home and Homeschooling Spaces

This week, we highlight three new titles from the ASPA Series in Public Administration and Public Policy.

Market disruptions, climate change, and health pandemics lead the growing list of challenges faced by today’s leaders. These issues, along with countless others that do not make the daily news, require novel thinking and collaborative action to find workable solutions. However, many administrators stumble into collaboration without a strategic orientation.

Using a practitioner-oriented style, Strategic Collaboration In Public And Non-Profit Administration: A Practice-Based Approach To Solving Shared Problems provides guidance on how to collaborate more effectively, with less frustration and better results.

Linking collaboration theory to effective practice, this book offers essential advice that fosters shared understanding, creative answers, and transformation results through strategic collaborative action. With an emphasis on application, it uses scenarios, real-world cases, tables, figures, tools, and checklists to highlight key points.

The appendix includes supplemental resources such as collaboration operating guidelines, a meeting checklist, and a collaboration literature review to help public and nonprofit managers successfully convene, administer, and lead collaboration. The book presents a framework for engaging in collaboration in a way that stretches current thinking and advances public service practice.

A guidebook through the minefield of government contracting and procurement, Government Contracting: Promises and Perils describes the dangerous practices commonly applied in the development and management of government contracts and provides advice for avoiding the sort of errors that might compromise their ability to protect the public interest.

It includes strategies for increasing profits for government contractors, rather than incurring burdensome costs, through compliance with government mandated subcontracting and financial management systems.

Drawing from his in-depth investigation of government agencies across the country, the author examines present-day scenarios that regularly lead public servants and government committees to manage contracts with tools that are less than optimal and to select contractors that may not be the best qualified. He then delineates practical processes, contracting documents, and contract management tools to mitigate detrimental outcomes and alternative approaches to supplant the imperfect methodologies.

The author includes a CD-ROM with the book that provides a number of practical tools that you can apply as well as examples of contracts and templates that are the best he discovered during his research. The book also outlines an approach for performing advance contract planning, conducting contract negotiations, and administering contracts useful when planning for the management of the contracting process throughout the contracting cycle, negotiating a contract that protects the interest of all contracting parties, and ensuring successful contractor performance.

Filling a gap in project management literature, Managing Public Sector Projects: A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government supplies managers and administrators—at all levels of government—with expert guidance on all aspects of public sector project management.

From properly allocating risks in drafting contracts to dealing with downsized staffs and privatized services, this book clearly explains the technical concepts and the political issues involved.

In line with the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the PMBOK^® (Project Management Body of Knowledge), David S. Kassel establishes a framework those in the public sector can follow to ensure the success of their public projects and programs. He supplies more than 30 real-life examples to illustrate the concepts behind the framework—including reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Big Dig project in Boston, local sewer system and library construction projects, and software technology.

This authoritative resource provides strategic recommendations for effective planning, execution, and maintenance of public projects. It also:

• Highlights the differences between managing projects in the public sector versus the private sector
• Explains how to scrutinize costs, performance claims, and the backgrounds of prospective contractors
• Presents key safeguards that should be included in all contracts with contractors, consultants, suppliers, and other service providers
• Details the basics of project cost estimation, design and scheduling, and how to hold contractors responsible for meeting established project standards

In an age of downsized government and in the face of a general distrust of public service, this book is a dependable guide for avoiding management practices that are common to projects that fail and for adopting the practices common to projects that succeed in terms of cost, schedule, and quality.

Each and every day, social media tools change the way that organizations
interact with their users.

A recent report from the Center For Urban Transportation Research at University of South Florida titled Routes To New Networks: A Guide To Social Media For The Public Transportation Industry (66p. PDF) explains how these new platforms offer not only more personal one-on-one interaction than traditional media, but also represent the essence of niche marketing.

It is undeniable that social media is all the buzz. For some, utilizing new media tools may come as second nature. For others, however, entering the world of social media means taking a giant leap into the world of online communications.

One thing is certain – social media platforms are allowing a new opportunity for transportation providers to directly communicate with their target audiences. Communication is moving in this direction – with or without your organization.

The report analyzes the usefulness of and applications for social networks, written blogs, audio/video blogs, microblogs (e.g. Twitter), photo sharing, video sharing, user-generated content and mobile web content.

The report states that key points to consider when determining which tool(s) to use are:

1) Who is my target audience and what tools are they using?
2) What type of information do I want to communicate?

Content must always resonate with your audience. What can you provide that would be of value?

Earlier this year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) published Funding The Public Transportation Needs Of An Aging Population (57p. PDF).

It explains how rapid growth in the number of older people in the United States during the coming decades will lead to greatly increased needs for expanded and enhanced public transportation services. This report:

a) identifies the range of actions that will be needed to expand mobility options for older people, including accessible public transportation services;
b) quantifies the demand for these public transportation services; and
c) estimates the funding that will be needed to provide them.

Needed actions have been identified by means of a review of the extensive literature on this
subject. The actions needed to expand mobility options for older people include:

• Enhancements to fixed-route public transportation operations and planning such as additional bus operator training, incorporating travel needs of older people in route planning and stop placement, and coordination with other agencies and transportation providers
• Enhancements to public transportation vehicles such as low-floor buses, kneeling buses, improved interior circulation, additional stanchions and grab bars, ergonomic seating designed for older riders, and accessibility features either required or encouraged by ADA like lifts and ramps, larger letters on head signs, and stop announcements
• Actions to help older people take advantage of existing services, like presenting information in ways that are easy to read and as clear as possible, information and assistance programs to connect older people with appropriate services, and outreach and training programs
• Expansion of supplementary services including flexible route and community transportation services, ADA complementary paratransit, non-ADA demand-responsive services, taxi subsidy programs, and volunteer driver programs
• Application of universal design strategies at transit facilities, bus stops, and on streets and sidewalks in the immediate vicinity of transit facilities and stops

These are the actions of greatest concern to public transportation agencies, but they are not the
only actions needed.

Other important actions include assuring supportive services to caregivers
who provide transportation, encouraging further development of unsubsidized private
transportation services, increasing the availability of accessible taxicabs, coordinating with non-emergency medical transportation provided under Medicaid and Medicare, and supporting
modifications to automobiles and roadways to increase the safety of older drivers.

Finally, we wanted to take a closer look at U.S. Parking Policies: An Overview Of Management Strategies put out by the Institute For Transportation And Development Policy in New York.

This report highlights best practices in parking management in the United States.

In the last decade, some municipalities have reconsidered poorly conceived parking policies to address a host of negative impacts resulting from private automobile use such as traffic congestion and climate change. Unchecked, these policies have proven to be a major barrier to establishing a balanced urban transportation network.

Many aspects of current parking management in the United States do not work reliably or efficiently for anyone: Motorists find themselves circling for long periods in search of a place to park; retail employees take choice parking locations away from potential customers; developers are compelled to provide more parking than the market requires; and traffic managers encounter difficulty handling traffic generated by new parking as there is often no link between parking price, supply and the amount of available road space.

Finally, the old parking paradigm doesn’t work for the environment, as hidden subsidies encourage over reliance on private car use — a major, growing contributor to global warming and air pollution.

This report identifies core sustainable parking principles and illustrates how smarter parking management can benefit consumers and businesses in time and money savings, while also leading to more livable, attractive communities.

There is a wealth of research and literature explaining suburban sprawl and the urgent need to retrofit suburbia. However, until now there has been no single guide that directly explains how to repair typical sprawl elements.

The National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) has given its full endorsement to the 2020 edition of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America’s (MCAA) publication Change Orders, Productivity, Overtime—A Primer for the Construction Industry.

As a member of the Global Task Force for public media, we would like to add our salute to the essential service being provided at this time by public broadcasters around the world. 

Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) Acting Director Laura L. Rogers today announced awards of more than $16.5 million to support public safety efforts in the Northern District of Texas. Funds will help law enforcement agencies, local cities and counties, campus safety, and victim service providers and domestic violence shelters fight gun, gang, drug and domestic and sexual violence and bring criminals to justice.

Today, the Department of Justice announced awards of more than $122 million to support public safety efforts in Michigan. The funds will help law enforcement agencies and community organizations in jurisdictions across the state fight gun, gang, drug and sexual violence, and bring criminals to justice.

The Department of Justice today announced awards of more than $29 million to support public safety efforts in the Northern District of Ohio. The funding from the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) will support violent crime reduction, opioid/substance abuse reduction efforts, victim services, transitional housing for domestic violence victims, law enforcement activities, justice mental health, and juvenile justice.

The Department of Justice today announced awards of more than $165 million to support public safety efforts in the state of North Carolina. The funding from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), and Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) will support violent crime reduction, opioid/substance abuse reduction efforts, school safety, victim services, transitional housing for domestic violence victims, law enforcement activities, justice mental health, and juvenile justice.

As we mark Veterans Day 2019, the Justice Department announced two settlement agreements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to protect and advance equal access for veterans with disabilities who use service dogs. One agreement is with Deerfield Inn & Suites, in Gadsden, Alabama. The second agreement is with the Landmark Hotel Group in Virginia Beach, Virginia, which manages the Holiday Inn Express in Hampton, Virginia. These matters were investigated and resolved in furtherance of the Department’s commitment to ensuring that our veterans enjoy equal access to public accommodations, such as restaurants, hotels, and shops.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd issued the following statement in support of efforts to streamline payments under the Public Safety Officer Benefit Program (PSOB) to public safety officers fatally injured while working during COVID-19:

The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and The Federal Trade Commission today issued a joint statement detailing an expedited antitrust procedure and providing guidance for collaborations of businesses working to protect the health and safety of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Family, friends and elected leaders were joined by police officers from as far away as Chicago.

(WASHINGTON) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, from the tobacco state of Kentucky, on Monday unveiled federal legislation to raise the minimum age to purchase e-cigarettes and all other...

Simas Kucinskas writes: I would like to share some recent research (pdf here). In this paper, I develop a new method for estimating R in real time, and apply it to track the dynamics of COVID-19. The method is based on standard epidemiological theory, but the approach itself is heavily inspired by time-series statistics. I […]

Carlos Ungil writes: The IHME released an update to their model yesterday. Using now a better model and taking into account the relaxation of mitigation measures their forecast for US deaths has almost doubled to 134k (95% uncertainty range 95k-243k). My [Ungil’s] charts of the evolution of forecasts across time can be found here. I […]

Part 1 Andrew Lilley, Gianluca Rinaldi, and Matthew Lilley write: You might be familiar with a recent paper by Correira, Luck, and Verner who argued that cities that enacted non-pharmaceutical interventions earlier / for longer during the Spanish Flu of 1918 had higher subsequent economic growth. The paper has had extensive media coverage – e.g. […]

As heads of state, local leaders, business owners and individual citizens weighed the costs of re-opening the global economy, fears of new outbreaks grew. A central question emerged: How much infection and loss of life will emerge amid the push to restart business?

Each year in the spring (April – June), an increase in the turbidity of drinking (potable) water occurs at Grand Canyon National Park. Turbidity has no health effects.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/info-2009-04-01-turbid.htm

Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Steve Martin has announced that an Environmental Assessment (EA) for Supai Camp Improvements is now available for public review and comment. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/environmental-assessment-for-improvements-at-supai-camp-within-grand-canyon-national-park-available-for-public-review-and-comment.htm

This year National Public Lands Day at Grand Canyon National Park will be commemorated with more than free admission and volunteer opportunities. Park staff and friends will also be celebrating the park’s first Dia de la Familia. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news_2009-09-01_npld-dia.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-to-celebrate-dia-de-la-familia-on-national-public-lands-day.htm

The National Park Service has released an Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) Closure Plan and Environmental Assessment for projects to correct health and safety hazards associated with abandoned mines in four national park system sites in Arizona. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2010-02-12_mines_ea.htm

Grand Canyon Announces Public Meeting Schedule for Mule Operations and Stock Use Environmental Assessment https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/national-park-service-announces-public-meetings-to-discuss-mule-operations-and-stock-use-environmental-assessment.htm

Phase II of the improvements called for in the South Rim Visitor Transportation Plan/Environmental Assessment (Transportation Plan) is now substantially complete; and Mather Point and the Visitor Center plaza areas have reopened for public use. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2011-01-06_phaseii.htm

https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news-5may2011.htm

Grand Canyon National Park’s Division of Science and Resource Management will host a public open house on June 8th at Park Headquarters in the courtyard from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news25may2011.htm

Grand Canyon National Park’s Division of Science and Resource Management will host a public open house on July 25 in the Grand Canyon Lodge Auditorium on the North Rim from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/behind-the-scenes-science-and-resource-management-staff-to-host-public-open-house-in-the-grand-canyon-lodge-on-the-north-rim-of-grand-canyon-national-park.htm

Grand Canyon National Park will be joining national park units across the country in celebrating National Public Lands Day with fee free entry into the park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2011-09-14_npld.htm

Beginning Nov. 7, the public will have an opportunity to attend public meetings on the development of a long-term plan that will determine the timing and volume of water flows from Glen Canyon Dam. Those flows affect hydroelectricity production, beach recreation, native fish and other river-related plants and animals, as well as archeological sites in Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/public-invited-to-open-houses-on-plan-for-glen-canyon-dam-operations.htm

Sobriety safety checkpoints will be set up within Grand Canyon National Park this holiday season in an effort to assure the safety of park visitors and residents. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2011-12-21_checkpoints.htm

On December 28, during the peak of the holiday season, a sobriety safety checkpoint was conducted in Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2012-01-10_checkpoint.htm

Rangers in Grand Canyon National Park are seeking the public’s assistance in locating 47-year old Shaw Joseph Ostermann of Tempe, Arizona. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2012-04-17_missing.htm

On Friday, May 18, 2012, Grand Canyon National Park will celebrate Endangered Species Day in recognition of the national conservation effort to protect our nation’s endangered species and their habitats. Then, on Saturday, May 19, the celebration will continue as the park hosts its 5th annual Celebrate Wildlife Day. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2012-04-25_cwd-esd.htm

Each year in the spring, Grand Canyon National Park experiences an increase in turbidity in the drinking water. This increased turbidity is caused by snow melt, spring rains recharging the aquifer and increased water flows through the rock formations to Roaring Springs.. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2012-04-30_turbidity.htm

Although Grand Canyon National Park received below-average precipitation this winter, the warm spring caused vegetation in the park to thrive. Now, fine fuels are quickly drying out as winds and temperatures rise, increasing the risk of wildfire. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2012-05-24_fire.htm

Grand Canyon National Park rangers will be setting up sobriety safety checkpoints, over the Memorial Day weekend, in an effort to assure the safety of park visitors and residents. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-taking-steps-to-ensure-public-safety-over-the-memorial-day-weekend.htm