Thune, a Republican, on Saturday (August 8), filed the bill, called the “Clarity Act,” following which a key procedural vote will be set up when the Senate returns from its August recess in mid-September, stated the US Senate Press Gallery website.

Amid opposition from the Democrats, Senate Republicans believe they may be able to put together the ⁠60 votes needed for the bill to pass. However, the bill still needs the support of at least eight Democrats and all of the Senate’s voting Republicans for it to pass.

The legislation, if passed, would give the crypto industry its first comprehensive federal rulebook, defining when digital tokens will become securities or commodities and which regulators will oversee them.

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The president’s stand on it has not been confirmed by the White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokeswoman declined to say if she supports the bill but said she was evaluating it carefully.

The proposed law is aimed to have brighter hours in the afternoon in the hope of increasing economic activity. The legislation has the backing of airline and broadcasting companies. Other supporters of the bill claim that this will allow children to play outdoors longer and have a positive impact on lowering seasonal depression incidents.

Currently, in the US, clocks are changed once in November and once in March as per the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The daylight starts on the second Sunday of March at 2:00 am local time and ends on the first Sunday of November.

According to many accounts of health experts, this move contributes to sleep deprivation and causes a multitude of bodily ailments.

At least 18 states have already passed similar laws in their own state legislatures according to the National Public Radio. However, this needs to be ratified as a federal law in order to come into effect. Even the American Academy of Sleep Medicine is in favour of a national round the year clock. There are research findings that go on to say that biannual time switching leads to workplace injuries and even a rise in the number of fatal road accidents.

Marco Rubio, one of the most vocal supporters of the Bill, said with this decision the country is not going to be forced to engage in “stupidity” anymore while contending this was not the most important issue of the day. Currently, clocks in the US are adjusted twice a year. He also used a pun and said that this was an idea “whose time has come”.

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Mostly, hackers use fake websites in ‘phishing’ schemes to lure users into providing sensitive information such login credentials to access computer networks and other targets such as email accounts. Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post: “We’re concerned that these and other attempts pose security threats to a broadening array of groups connected with both American political parties in the run-up to the 2018 elections.”

However, Russian officials have rejected the allegation and denied reports owing to lack of evidence to support the case. According to Reuters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: We don’t know what hackers they are talking about.”

“It is regrettable that a large international company, which has been working in the Russian market for a long time, quite actively and successfully has to take part in a witch-hunt that has engulfed Washington.” In a statement The International Republican Institute confirmed that it had been targeted in the attack. Institute President Daniel Twining said: “This latest attempt is consistent with the campaign of meddling that the Kremlin has waged against organisations that support democracy and human rights. It is clearly designed to sow confusion, conflict and fear among those who criticise Mr. Putin’s authoritarian regime.”

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18th October 2013

The US Senate has passed legislation raising the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority, which would end the government shutdown that has crippled the country since October 1. The Senate sent the measure to the House of Representatives for final passage, before being signed into law by Obama. The legislation passed by Congress last night to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government in 2014 will bring the furloughed workers back to work, but Bloomberg reported that it may be weeks or months before the government resumes issuing loans, payments and contracts at a normal pace.

“The shock wave will last for months” said Larry Allen, president of Allen Federal Business Partners, a contract consulting firm in Mclean, Virginia, in an interview. Although, the halt in government operations was shorter than the budget shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 that lasted 26 days, this year’s disruption has been far broader in scope, said Barry Anderson, who was assistant director of the White House Office of Management and Budget during the fiscal 1996 shutdown. In the earlier shut down Congress had completed seven of its 13 annual appropriations bills, funding agencies in the previous stoppage – leaving vast parts of the government still working. This time not a single agency funded at Congress’s discretion had final budget approval.

Return to Work

Federal agencies were instructed to begin opening offices today in a “prompt and orderly manner,” according to a memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Sylvia Burwell that cleared furloughed employees to return to work. “We will work closely with departments and agencies to make the transition back to full operating status as smooth as possible,” Burwell said in the memo after Obama signed the bill ending the shut down.

Effects of the Shutdown

The 16 day- halt in operations in many federal agencies has reduced the economic growth by 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter GDP, S&P said. John Koskinen, Deputy Director of Management at OMB said “Significant additional costs, that cannot be determined at this time, include interest payments to third parties” when the government does not pay its bill on time to third parties. There will also be additional personnel costs necessary to deal with the backlog of work resulting from the shutdown.” Elaborating in detail, Charles Tiefer, Professor of law at the University of Baltimore who has studied shutdowns said the expenditures (payments to third parties) could be in billions, it would be difficult for the agencies to carefully audit the huge backlog of payments including those to IRS and Medicare claims.

Reliance on Technology  

Excessive reliance on information technology at U.S. agencies also poses pitfalls as workers return to their work. The Federal government is dependent on the internet, operating huge networks that offer online services and mobile platforms that link employee, citizens and businesses directly to digital forms and applications. Agencies that continued to collect large amounts of data measured in tera – or petabytes should reboot their systems to ensure the networks are operating properly after a period of lax monitoring.

Automakers Hit

American auto giant, General Motors said the shutdown will hit consumer confidence, while another automaker Hyundai said that industry sales could fall as much as 10 percent in October due to the shutdown.

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