General Concerns of these comments (below) responds point-by-point to certain enumerated language changes set forth in various Policy Modification Proposals (PMPs) classified as active for purposes of the current process. But first, we present the following: 1) certain general threshold concerns to those PMPs that would abrogate the Unified State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (the “Unified Agreement”); and 2) responses to the introductory statements found on the first five pages of the Century Foundation attachment titled, “Elevating the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement’s Consumer Protection Standards” (referenced below as “the Century Foundation attachment).” That attachment was submitted with PMPs 0340, 0341, 0345, 0346, 0347, and 0350. PMPs that abrogate the Unified Agreement cannot be validly adopted or implemented. Any PMP proposing policy changes that would abrogate the Unified Agreement cannot as a practical or legal matter be adopted or implemented. XXXX is a state compact whose terms are legally binding upon the member states that have chosen to participate in XXXX. The Unified Agreement went into effect when it was adopted by the four Regional Education Compacts and then ratified by the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-XXXX) on December 1, 2015. Section 5.1 of the Unified Agreement (“Core Conditions for State Participation”) expressly requires that to effectuate reciprocity, each member state must “demonstrate that state law and policy have been enacted or amended to meet the standards of [the Unified Agreement].” Unified Agreement at Section 5, Introduction. The Unified Agreement further requires member states to agree not to have “fees, requirements for a refund policy unique to that state, requirements for a set curriculum for general education requirements, a mandatory number of hours for a degree or certificate, and other such requirements for out-of- state institutions that do not have physical presence in their borders and are participating in the interstate reciprocity agreement.” Unified Agreement, Section 5.1.5. Furthermore, a state seeking participation in XXXX acknowledges that XXXX “provides uniform standards for distance education across states and eliminates the need for participating states to assess the quality of out-of-state institutions through the traditional authorization process. Therefore, states will not require that institutions participating in the agreement meet additional requirements ...
General Concerns. Any person feeling aggrieved concerning any matter connected with the school will contact the individual concerned before discussing it with others.
General Concerns. The Reading Public Schools recognizes the proliferation and, in some instances, usefulness, of online conversation between Staff and students. However, due to the nature of social networking sites, there exists a risk, without care and planning, that the lines between one’s own professional life and personal life will be blurred. Our staff should always be mindful of how they present themselves to the world, online and otherwise. Should an educator “friend” a student on Facebook, subscribe to a student’s “twitter” account, regularly engage in email “chat” with a student, exchange text messages with students or engage in other electronic communication, the school district is concerned, and the educator should be concerned, that such activities may undermine the educator’s authority to maintain discipline, encourage inappropriate behaviors and compromise the educator’s ability to remain truly objective with his or her students.
General Concerns. The TRIPS-plus nature of provisions found in PTAs has been characterized as having a major undermining effect on the use of internationally agreed flexibilities92 and making accessibility to medicines a major hardship to developing countries.93 Concerns raised by the expansive exclusive rights on pharmaceutical products are not limited to access issues, but extend to the building of technological capacities in developing countries. Overly broad exclusive rights may threaten the ability of local innovators, especially in developing countries, to engage in research and development (R&D) through reverse engineering and the creation of functional generic equivalents and improvements.94 Extended exclusive rights might discourage potential generic investors from investing in existing local production plants in developing countries, thus denying important opportunities for technology transfer to local producers of pharmaceuticals.95 Thus, PTA provisions, where implemented without due regard to their potential impact on innovation, may seriously hamper developing countries' efforts of technological catching-up.96 As noted, some of these concerns were reflected in the changes introduced in recent PTAs signed by the USA to echo more accurately the need to conform the trade agreements to the spirit and letter of the Doha Declaration on Public Health (See Box 4).97 The subsequent sections focus on the following pharmaceutical related provisions of the free trade agreements: patent extensions, the patentability criteria, compulsory licensing, parallel imports, test data protection and the patent-marketing approval linkage. 92 “…In the 2002 Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx Act, Congress directed the Administrative branch to adhere to the Doha Declaration as a ‘principal negotiating objective’ in U.S. trade negotiations. Regrettably, recent … FTAs appear to undermine this commitment with provisions that strip away flexibilities to which countries are entitled under TRIPS. The FTAs provisions also appear to upset an important balance between innovation and access by elevating intellectual property at the expense of public health. The end result is that they threaten to restrict access to life-saving medicines and create conditions where poor countries could wait even longer than the Unites States for affordable generic medicines.” Public letter dated 12 March 2007 addressed to the USA Trade Representative, signed by 12 members of the USA Congress 93 Nobel Prize laureate Xxxxxx X...
General Concerns. As some of the CI industries have a long history they might have static processes in place for working with security. These processes might work for a range of security related situations, but they might not be dynamic or proactive enough to enable them to work in the field of securing themselves against advanced cyberattacks. The general concern could be rooted in the uncertainty of testing security proactively. The following questions should be anticipated and addressed: “are we sure the attack won’t cause disruption of our operation/production?” “how do we ensure confidentiality?” “do we run the risk of exposing ourselves?” “are the simulated attacks even realistic?”
