Canadian pipeline company TransCanada has filed an application with the U.S. Department of State to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude oil from the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest region. Keystone XL would have the capacity to transport 700,000 barrels a day (bpd) and can deliver crude to the oil market hub at Cushing, OK, and further to points in Texas. The project is expected to cost approximately $7.0 billion, of which an estimated $5.4 billion would be spent on the U.S. portion of the pipeline.

Section 1207 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2006 (P.L. 109-163) provides authority for the Department of Defense (DOD) to transfer to the State Department up to $100 million per fiscal year in defense articles, services, training or other support for reconstruction, stabilization, and security activities in foreign countries. It expires at the end of FY2010.

Trafficking in persons (TIP) for the purpose of exploitation is a lucrative criminal activity that is of major concern to the United States and the international community. According to the most recent U.S. State Department estimates, roughly 800,000 people are trafficked across borders each year. If trafficking within countries is included in the total world figures, official U.S. estimates are that some 2 to 4 million people are trafficked annually.

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. attention to terrorism in Latin America has intensified, with an increase in bilateral and regional cooperation. In its April 2009 Country Reports on Terrorism, the State Department maintained that terrorism in the region was primarily perpetrated by terrorist organizations in Colombia and by the remnants of radical leftist Andean groups. Overall, however, the report maintained that the threat of a transnational terrorist attack remained low for most countries in the hemisphere.

The U.S. program of assistance to Afghanistan is intended to stabilize and strengthen the Afghan economic, social, political, and security environment so as to blunt popular support for extremist forces in the region. Since 2001, nearly $38 billion has been appropriated toward this effort. More than half of U.S. assistanceroughly 54%has gone to security programs, mostly the training and equipping of Afghan forces. Another 32% has gone to development and humanitarian-related activities from infrastructure to private sector support.