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Coast Guard solicits private sector ideas on how to stem spill, deal with consequences
“We’re adapting to an enemy that changes,” Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the oil spill, said; accordingly, in somewhat of an about-face, the Coast Guard last Friday began to solicit ideas from vendors, scientists, government laboratories, and nonprofits on how to stop, contain, and clean up the largest off-shore oil spill in U.S. history
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40,000-plus barrels per day pouring into Gulf
Since the 20 April explosion of the Deepwater Horizon well, BP has insisted that the amount of oil being spilled into the gulf was no more than 5,000 barrels a day; U.S. government scientists yesterday corrected the company’s assertions, saying that amount is at least 40,000 barrels, if not more; the 1989 Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound; there are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, so 40,000 barrels mean 1,680,000 gallons; this means that since 20 April, the BP well has released oil into the Gulf at a rate of one Exxon Valdez every 6.5 days; in other words, between 20 April and 3 June, when the well’s riser was cut, a quantity of oil equal to seven Exxon Valdez has been spilled into the Gulf
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Solar-powered robot crawls on aging power lines to inspect the grid
The U.S. grid infrastructure has two characteristics: it is vast and it is aging; now there is a cost-effective way to examine thousands of miles of power lines: a new, solar-powered, 140-pound, six-foot-long robot; the robot uses rollers to clamp onto and move along a line; it can maneuver past towers, known as pylons, using cables built into newer towers or retrofitted onto old ones
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U.K. police raids companies selling explosives "divining rods"
A British company made millions of dollars selling hand-held explosives “divining rods” to Iraqi security forces; despite scientific evidence that the device was a hoax., the Iraqi army and police kept using millions in U.S. aid dollars to buy the worthless gimmick and equip check-point personnel with it; in February the British government banned the production and sale of the device, and last week the police raided three companies for exporting fake bomb detectors
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BP's cost-cutting approach made well vulnerable, left company unprepared
Safety upgrades are critical but could mean higher prices for oil and gas; to cut costs, BP decided to install a continuous set of threaded casing pipes from the wellhead down to the bottom of its well; this leaves one blind to leaks that sneak up around the casing pipe, and the long string gives gas more time to percolate into the well; a preferred — and costlier — alternative in high-pressure deepwater is a “liner” design in which drillers install and then cement in place a short string of casing in the lower reaches of the well before casing the rest of the well
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DOE puts raw oil spill data on new Web page
A new Department of Energy Web page provides numbers on how much oil is being recovered, and schematics of the technology involved in trying the cap the well and the Gulf clean-up
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Symantec acquisitions contribute to making encryption-as-a-feature commonplace
Encryption has been a growth market, fostered by increasingly stringent regulations from data breach notification laws, now in more than forty states, and tougher Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) rules, to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCIDSS)
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21st Century Technologies acquires D.C.-area cyber-security firm
21st Century Technology (21CT), a developer of advanced intelligence analytics software to combat terrorist threats and cyber threats, acquires a specialist in defenses against network intrusions
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Lookingglass named finalist for Best Cyber Security Company
Lookingglass Cyber Solutions’s ScoutVision allows corporations to monitor networks and infrastructure they are not in control of, but rely upon for day-to-day operations; the company is finalist in Maryland Incubator of the Year Awards program
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Video study finds risky food-safety behavior more common than thought
New study finds that that risky practices in restaurants, cafeterias, and other food-service places happen more often than previously thought; one expert says: “Meals prepared outside the home have been implicated in up to 70 percent of food poisoning outbreaks, making them a vital focus area for food safety professionals”
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FIFA warns South Africa that stampede must not be repeated
Sepp Blatter, FIFA president, believes that the crowd stampede during last Sunday’s Nigeria-North Korea warm-up game, in which 16 people were trampled, came close to giving the World Cup finals a tragedy before they had started — but may serve as a wake-up call to South Africa’s security services to take security at the games more seriously
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Corporate set stays away from World Cup
Not only individual soccer fans stay away from the World Cup in South Africa, which opens tomorrow — corporations stay away, too; FIFA has admitted defeat by putting 38,000 corporate tickets on the open market; worried about personal safety of top executives and rich clients, and fearful of cost and criticism that they are spending on jaunts, corporations decided not to buy corporate tickets for the games
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BP's oil spill depleting oxygen in Gulf, decimating Gulf's abundant sea life
The magnitude of the BP oil spill disaster becomes clearer; scientists confirm the massive oil spill spread more than forty nautical miles from the disaster site and at a depth of 3,300 feet; scientists have said that in addition to being nearly impossible to clean up, the oil plumes could deplete oxygen in the Gulf, decimating its abundant sea life
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Altegrity to buy Kroll for $1.13 billion in cash
Altegrity, which does a range of contract work, mostly for the U.S. federal government, including security clearance investigations for the U.S. government and training and consulting for police departments at home and abroad, will buy Kroll, the corporate intelligence unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos., for $1.13 billion in cash; acquisition will strengthen Altegrity’s business outside the United States
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Demand for stand-alone terrorism coverage down
Reinsurers would like to place more terrorism business, but the demand for stand-alone terrorism coverage is on the wane; the market could tighten if the Obama administration proceeds with its plan to scale back the federal government’s terrorism insurance backstop, which has been in place since 2002
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More headlines
The long view
Ransomware Attacks: Death Threats, Endangered Patients and Millions of Dollars in Damages
A ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a company that processes 15 billion health care transactions annually and deals with 1 in 3 patient records in the United States, is continuing to cause massive disruptions nearly three weeks later. The incident, which started on February 21, has been called the “most significant cyberattack on the U.S. health care system” by the American Hospital Association. It is just the latest example of an increasing trend.
Chinese Government Hackers Targeted Critics of China, U.S. Businesses and Politicians
An indictment was unsealed Monday charging seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement in a PRC-based hacking group that spent approximately 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials in furtherance of the PRC’s economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
LNG Exports Have Had No Impact on Domestic Energy Costs: Analysis
U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) exports have not had any sustained and significant direct impact on U.S. natural gas prices and have, in fact, spurred production and productivity gains, which contribute to downward pressure on domestic prices.