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A firefighter drone flies, crawls up walls
The 1974 American disaster film “Towering Inferno” depicted well the earnest struggles of firefighters engaged in ending a fire at a 138-story skyscraper. To this day, fires at high-rise buildings are considered one of the most dangerous disasters. Researchers developed a wall-climbing scout drone to fight fires in high-rises, finding the source of the fires and locating people trapped inside.
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Canada avoids sex attacks by accepting refugee families over single men
Canada’s immigration minister John McCallum said Canada will not suffer from Cologne-style sex attacks because the country “carefully selects” the Syrian refugees it takes in. McCallum said that because Canada has welcomed Syrian refugees “with open hearts and love,” Canadians will not be affected by their resettlement as Germany has been. “Most of them are not single men. Most of them are family members. Whereas Germany accepts everybody that comes to its borders,” McCallum said.
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FBI antiterrorism unit arrests white supremacist for contract killing plot
A leading member of a white supremacist gang in Louisiana was arrested by FBI agents over a murder-for-hire scheme. Jeffery Howard of Mississippi, a known member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was arrested Thursday. Federal authorities say he had agreed to execute a black drug dealer for $5,000.
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Technologies enabling automated lookouts for unmanned surface vessels sought
DARPA’s Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program seeks to develop a new type of unmanned surface vessel that could independently track adversaries’ ultra-quiet diesel-electric submarines over thousands of miles. ACTUV program invites input so future unmanned ships could operate safely near manned maritime vessels in all weather and traffic conditions, day or night.
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Seismologists "hear" the nuclear explosions in North Korea
International experts are far from convinced that North Korea actually conducted its first H-bomb test, which was reported by the country last week.Seismology alone cannot tell whether it was a hydrogen bomb or not, but seismologists say that what emerges from the existing data is that last week’s seismic events in North Korea were slightly smaller than a similar event in 2013.
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Rate of violent crime in England and Wales rising
A new method of analyzing crime statistics finds that violent crime in England and Wales is increasing, not decreasing. These findings contradict the official view that violent crime in England and Wales is continuing to fall.
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What makes a “smart gun” smart?
Throughout the 20-year-long discussion of “smart guns,” the topic has been a lightning rod for debate between pro- and anti-gun lobbies. But too often, there isn’t substantive knowledge of the underlying technologies, their appropriate use and their design limitations. Personalized weapons technology can make a contribution to reducing death and injury from accidental or unauthorized weapons use. It is not a panacea, but it can be an option for gun buyers to ensure their weapons never fall into the wrong hands. Smart guns are not science fiction and could be a commercial reality much sooner than later.
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ISIS follower shoots Philadelphia police officer
A man who shot a Philadelphia policeman while he was sitting in his squad car and wounded him, was inspired by ISIS. Edward Archer used a stolen gun to fire eleven shots at Jesse Hartnett in – but Hartman, despite being wounded, was able to get out of the car and return fire, hitting the gunman three times.
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Mexico’s homicide rate has led to decrease in men’s life expectancy
Mexico’s staggering homicide rate has taken a toll on the mortality rate for men — and it could be even worse than the statistics indicate. The homicide rate more than doubled from 9.5 per 100,000 deaths in 2005 to 22 per 100,000 by 2010. As a result, average life expectancy among Mexican men ages 15 through 50 fell from 33.8 years to 33.5 years between 2005 through 2010.
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Sharing of research data, findings should be the norm in public health emergencies
Opting in to data sharing should be the default practice during public health emergencies, such as the recent Ebola epidemic, and barriers to sharing data and findings should be removed to ensure those responding to the emergency have the best available evidence at hand, experts say.
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New York City settles Muslim surveillance lawsuits
The NYPD has been agreed not to conduct surveillance based on religion, race, and ethnicity after charges that it had illegally monitoring Muslims in New York City. The city has agreed to settle two civil rights lawsuits for illegally monitoring its Muslim community following the September 11 attacks. As part of the settlement, in which the city does not admit to any wrongdoings, the city will appoint a civilian to monitor the NYPD’s counterterrorism unit.
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Adelson offered to pay for Iron Dome’s development
In 2013, shortly after Congress had passed a funding bill for the joint Pentagon-Israel Iron Dome missile defense system, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), then the Senate’s majority leader, received a call from one of his constituents, the gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Adelson asked Reid to convey to the White House a most unusual offer: He, Adelson, was willing personally to contribute $1 billion of his own money toward the development costs of Iron Dome.
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Florida prof. claiming mass shootings were staged by the Obama administration is fired
James F. Tracy, a Florida Atlantic University professor conducting a public campaign on social media, in radio interviews, and op-ed articles claiming that that the 2012 massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary and other mass shootings were not more than hoaxes perpetrated by federal officials on instructions of the Obama administration in order to rally support for gun control, was fired Tuesday. Tracy has made a name for himself in the more rabid conspiracy circles for repeatedly calling into question the very truth behind recent mass shootings like the ones in Newtown, Connecticut, Charleston, South Carolina, Aurora, Colorado, and San Bernardino, California. Tracy, in his blog posts and radio interviews, claim that these shooting never took place – or, if they did, that they were mere “drills” carried out by “crisis actors” employed by the Obama administration.
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Wi-Fi devices goldmine for investigators
Timely access to Wi-Fi devices at crime scenes could provide police with vital evidence, including placing suspects at the location. This is due to their ability to record information from mobile devices, including successful or failed attempts to log into a network, de-authentication times and MAC addresses.
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North Korea claims to have tested miniaturized hydrogen bomb
North Korea has conducted its fourth nuclear test in ten years – the previous tests took place in 2006, 2009 and 2013 – indicating that the country is further along in developing nuclear warheads which could be miniaturized and placed on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
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.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.