• Leading Latino supermarket entrepreneur criticized for using E-Verify

    Juvenal Chavez built his Mi Pueblo supermarket chain from the ground up into twenty-one stores, revitalized San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood in San Jose; he has been hailed  the king of Latino supermarket; now the entrepreneur has come under fire: Mi Pueblo shocked some of its 3,000 employees last month when it told them the supermarket chain has joined E-Verify, a DHS program that aims to verify the immigration status of new hires and existing employees

  • U.S. models underestimates costs of carbon pollution

    Model used by government all but ignores economic damages that climate change will inflict on future generations; two economists argue that when these costs are factored in, the real benefits of carbon reduction range from 2.6 to more than 12 times higher than the government’s estimate

  • New NIST publication provides guidance for computer security risk assessments

    The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a final version of its risk assessment guidelines which can provide senior leaders and executives with the information they need to understand and make decisions about their organization’s current information security risks and information technology infrastructures

  • Tasered youth fare as well as adults: study

    Adolescents who are tasered by law enforcement officers do not appear to be at higher risk for serious injury than adults, according to new a new study; the conclusions are based on a retrospective study of Taser use from law enforcement data collected by the largest, independent multicenter database established in 2005

  • Nexans shows its anti-theft cable solutions

    Nexans is showing its new anti-theft cable solutions at InnoTrans, which opened yesterday in Berlin; the solution promises to help network operators reduce the high volume of copper cables theft along their railway networks

  • Sharp drop in illegal crossers notwithstanding, “border industrial complex” keeps growing

    Since 1986, U.S. immigration enforcement has cost the U.S. government $219 billion dollars; almost 80,000 workers now depend on immigration enforcement for their employment; illegal immigration has dropped sharply over the last four years, and is now at a 1971 level — but the what some call the “border industrial complex” keeps growing and growing

  • New immigration policy separates families, loved ones

    When DHS issued, on 15 June, an executive order which would defer, for two years, deportation proceedings against many illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, it was a day of celebration for many young immigrants and their families; the order went into effect on 15 August; some illegal immigrants had a cause for celebration, but many do not – because they found out they were not eligible

  • Wildfires have both positive and negative economic impacts

    Wildfires disrupt the lives of workers, employers, and families, and lead to longer-term instability in local labor markets, but on the flip side of the coin, countywide employment and wages increase in some sectors during the wildfires, often mitigating the short-term employment disruptions wildfires cause

  • Verizon’s all-hazard approach to disaster preparation

    September is National Preparedness Month in the United States, but Verizon saysits Business Continuity and Emergency Management teams are busy every day of the year monitoring, preparing, and responding to weather-related and man-made events throughout the world; there are 193 member states in the UN, and the company’s BCEM teams are operating in 150 of them and in more than 2,700 cities

  • Thorium to play limited role in U.K. future power supply

    Worldwide, there has for a long time been a sustained interest in the thorium fuel cycle and presently there are several major research initiatives which are either focused specifically on the thorium fuel cycle or on systems which use thorium as the fertile seed instead of U-238; the U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory examined the topic and concluded that thorium has theoretical advantages but that these benefits are often overstated; as a result, thorium fuel cycle at best has only limited relevance to the United Kingdom as a possible alternative plutonium disposition strategy and as a possible strategic option

  • Regional, global food security effects of climate change to felt soon

    Research shows that within the next ten years large parts of Asia can expect increased risk of more severe droughts, which will impact regional and possibly even global food security; on average, across Asia, droughts lasting longer than three months will be more than twice as severe in terms of their soil moisture deficit compared to the 1990-2005 period; China, Pakistan, and Turkey as the most seriously affected major producers of wheat and maize

  • Security education is becoming a central part of security hiring, promotion

    There is a growing emphasis on homeland security-related education in security hiring in both the private and government sectors; this growing demand has lead to a rapid growth in college and university degree programs in homeland security – the number of such programs is now estimated to be 350; trouble is, those programs do not have a commonly agreed upon curriculum, and as a result, the classes chosen to be part of an individual’s curriculum are based on the available faculty, rather than proven value to the students

  • GovSec West Conference & Expo, Dallas, Texas, 8-10 October

    The 2nd Annual GovSec West Conference & Expo in Dallas, Texas, will be held 8-10 October; the event takes a comprehensive approach to security by providing security professionals with the tools, techniques, and strategies for critical infrastructure protection, border and physical security, preparing for and responding to disasters, preventing domestic and international terrorism, and protecting against cybercrime and cyberterrorism

  • Rinderpest: how the world’s deadliest cattle plague was eradicated

    Rinderpest, the deadliest of cattle diseases, was declared vanquished in May 2011; after smallpox, it is only the second disease (and first livestock disease) ever to be eradicated from the earth; the insights gained from the eradication campaign may be applied to similar diseases that today ravage the livestock populations on which the livelihoods of one billion of the world’s poor depend; the lessons could also be applied to “zoonotic” diseases which are responsible for 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths per year

     

  • At least 200,000 tons of oil, gas from Deepwater Horizon spill consumed by bacteria

    Researchers have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally occurring bacteria which exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the deep Gulf from the ruptured well head