• U.K. firm investigated over sale of dirty bomb material to Iran

    British company sells cobalt aluminate; the material can be used to produce alloys as well as the lethal radioactive isotope cobalt 60; for this reason its sale to nations like North Korea and Iran is tightly limited; cobalt is considered by nuclear experts as more likely to be used in a dirty bomb than in a nuclear warhead

  • TSA awards CSC a $489 million IT infrastructure contract

    TSA awards CSC an IT infrastructure protection contract worth approximately $489 million for a five year life cycle; the contract is for the deployment, maintenance, and enhancement of TSA’s IT infrastructure capabilities

  • World's largest airship inflated Wednesday for the first time

    The world’s largest airship — 235 feet long and 65 feet in diameter — was inflated on Wednesday for the first time; the test took place inside the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Alabama which, the proprietors state, can hold as many as 1,500 cattle (“with milking parlor”); the airship features many innovations, including propelling ducted fans which are mounted along the centerline of the hull rather than beneath it, so that the nose does not lift when more power is applied

  • Federal agencies outline government's cybersecurity goals

    Government representatives outlined to the attendees at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy the current U.S. cybersecurity research and development goals — and needs; the representatives outlined the need for a better understanding of the economics of security in order to gain a clearer picture of what types of investments would help defenders, and they asked for solutions that might again shift the advantage away from attackers

  • Mexican executives up security after former senator disappears

    Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a Mexican lawyer and 1994 presidential candidate, had been taken forcibly from his ranch in Queretaro state on 15 May and never heard from since; one business leader says: “With a person of this stature falling victim to this kind of circumstance, the sense of vulnerability increases for everyone in society and we all become more worried”; drug-trafficker turf wars and kidnapping gangs have elevated the cost of doing business and hurt Mexico’s ability to attract foreign investment

  • Deep-water oil spills do most of the damage deep down

    Oil spills like the one in the Gulf do most of their damage in the deep; the oil visible on the surface accounts for only 2 percent of the oil spilling into the Gulf; most of the oil remains submerged in the form of droplets that only slowly make their way to the surface

  • Fears grow that Gulf oil could strike Florida

    Worries grow over the ecological and economic impact of the huge oil spill, with the most recent fears focused on its possible spread into a “loop current” that could carry the pollution to the Florida Keys and nearby tourist beaches; the U.S. government has already extended fishing closure to nearly 20 percent of the Gulf because of the contamination of harvested seafood

  • Why SBINet has failed

    New report says SBINet failed because the U.S. government rushed into it without a well-thought-out plan and without a sufficiently tight supervision of the prime contractor, Boeing; “Instead, [SBINet] has been based more on dreams, hopes and fantasy — and on the widely shared, but faulty, assumption that technology provided by private contractors could meet the challenge of securing the country’s nearly 6,000 miles of land borders with remote surveillance systems”

  • The day of transportable, refrigerator-size nuclear reactor nears

    The need for more energy and the growing interest in energy not based on fossil material have led to a revival of interest in nuclear power; there is a competition afoot among several companies for designing and building — and receiving a operation license for — a refrigerator-size nuclear reactor; the $50 million, 25-megawatt unit is transportable by truck, and would put electricity into 20,000 homes

  • BP's emergency "plan" for the Gulf discusses impact on "seals, sea otters and walruses"

    BP’s 582-page emergency-response never anticipated an oil spill as large as the one now gushing on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico; a closer reading shows the document was not much than a boilerplate, cut-and-paste job used by BP from region to region; in a section titled “Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources,” the emergency plan lists “seals, sea otters and walruses” as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill — even though no such animals live in the Gulf; the plan was approved in July by the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS), a toothless agency accused by lawmakers of being in the pocket of the oil industry

  • Investing in terrorism-resistant stock

    Terrorism attacks not only the safety of people, but their wealth; an investment consultant says that while it is impossible to make a conventional investment portfolio terrorism-proof, it is possible to select securities that are a bit resistant to it

  • Today's IT security professionals are expected to offer more than a school certificate

    Demand for IT security specialists in both the private sector and government grows steadily; IT security is the No. 1 growth industry in the government and government contractor sectors; employers, however, no longer see IT security certification as a sufficient qualification, and are looking for a broader set of skills

  • U.S. Army's XM25 smart grenade launcher described as "game changer"

    New smart grenade launcher described as a “game changer”; the XM25 can fire 25mm rounds that explode at any distance set by a soldier, effective at a range of up to 700 meters; the 14-pound, $25,000 gun can fire rounds in just seconds, it could replace the need to call in fire missions, artillery, or air strikes in some situations, which can take anywhere from several minutes to an hour to arrive

  • BP oil leak "much bigger" than official estimates'

    BP first asserted that the amount of oil its well releases into the Gulf is about 1,000 barrels daily; following the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s (NOAA) initial estimates, that figure has been increased to 5,000 barrels; ocean scientists and engineers now say that amount of oil released daily is more likely to be between five times and 14 times that — about 25,000 to 80,000 barrels a day

  • Scientists discover huge oil plumes deep in Gulf of Mexico; worry for marine life

    The news from the Gulf get worse: Scientists discover giant plumes of oil in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico; one of the plumes was ten miles long, three miles wide, and 300 feet thick; the plumes are depleting the oxygen in the Gulf, prompting fears that the process could eventually kill much of the sea life near the plumes