• Grim milestone: Mexican border city hits 3,000 dead in 2010

    The Mexican drug war among the drug cartels — and between the cartels and the government —- continues to escalate as more and more weapons pour into the country; Ciudad Juarez, the homicide capital of the world, saw 1,623 people killed in drug-related violence in 2008; the toll increased to 2,763 deaths in 2009; on Tuesday the tolls reached 3,000 for 2010; also Tuesday: the Mexican navy reported it seized nine go-fast boats and a total of 15 metric tons (16.5 tons) of marijuana during two days of searches in the Gulf of California.; on 13 December; and the lower house of Mexico’s Congress voted 384-2, with 21 abstentions, to rescind the congressional immunity from prosecution of a fellow legislator accused of links to La Familia; La Familia leader Nazario Moreno, nicknamed “The Craziest One,” was killed in battles that lasted two days and spread to key parts of Michoacan state

  • U.S. Navy demonstrates 100-mile hypersonic rail gun test shot

    The latest test by the U.S. Navy of a rail gun saw a trial firing which pushed muzzle energy to a blistering 33 megajoules (MJ); the Navy wants to achieve lab trials at 64 MJ, potentially offering 200 mile range with projectiles striking at Mach 5, before trying to build an actual weapon

  • Mexicans march in support of killed drug kingpin

    Hundreds of people turned out for the march in Apatzingan, the birth place of La Familia cartel leader Nazario Moreno, who was known as “the Craziest One” and reputedly indoctrinated his gang members in pseudo-Christian ideology; the government says Moreno was killed in Apatzingan on Thursday in a shootout with federal police

  • Police robot ends Wisconsin standoff

    Last Friday, a Northrop Grumman police robot was sent to investigate an SUV parked on the shoulder of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, highway; the robot approached the two potentially dangerous suspects holed up in an SUV, transmitted instructions from a hostage negotiator sitting safely in a nearby truck, and punched out the rear window of the suspects’ stolen car, helping police end the standoff peacefully

  • Mobile apps tackle bad driving with "see something, say something"

    Crowdsourcing comes to traffic management; state governments are increasingly asking drivers to help enforce traffic laws, and there is a growing number of driving apps allowing drivers to report the bad traffic habits of fellow drivers; the app developers say their aim is to bring greater civility and safety to the nation’s roads — but they also plan to sell the information they gather to insurance companies and states’ DMVs

  • Car 54 -- we know where you are

    In “Car 54 Where Are You,” the dispatcher of the 53rd Precinct in the Bronx always tried to locate officers Francis Muldoon and Gunter Toody; that was in the early 1960s; now, 47 years later, Chief Stan Bynum of the Ingleside, Texas, Police Department does not have to wonder where his patrol cars are; he just has to go to his new laptop to visually pinpoint every patrol car at the same time via GPS

  • DSU police helps in development of new law enforcement technology

    Delaware State University police is the primary tester of the Condor Crime Scene Management and Evidence Tracking System, developed by Fairfax, Virginia-based Advanced Response Concepts; a primary feature of the system is an electronic tablet that police can use to write their investigation and evidence collection information

  • Using a GPS database in law enforcement

    A GPS database can be used for a variety of different purposes and is an important part of law enforcement software; primarily, database-driven GPS devices are used for navigation and tracking in the civilian world; other data, however, can be included in devices designed for police officers, detectives, parole officers, and 911 operators

  • Iranian man who blinded love rival sentenced to suffer same fate

    Iranian justice is harsh; a man who blinded his lover’s husband by throwing acid in his face was sentenced to be blinded himself by having acid poured into his own eyes; a woman is hanged for allegedly killing her lover’s wife — she has denied the allegations — and the brother of the killed woman carried out the final stage of the execution by kicking away the stool on which Jahed was standing with the noose around her neck

  • U.S. Army envisions an XM-25 smart gunner in every squad from 2014

    U.S. military unveils XM-25 portable airburst artillery piece plans; the XM-25 shoots special, fat 25 mm projectiles which are more or less a cross between ordinary rifle bullets and 40 mm launched grenades; the XM-25 rounds have an added special feature: an extremely accurate time fuse which is set electronically by the gun’s systems at the moment of firing, permitting them to explode in midair at a precise distance from the muzzle

  • Fully robotic, remotely controlled bomb-disposal hand nears

    Engineers have developed a robotic hand that offers remotely controlled, highly dexterous movements that could lead to a breakthrough in areas such as bomb disposal; the robotic hand can be remotely controlled by a glove worn by an operator connected to a computer; this can then communicate via a wireless connection with the hand offering real time comparable movements

  • Ray gun runs at full power for six hours

    Laser weapons are potentially very powerful, but until now they had one major drawback: All the earlier versions of the weapon were essentially giant rocket engines that burned chemical fuels and reached impressive powers; some even shot down test missiles; all of them, however, only ran for seconds at a time, and needed special fuels that would have created nightmares for battlefield logistics; a new Northrop Grumman ray gun has now run at full power for more than six hours

  • Computational forensics determines the rarity of a finger print

    Crime scene forensic analysis has long functioned on the premise that a person’s unique identity is hidden in the tiny loops and swirls of their fingerprints, but teasing that information out of the incomplete prints left at crime scenes is still an inexact science, at best; a University at Buffalo researcher has developed a way computationally to determine the rarity of a particular fingerprint and, thus, how likely it is to belong to a particular crime suspect

  • Cash-sniffing dog comes through at Philadelphia airport

    The U.S. Customs and Border Protection employs a small number of currency-sniffing dogs; Nina, the currency-sniffing canine working at the Philadelphia International Airport, last Friday sniffed out a woman heading to Jamaica with $41,500 in her checked luggage