• Teen fan tasered by Phillies security after running onto field during game

    A 17-year old boy hopped onto the field in the eighth inning of a Phillies-Cardinals game; he fled security for a few seconds until a Philadelphia police officer fired a Taser gun at the boy from about 15-feet away, dropping him on the spot in left-center field

  • Trains still carry lethal cargo through Dallas-Forth Worth, other American cities

    A cloud of chlorine gas could kill up to 17,500 people and injure 100,000 others within several miles; about 1,300 chlorine-filled cars go through Union Pacific Railroad’s Davidson Yard in west Fort Worth in a typical year; the U.S. railroad industry, which is required by federal common-carrier law to ship chemicals such as chlorine, transported some 75,000 tank cars of toxic inhalants nationwide in 2009

  • Ungainly military boat center of attention

    An ungainly — some would say outright ugly — boat is drawing a lot of attention; the name of the boat is Stiletto and it is described as the largest all-carbon power boat in the world; its immediate mission is to support drug enforcement operations in Central and South America, but its long-term — and more significant — contribution is to help the military develop future technologies

  • Using sports-TV technology to help the military in the field

    One thing which would help soldiers in the field is the application of sports-TV technology — instant replays, high-definition views of targets shot from multiple angles, audio feeds to accompany the video, a digital map that could be laid over images to pinpoint locations, and more — to UAV video analysis; each day commercial broadcasters create and successfully manage 30 times the volume of video and other digital content that the military struggles with

  • U.S. nabs Times Square bomber at JFK airport

    Pakistani-born U.S. citizen was caught while trying to board a plane to Dubai from JFK; the man is not the individual seen on videotape near the bomb-laden SUV; bomb experts say the would-be bomber had left many leads for detectives to follow; one expert: “He was trying to cover his tracks, but he left more clues than a guy walking into a bank to rob it without a mask. This guy left everything here but his wallet”

  • Large U.S. companies allocate less money to executive security

    The money spent on protecting senior executives in crime-ridden countries such as South Africa and Brazil, and in many Central American countries, is increasing every year; in these countries, targeting executives and their families for ransom is now a profitable industry; in the United States, however, the trend is in the other directions - companies pay less and less to protect their executives, evidence that executive-security is one perk corporate boards are scrutinizing more closely

  • U.S. hypersonic glider lost in space

    The glider is designed to fly through the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 20, providing the U.S. military with a possible platform for striking targets anywhere on the planet with conventional weapons; the hypersonic program appears to fit in with U.S. plans to develop a way of hitting distant targets with conventional weapons within an hour, dubbed Prompt Global Strike

  • Northrop Grumman delivers mine detection pods ahead of schedule

    Here are words you do not read every day: a government defense contractor delivers what it was contracted for ahead of schedule; this is what Northrop Grumman did, delivering the mine detection system it has developed for the U.S. Navy three weeks ahead of schedule

  • Pentagon looking for augmented cognition troop trainer

    Today’s troops need to be as cognitively ready as they are physically — if not more; they have also got to spend more time on the ground in urban settings, interacting with locals and canvassing for information; the Pentagon is looking for an immersive troop trainer, one that includes voice-recognition technology, and picks up on vocal tone and facial gestures

  • Software helps World Cup emergency planning

    The organizers of this summer’s World Cup are using a simulation software developed by researchers at the University of Salford which allows emergency personnel and hospital better prepare for different emergencies

  • Detecting sweaty, smelly security threats

    DARPA wants to be able to detect, track, and even positively identify them from a distance — and do so using nothing more than the heat and sweat that emanate from a person’s pores; DARPA envisions myriad civilian applications for the technology, including “identifying and tracking persons from the scenes of various crimes”

  • Update: South Korean corvette was sunk by conventional torpedoes

    On 26 March an explosion destroyed the South Korean corvette Cheonan, killing 46 of its crews of 104; the North Koreans were suspected to be behind the attack, and stories circulated about a midget submarine and “human torpedoes”; an examination of the ship wreckage leads South Korean naval investigators to conclude that it was destroyed by a conventional torpedo of advanced design — and that North Korea was indeed behind the attack; there is an outside possibility that the corvette ran into an old sea mine left floating in the water since the Korean War

  • Aeronautics readies Picador UAV for May first flight

    Aeronautics is moving forward — from September to May — the first autonomous flight of its Picador unmanned helicopter; the Picador is being aimed mainly for navies as a means of replacing their current, manned helicopters in delivering “over the horizon” intelligence and deploying long-range weapon systems

  • Specialty bomb for fighting terrorists in dense urban areas

    The war against terrorists require weapons that can destroy targets in densely populated urban areas — without causing unnecessary damage to the surrounding neighborhood; the U.S. military has developed the new FLM (Focused Lethality Munition) bomb which will use a composite (carbon fiber) casing and replace some of the normal 127.2 kg (280 pounds) of explosives with 93 kg of explosives surrounded by high density filler (fine tungsten powder)

  • Al Qaeda rockets aimed at Israel hit Jordanian port city

    Al Qaeda terrorists fire two Grad rockets from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai peninsula at the Israeli resort town of Eilat, at the northern tip of the Red Sea; the rocket miss Eilat — one hit the neighboring Jordanian port city of Aqaba, the second fell into the sea; in 2005 al Qaeda terrorists used the same area of the Sinai to fire Katyusha rockets at a U.S. warship docked in the port of Aqaba