• Nevada lawmakers fail to restore DHS funds to Las Vegas

    Members of the Nevada congressional delegation were taken aback when they found that Las Vegas would lose DHS funding for anti-terror programs, and immediately began to work their fellow lawmakers on the Hill to add money to DHS security grants to cities. The effort failed, and Las Vegas will have to find other sources of funding for some of the city’s security programs.

  • NSA collecting information on Verizon customers’ communications

    The National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting massive amounts of “metadata,” or transactional information, on millions of Verizon’s U.S. customers. A court granted the NSA permission to begin information collection on 25 April, stipulating the collection must end by 19 July. The court order instructs Verizon to “continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order.” It specifies that the records to be produced include “session identifying information,” such as “originating and terminating number,” the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and “comprehensive communication routing information.”

  • The two-track Syria strategy of Iran and Hezbollah

    For Iran and Hezbollah, the preservation of Bashar Assad regime is of supreme strategic importance, but both realize the regime may not survive. Iran and Hezbollah, therefore, employ two parallel strategic tracks. The first, immediate track aims to prop up the Assad regime’s ability to survive and continue governing by providing it with military, economic, political, and propaganda support. The second track, planned as an intermediate- and long-term strategy, aims to make it possible for Syria’s Shi’ites and Alawites to defend themselves by creating a “popular army.” To help the first track, Hezbollah has sent thousands of its best fighters to fight on the side of the Assad regime and help the regime keep its hold over areas in northwest Syria. To advance the second track, Hezbollah, with Iranian funding, is helping the Assad regime build and train a popular army of about 150,000 Alawite and Shi’a soldiers. This army will protect the interests of the Alawite and Shi’a communities – and the interests of Iran and Hezbollah — in Syria if the Assad regime falls.

  • Rubio will vote against immigration bill unless border security provisions are strengthened

    Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) is a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight group which drafted a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The bill has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee and will come to the Senate floor next week. Rubio, however, says he would vote against the bill he helped draft unless the border security provisions in the bill are strengthened.

  • Iowa City to ban red-light cameras, drones, license plate readers

    Iowa City could become the first city in the United States to issue a sweeping ban on three law-enforcement technologies:  drones, license plate readers, and red-light cameras. Privacy advocates say each of these technologies poses a threat to privacy, and the cumulative effect of using all three would turn America into a surveillance society.

  • Highly sensitive polymer detects IEDs

    A chemical which is often the key ingredient in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can be quickly and safely detected in trace amounts by a new polymer created by a team of Cornell University chemists. The polymer, which potentially could be used in low-cost, handheld explosive detectors and could supplement or replace bomb-sniffing dogs.

  • Thousands of U.S. bridges in “fracture critical” condition

    There are currently 66,749 structurally deficient bridges and 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges in the United States – about a quarter of the nation’s 607,000 bridges. With declining federal funds for bridge repair, the burden of maintenance has shifted to states, which spent $28.5 billion last year on bridge work – up from $12.3 billion in 1998.

  • France weighing military options after French lab confirms Syrian use of sarin gas

    Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, said yesterday (Tuesday) that samples taken from Syria and tested in France confirm that sarin gas has been used by the Assad regime in several attacks in March and April. The U.K. Foreign Office said that samples from Syrian victims tested in British labs also confirmed the use of sarin. A UN investigative panel released its report yesterday, saying its experts had “reasonable grounds” to suspect small-scale use of toxic chemicals. Fabius said that France was not ruling out a military strike on the place where the gas is being stored.

  • Lawmaker wants more Bin Laden documents declassified

    There were so many documents seized by U.S. Special Forces in the 2011 raid on Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan have been, that official described them as the equivalent of “a small college library,” but two years after the raid, only seventeen documents are public. Representative Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wants the documents declassified. Leaders of the U.S. intelligence community do not think it is a good idea.

  • Divided Supreme Court allows collection of DNA samples from suspects upon arrest

    The Supreme Court on Monday, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that law enforcement is now allowed to take samples of DNA from people who have been arrested on suspicion of committing a serious crime.“Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee’s DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,”Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

  • Laser-driven neutrons to detect nuclear smuggling

    Researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that laser-generated neutrons can be enlisted as a useful tool in the war on terror, as Los Alamos shows first nuclear material detection by single short-pulse-laser-driven neutron source.

  • Sen. Rubio proposes that Congress, not DHS, devise border security plan

    Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida), a member of the bipartisan group which drafted the immigration bill which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and which will be brought to the floor of the Senate next week, is working on a proposal which will dramatically change the approach to devising and assessing border security in the bill. The bill now has DHS entrusted with the responsibility of devising a border security plan and determining whether the plan has been adequately implemented. Rubio proposes that Congress would assume these responsibilities, saying that the current plan for borer security is not robust enough to convince many Republican lawmakers to support the immigration bill.

  • Critics: Gang of Eight bill will create new surge of illegal immigration

    The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a nonprofit organization critical of U.S. policies toward both legal and illegal immigration, says the Gang of Eight bipartisan immigration reform bill will not solve the U.S. illegal immigration problem, but rather exacerbate it. FAIR notes that in 1986, the Reagan administration pushed a bill through Congress which gave amnesty to nearly three million illegal aliens — but the problem of illegal immigration has only grown worse.

  • Turmoil in Turkey is about the future identity of the country

    The demonstrations in Istanbul began as a neighborhood protest against the government’s plan to build a shopping mall on the site of a popular park. Soon, however, the demonstrations spread to other cities, and spokespeople for the demonstrators emphasized that the park issue was symbolic, and that it stood for deeper issues. This growing unrest may yet unleash deeper forces within Turkish society.

  • U.S. unlikely to meet its biofuel goals

    The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) mandates that by 2022 the United States derive fifteen billion gallons per year of ethanol from corn to blend with conventional motor fuels. A new study says that if the climate continues to evolve as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States stands little to no chance of satisfying its biofuel goals.