• Keeping an eye on the world’s dangerous chemicals

    In the chemistry labs of the developing world, it is not uncommon to find containers, forgotten on shelves, with only vague clues to their origins. The label, if there is one, is rubbed away. Left alone for years, some chemicals can quietly break down into explosive elixirs, and what was once an innocent experiment by a well-meaning scientist becomes a very real, unsecured threat. Should such chemicals fall into malicious hands, the consequences could be widespread and deadly.

  • Harvard president issues a clarion call for science

    Harvard President Drew Faust, addressingthe annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), called for members of the scientific community to “raise our voices” in an effort to prevent the U.S. Congress from becoming “an American Association for the Retreat of Science.” Urging widespread efforts to prevent U.S. cuts in funds for sustained research, Faust said: “We must secure the federal research support critical to the future of our nation and of the world.”

  • Chinese government orchestrates cyberattacks on U.S.: experts

    For more than a decade now, China has engaged in a sustained, systemic, and comprehensive campaign of cyber attacks against the United States. The Chinese government has enlisted China’s sprawling military and civilian intelligence services, with their armies of cyber-specialists, in a cyber-campaign aiming to achieve three goals: steal Western industrial secrets and give them to Chinese companies, so these companies could compete and weaken their Western rivals; hasten China’s march toward regional, then global, economic hegemony; achieve deep penetration of U.S. critical infrastructure in order to gain the ability to disrupt and manipulate American critical infrastructure – and paralyze it during times of crisis and conflict. A detailed 60-page study, to be released today , offers, for the first time, proof that the most sophisticated Chinese hacker groups, groups conducting the most threatening attacks on the United States, are affiliated with the headquarters of China’s military intelligence lead unit — PLA Unit 61398.

  • DHS reasserts right for search and seizure without probable cause

    Thousands of times a year  people are stopped as they cross into the United States, and their cell phones, tablets, and laptops are taken from them. Their e-mails and photos and other important documents are searched thoroughly without  probable cause.

  • DHS to buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition

    DHS is looking to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the next four or five years — this comes to about five bullets for every person in the United States. The news was met in some conspiratorial quarters as an indication that the government is in an “arms race against the American people,” but the truth is more mundane: the rounds will be used for basic and advanced law enforcement training for federal law enforcement agencies supervised by DHS. The training will be conducted Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia and other facilities, which also offer firearms training to tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers.

  • Ohio country authorized to use drones to look for missing persons

    The Medina County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Office has recently been authorized to fly drones on police missions. Tom Miller, the county’s new sheriff, said the drones will be used specifically for looking for missing people or suspect who may be hiding in the woods.

  • Infrastructure renewal in regional Australia

    New research in Australia calls for the establishment of a new national organization to tackle the shortfall in infrastructure investment and boost the regions’ capacity to contribute to national economic growth. Expert say the new organization, to be called Local Infrastructure Australia, would be the most effective way of overcoming the backlog in local government infrastructure investment now estimated at between $12 and $15.5 billion.

  • Iran installs faster centrifuges at Natanz

    Iranian officials said Wednesday that Iran has begun installing more sophisticated enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility. Speeding up the enrichment process would shorten Iran’s “break out” period: if Iran were to inform the IAEA that it was withdrawing from the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), a step which would allow it to build nuclear bombs without violating the treaty – the time between withdrawal from the treaty and to first nuclear weapons being build will be that much shorter. This will make it that much more difficult for outside powers to intervene to stop the build-up.

  • Senate Judiciary Committee launches immigration hearings

    Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing featured testimony from DHS secretary Janet Napolitano and Jose Antonio Vargas, a former journalist who started the group Define American, which campaigns for immigration reform. The hearing focused largely on border security and enforcement, with an entire panel devoted to just one witness — Napolitano. Napolitano said that border security was often used as an excuse to prevent meaningful changes.

  • Alabama consolidates state law enforcement, IT agencies

    A Republican-led effort to consolidate government operations in Alabama was met with a bi-partisan approval as both Democrats and Republicans voted to merge law enforcement and information technology operations. A study done by Auburn University at Montgomery estimates state agencies spend $317 million a year on IT operations, and that with the new measures, the state could save between $32 million and $64 million.

  • Maryland drills first responders in response to “large-scale” incident

    More than 100 police, fire, first responders, military and civilian personnel took part in a homeland security exercise earlier this month at Battelle in Aberdeen, Maryland. The exercise included intelligence and information sharing, mass casualty care, on-site security and protection, operational coordination, and public information and communication.

  • Obama to issue cybersecurity executive order today

    President Barack Obama is expected to issue an executive order tomorrow to dealing protecting U.S. critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. The order will be issues one day after the president’s State of the Union address. The order will establish a critical infrastructure council which will be run by DHS and will include members of the Departments of Defense, Justice, and Commerce as well as the National Intelligence Office. The council will be tasked with formulating new regulations for federal agencies, or broadening regulations  already in place. The regulations will most likely include the sharing of data between private corporations and the federal government.

  • Final U.S. infrastructure report offers a sober message

    In its fifth and final report on the state of U.S. infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has a sober message for elected officials, policy makers, businesses, and general public: unless the United States invests an additional $1.57 billion per year in infrastructure — drinking water and waste water, electricity, airports, seaports and waterways, and surface transportation — between now and 2020, the nation will lose $3.1 trillion in GNP (gross national product), $1.1 trillion in trade, a $3,100 per year drop in personal disposable income, $2.4 trillion in lost consumer spending, and a little over 3.1 million jobs.

     

  • Chechnya president orders crackdown on wizards, sorcerers, and faith healers

    Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya since 2005, was the driving force behind the Center for Islamic Medicine in Grozny, the largest Islamic folk hospital in Europe, where faith healers perform djinn (Islamic spirits) exorcisms by reading Quranic verses aloud. Kadyrov has changed his mind, and has now banned sorcery in the country, calling its practitioners “charlatans.”

  • Courts largely ignore immigration status in lawsuits: study

    When a person living in the United States without legal permission or suspected of doing so is involved in a work-related lawsuit, most courts disregard their immigration status when determining remedies, says a study from an expert in labor relations.