• U.S. denies Iran’s claim that it had captured a U.S. surveillance drone

    Drones are used extensively by the United States to monitor not only Iran’s nuclear activities, but also its military moves on land and at sea. Iran’s state television reported on Tuesday that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps naval forces captured an American drone that entered Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy quickly denied the claim

  • Andrew Cuomo heads to Washington to push for disaster aid

    Governor Andrew Cuomo says that New York needs $33 billion to cover storm cleanup and another $9 billion for new programs to protect against future storms; Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey says his state will need $36.8 billion to recover from Sandy; it is not clear how Congress and the administration, locked in a tug of war over differing deficit cut plans, will respond

  • The Assad regime moving chemical weapons closer to delivery vehicles

    Over the weekend, the besieged Assad regime has begun to move chemical munitions out of storage to military bases where the delivery vehicles for these weapons are based; the move of these munitions was captured by U.S. and Israeli intelligence assets, and confirmed by human sources inside the regime; the readiness of the regime to place chemical warheads right next to the weapons – missiles, planes, tanks, and artillery – which will deliver them has dramatically increased the sense of alarm in the region, in Europe, and in Washington

  • New York is home of the terror bar

    Islamic terrorists from around the world are being extradited to the Federal District Court in Manhattan or Brooklyn to face prosecution, which is a boon for the qualified lawyers who defend them; the skills these lawyers display often go beyond what can be taught in law school

  • Israel’s isolation grows

    Last Thursday UN General Assembly vote to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a non-state observer highlighted the growing isolation in which Israel finds itself as a result of its policies toward the Palestinians; Israel’s isolation is only going to grow: in response to Israel’s decision to make preparations to build 3,000 housing units in a sensitive area east of Jerusalem,  France and the United Kingdom are now considering recalling their ambassadors from Tel Aviv for consultations

  • Arizona denies driver licenses to those eligible for DHS deferred action program

    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit to overturn Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s order to deny driver licenses to illegal immigrants who qualify for the federal governments “deferred action” program; Brewer contends that although DHS is not deporting the 1.4 million people eligible for the program, this does not mean they are in the country legally

  • DARPA’s program to reveal backdoors, hidden malicious functionality in commercial IT devices

    The scenario is one that information security experts dread: widespread dissemination of commercial technology which is secretly wired to function in unintended ways or even spy on its users; from this vantage point, mobile phones, network routers, computer work stations, and any other device hooked up to a network can provide a point of entry for an adversary; for the Department of Defense this issue is of great concern, and DARPA pland to do something about it

  • Fracking in Michigan

    In hydraulic fracturing, large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to break apart rock and free trapped natural gas; though the process has been used for decades, recent technical advances have helped unlock vast stores of previously inaccessible natural gas, resulting in a fracking boom; researchers are examining the benefits of fracking for Michigan

  • New Homeland Security Committee chairman to continue outgoing chairman King’s pragmatic approach

    Rotation at the head of two House committees – Homeland Security and Transportation and Infrastructure — will bring to an end an on-going turf war over who has jurisdiction over Transportation Security Administration (TSA); the new Homeland Security chairman, Representative Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said he would end the push to dismantle the agency – a goal pursued by the outgoing T&I chairman John Mica (R-Florida); McCaul also distanced himself from calls to restrict screening of passengers at airports or limit the authority of TSA agents to conduct such screening

  • Post-Sandy insurance rates increase may make coastal living unaffordable

    Residents of New York and New Jersey are still coping with the destruction Hurricane Sandy caused, but home and business owners alike will soon face another burden: rising insurance rates and new building codes and requirements that could threaten many that live and work in the coastal areas of the two states

  • Increase in negative messages about Muslims in the media: study

    Organizations using fear and anger to spread negative messages about Muslims have moved from the fringes of public discourse into the mainstream media since the 9/ 11 attacks; to reach these conclusions, a University of North Carolina sociologist used textual detection software to track the influence of 1,084 press releases about Muslims from 120 organizations on more than 50,000 television transcripts and newspaper articles produced from 2001 to 2008

  • Egyptian assembly to vote on a new constitution today

    Egypt’s National Assembly speaker Hossam el-Gheriyan said that the vote on a new constitution – expected to be held today — would be the only way to quell public anger over President Mohamed Morsi’s sweeping decree, which shields his decisions from judicial or parliamentary scrutiny; observers and leaders of the secular opposition are less sanguine; the new Egyptian constitution will be based on the strict Islamic Sharia law; it is not easy to see how the liberal and secular forces which pushed Mubarak out of power nearly two years ago would readily welcome a legal system which, in some respects, would make Egypt look like Saudi Arabia

  • Lockheed Martin demonstrates ground-based laser system against short-range threats

    See video

    Lockheed Martin has successfully demonstrated a portable, ground-based military laser system in a series of tests against representative airborne targets; the Area Defense Anti-Munitions (ADAM) system aims to provide a defense against short-range threats, such as rockets and unmanned aerial systems

  • Technology transfer from U.S. federal laboratories to private entities, other governments

    In 2010 the eleven U.S. federal laboratories had more than 18,000 active collaborative relationships with private entities and other government agencies, disclosed more than 4,700 inventions, submitted 1,830 patent applications, and received 1,143 patents

  • Federal ID deadline draws near, but some states are not yet ready

    A federal deadline imposing security standards for states-issued driver’s licenses is drawing near, but according to New Mexico’s congressional delegation, an extension is possible for the state for complying with the law; the act currently has thirty-one requirements, but New Mexico has not met sixteen of them and eight of those are related to the driver’s license law