• Iran to enrich uranium to 20 percent

    Iran said it was planning to begin enriching uranium to 20 percent, bringing its stock closer to bomb-grade level; it will also shift its enrichment activities from Natanz to Qom

  • Pakistan phases out U.S.-made border monitoring software

    In 2002 the United States provide sixteen countries with a border-monitoring system called Personal Identification, Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES); Pakistan has now decided to replace the system with a Pakistani-developed system called Integrated Border Management System (IBMS); the government says the reason for the change is the IBMS is more capable, and denies the decision is the result of worries that the United States has access to PISCES-collected information

  • U.K. unveils new strategy to tackle extremism

    The U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May yesterday unveiled the U.K. government’s revised strategy for tackling extremism; the new approach emphasizes preventing extremism at community levels; the new policy is the result of a review of the current policy, called Prevent, which was launched after the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks on London transportation; the goal of Prevent was to stop the growth of home-grown terrorism by, among other things, supporting Muslim organizations which were considered moderate; the review found that many of these organizations took the money but did little, if anything, to counter extremism in the Muslim community; these organizations’ funding will now be cut; May said that terrorists must be tackled, but that any anti-terrorism programs “must also recognize and tackle the insidious impact of non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularize views which terrorists exploit”

  • Middlesex County, N.J. gets $1 million for mobile tent system

    Local emergency responders in New Jersey recently received a big boost in disaster preparedness from DHS; last week the county unveiled a new 3,000 square foot mobile structure comprised of interlocking tents and trailers; the tents can be quickly set up to treat victims of a radiological accident, terrorist attack, pandemic, or weather emergency; the tent system can also be outfitted with its own water supply, power generator, and heating and cooling systems. They are even equipped with lights, showers, sinks, and a kitchen; for training purposes, the tents were set up at the Middlesex County College campus; the portable structure, called the Gatekeeper system, cost $1 million and was paid for with DHS grant money; county officials also received DHS grants to purchase mobile radiation detection devices for police officers; the tents and the radiation detectors come as part of a broader government effort to prepare local law enforcement agencies within a forty-five mile radius of New York City for a dirty-bomb attack

  • Denying safe havens to terrorists -- and reporting about it

    Denying safe haven to terrorists is one of the pillars of the U.S. counter-terrorism efforts; the U.S. government is required by Congress to report regularly on progress made on this issue; a new GAO report says the U.S. government has not fully addressed these reporting requirements

  • Spiraling violence and Assad's desperate tactics

    The conflict in Syria between anti-government protesters and the Basher al Assad regime escalates; two signs of escalation: the Saudi and Jordanian covert support of the anti-Assad forces is beginning to tell, and the regime, growing ever more desperate, is targeting children for torture and death and busing hundreds of Palestinians living in Syria to the border with Israel as a diversion; the Palestinian issue is a potent issue, and exploiting it for diversion may appear as clever ploy by a desperate ruler; it is not likely to work, though: If Israel manages to keep the level of violence low, and if it finds better — non-lethal — means to deal with repeated attempts of Palestinians from Syria to breach the border, then whatever happens along the border would just not be powerful enough — in terms of TV footage, drama, and the number of people killed or wounded — to offset to growing brutality inside Syria

  • Iran pushes ahead with nuke plans, despite seismic warnings

    Iranian officials have chosen to ignore the warnings of top scientists and continue with the construction of nuclear facilities near earthquake prone regions; according to an official with the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a top level meeting Iran’s leaders recently decided to move ahead with plans to construct nuclear facilities, despite Iranian scientists’ warnings that “data collected since the year 2000 shows the incontrovertible risks of establishing nuclear sites in the proximity of fault lines’ in Khuzestan as well as nineteen other Iranian provinces; Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world with major fault lines covering at least 90 percent of it

  • Suicide bombers: expedient tactics, not expression of Islam

    New study argues that female suicide bombing is a political and military tactic, not a religious act; according to mainstream scholars of Islam, the Qur’an, the Hadith (traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad), and other principles of Shari’a (Islamic law) clearly condemn terrorist acts and oppose suicide operations; in order to justify suicide bombings, leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and al Qaeda have formulated their own interpretations of Islam, which are based more on military strategy than theology

  • Louisiana parish appoints new emergency preparedness chief

    Ouachita Parish, Louisiana has ended their six-month search for a new director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness just as hurricane season is about to hit; the parish’s Homeland Security Committee appointed Tracy Hilburn as the agency’s new director; the committee said that it was critical to have a new director in place before 1 June, the official start of the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane season; as director of the parish’s Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness agency, Hilburn will be responsible for coordinating evacuations for not only Ouachita, which is the largest parish with nearly 150,000 residents, but also the surrounding parishes

  • House drastically cuts DHS science and technology

    The Republican majority in the House last week passed a proposed DHS budget which drastically cuts the department’s Science & Technology Directorate’s (S&T) budget by 52 percent, from $827 million to $398 million; the Obama administration has requested $1.2 billion for that program in fiscal year 2012, which begins on 1 October; the S&T reductions are part of a $1.1 billion reduction in DHS’s overall budget, now $43.4 billion; the proposed DHS budget is $1 billion lower than the FY 2011 funding level, and $3 billion lower than the Obama administration’s request ; DHS officials say the decrease in S&T’s budget will wipe out dozens of programs, stalling the development of technologies for border protection, detection of bio-hazards, cargo screening; also cut will be research into domestic IED detection, leaving mass transit vulnerable to attacks

  • DHS could lose funding for new headquarters

    In the latest rounds of congressional budget cuts, the House has moved to cut funding for the construction of a new headquarters for DHS; the agency had originally planned to build a facility to consolidate the dozens of agencies that currently have thousands of workers scattered among different locations; the House passed a $42.3 billion budget for DHS which was about $3 billion less than what the President had requested; among the cuts were $160 million that DHS had requested to continue developing the new facility

  • SAFETY Act falls short

    The SAFETY Act (the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002) was created in order to speed up the pace of homeland security-related technologies and solutions reaching the market; the act encourages private firms to develop technology to combat terrorism by providing liability protection in case a firm is sued; since applications by companies for Safety Act coverage began in 2004, not many more than 400 technologies have been approved under the act; critics say that number should be in the thousands; they say the act is a good idea — but few in the industry know about it

  • Police get $500k for sting operation

    After participating in federal sting operation that shut down Internet gambling businesses, a local police department in Maryland is receiving a check for nearly $500,000; agents from Anne Arundel Police Department went undercover to assist DHS officials seize millions of dollars in a sting operation; the money comes from a gambling case where federal investigators in Baltimore established a dummy gambling company that handled more than $33 million in transactions

  • Glimmer of hope for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project

    Over the last twenty-five years, the United States has spent around $15 billion on the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository which was supposed to offer a solution to the growing nuclear waste problems at U.S. nuclear power plants; in what some charged was a political move by President Barack Obama to secure Nevada’s Democratic tilt, the administration defunded the project, and funding for work on the site was terminated altogether effective with the 2011 federal budget passed by Congress on 14 April 2011; some in Congress want the project to continue, and the House Appropriations Committee has added $35 million for the project in the 2012 energy spending bill; this is far cry from past appropriations for the project — typically around $400 million a year — and even one of the supporters, Representative Mark Simpson (R-Idaho) described it as symbolic gesture; there is also a case now being heard in federal court, in which the administration is charged with overstepping its bounds by cancelling the project without congressional permission

  • WikiLeaks: Japan brushes aside U.S. fears of nuke terrorism

    Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that U.S. officials were concerned about terrorist attacks at Japan’s nuclear facilities and the government’s seemingly lax security measures; one cable dated 26 February 2007, detailed a meeting where Japanese officials brushed aside U.S. concerns for physical security at one of the country’s nuclear facilities; additional cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo to Washington D.C. reported that anti-terrorism drills held at nuclear facilities were unrealistic and overly “scripted”