• Sediment Movement During Hurricane Harvey Could Negatively Impact Future Flooding

    Enormous amounts of sediment, or sand and mud, flowed through Houston waterways during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due in part to modifications made by humans to bayous, rivers and streams over the past century. Harvey was the largest rainfall event in U.S. history, and it moved 27 million cubic meters of sediment, or 16 Astrodomes, through Houston waterways and reservoirs. This could seriously impact future flooding events and be costly to the City of Houston.

  • Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group Boss Joins Long List of Those Who Challenged Vladimir Putin and Paid the Price

    It is unlikely that we will ever know for sure how, why and on whose orders Prigozhin might have been killed, but it is far less difficult to imagine that he finally paid the price for his march on Moscow at the head of a column of his Wagner Group troops at the end of June 2023. Though abrupt, his death is not unexpected. Under Putin, a former KGB operative himself, Russia has carried out several high-profile assassinations and assassination attempts to go after alleged traitors and Putin critics.

  • Putin’s Victims: A Long List Getting Longer

    Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operatives have killed many critics of the regime, both in Russia and abroad — among them opposition politicians, journalists, academics, artists, former spies, oligarchs, and businesspeople. Russian intelligence operatives, however, have also killed Russians who were not outspoken critics of the regime, leading Russia experts to speculate that Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity among members of the Russian elite. The article offers a list of 175 dead Russians — 30 businesspeople; 23 politicians, diplomats, academics, and senior military officers; and 122 journalists —  who were killed, or who died under mysterious, often exceedingly implausible, circumstances, since Putin came to power.

  • New National Poll Shows Bipartisan Support for Polarizing Issues Affecting American Democracy

    “America in One Room: Democratic Reform” polled participants before and after deliberation to gauge their opinions on democratic reform initiatives, including voter access and voting protections, non-partisan election administration, protecting against election interference, Supreme Court reform, and more. The results show many significant changes toward bipartisan agreement, even on the most contentious issues.

  • DOJ Argues in Federal Court for Removal of Texas’ Floating Border Barrier

    In a court hearing over the barrier near Eagle Pass, the U.S. Justice Department argued it was installed without federal authorization, while lawyers for the state said it notified the proper authorities.

  • Is China Engaged in Biodiesel Fraud?

    European biofuel producers have come under significant price pressure as Chinese companies inundate the European second-generation biofuel market with their cheaper products. Shipping advanced biofuels from China to Europe should add about 20% to the price of the fuel, yet Chinese producers are selling it for half the price charged by European producers. The suspicion is that Chinese producers are using palm oil in the production of the fuel, even though palm oil, which will be phased out as a biofuel ingredient by 2030, is already tightly capped in Europe because it is linked to the destruction of rainforests in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

  • Lived Experiences of Contact with Counter-Terrorism Policies and Practices

    Actions taken by the U.K. authorities to prevent terrorism range from preventive action to counter radicalization to arrest and imprisonment for counter-terrorism offences. These activities are supported by counter-terrorism legislation, including the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. A new report explores empirical evidence relating to lived experiences of contact with counter-terrorism measures in the U.K.

  • AI Cyber Challenge Aims to Secure Nation’s Most Critical Software

    In an increasingly interconnected world, software undergirds everything from financial systems to public utilities. As software enables modern life and drives productivity, it also creates an expanding attack surface for malicious actors. This surface includes critical infrastructure, which is especially vulnerable to cyberattacks given the lack of tools capable of securing systems at scale. New competition challenges the nation’s top AI and cybersecurity talent to automatically find and fix software vulnerabilities, defend critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.

  • Towns Could Save Themselves from Wildfire — If They Knew About This Money

    There is a huge pot of federal money available to communities across the country — an unprecedented amount that would allow towns to quickly tackle work that otherwise would take decades. But local leaders in many small towns say they have not heard of the program, and most have not drafted the protection plans needed to apply for grants – in fact, less than 10 percent of communities facing wildfire risk have a protection plan.

  • Do Armed Guards Prevent School Shootings?

    Roughly a third of parents with school-age kids are very or extremely worried about gun violence at their child’s school, according to a 2022 survey by The Pew Research Center. The same Pew survey found that roughly half of U.S. parents think armed security in schools is an effective response. Do armed guards — sometimes called school resource officers or school police officers — are actually a deterrent to gun violence and mass shootings?

  • A First: Hurricane Hilary Triggers Southern California’s First Tropical Storm Warning Ever

    Hurricane Hilary headed for Mexico’s Baja peninsula as a powerful Category 4 storm on Aug. 18, 2023, and was forecast to speed into Southern California at or near tropical storm strength as early as Aug. 20. For the first time ever, the National Hurricane Center issued a tropical storm warning for large parts of Southern California.

  • Poisoning Critics: The Kremlin's Preferred Method of Dealing with Dissidents By Monir Ghaedi

    A recent report indicates the Kremlin might be responsible for the poisoning of Russian journalists in exile. The cases appear to fit into a broader pattern of targeting dissidents: these recent poisonings are but the latest in a series of poisonings targeting Kremlin opponents and critics. Poison has long been a weapon used by security services in Russia to silence prominent political dissidents.

  • Using Hydrogen to Power Disaster Relief

    A new vehicle will not only get emergency responders safely to the site of an emergency, but also directly provide power at the scene for up to 72 hours as they assess next steps. And it does all this running on hydrogen—a much more sustainable solution for our environment.

  • When Rumors Take Flight

    Misinformation pervades U.S. politics, with the outcome of the 2020 presidential election being the most pressing case in point as a result of the persistent, unrelenting Big Lie campaign by Donald Trump and some of his allies. Yet Trump’s lies and unfounded claims have gained wide traction among his followers. MIT professor Adam Berinsky’s new book examines the political misinformation that threatens the U.S. system of government.

  • Truth Decay and National Security

    The line between fact and opinion in public discourse has been eroding, and with it the public’s ability to have arguments and find common ground based in fact. We call this diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life “Truth Decay.” Two core drivers of Truth Decay are political polarization and the spread of misinformation—and these are particularly intertwined in the national security arena.