• More modest version of nuclear fusion power project to start

    Nuclear fusion reactor to built in southern France by an international consortium; operation will begin in 2018

  • ITER fusion project will start with hydrogen

    The ITER experiments will start in 2018 — but will be literally lighter, using hydrogen rather than heavier tritium and deuterium; the tritium and deuterium experiments will have to wait until 2026

  • China uses stolen software in its new Internet censorship scheme

    The Chinese government will impose strict Internet censorship beginning 1 July; the software the Chinese will use for filtering Web sites was stolen from California-based Solid Oak Software; the Chinese piracy was exceedingly clumsy: a file containing a 2004 Solid Oak news bulletin has been accidentally included in the Chinese filtering coding

  • Hamas, Hezbollah employ Russian hackers for cyber attacks on Israel

    During Israel’s January campaign in the Gaza Strip, Israeli government’s Web site were attacked, and some were paralyzed for hours; Israeli intelligence suspects the attacks were carried out by a criminal organization from the former Soviet Union and paid for by Hamas or Hezbollah

  • Locating VoIP callers in emergencies

    Callers who use VoIP to call 999 (the U.K. equivalent of the U.S. 911) run the risk of making it difficult, if not impossible, for the police, paramedics, and fire crews to attend emergencies promptly; a system is being developed to locate Internet phones

  • U.K. to centralize cybersecurity functions

    Following President Obama’s cybersecurty initiative, the U.K. government will move to centralize cyber security functions in Whitehall as part of an on-going major review of U.K. cybersecurity

  • Mobile workforce poses cybersecurity risk

    The growing mobility of the workforce creates new cyber security threats; Symantec’s Vic Mankotia: “Data in motion is the next big threat to government information security”

  • Worries in the U.K. over Chinese-made phone equipment

    BT is engaged in a massive upgrade of its 21CN network backbone; trouble is, at the core of this upgrade is equipment acquired from Chinese networking giant Huawei, a company Western intelligence services have long suspected of being a front for Chinese intelligence; fear of an undetectable “kill switch” that could disable critical communications

  • Motorola: Cellphones could offer a unified disaster alerts broadcasts

    Motorola envisages using cellphones for emergency alerts even if most of a cellphone network is down; a new generation of cellphones that can rapidly form a peer-to-peer network when an emergency alert is broadcast

  • Palestinians in Gaza try to build new foundations from the ruins of old ones

    Tight Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade of the Gaza Strip prevents building materials from entering the Hamas-controlled area; Gazans have come up with ingenious ways of rebuilding their city

  • Obama creates cyberczar post

    Czar will be in charge of coordinating efforts to secure government networks and U.S. critical infrastructure; president says the new White House cybersecurity office would include an official whose job is to ensure that the government’s cyber policies do not violate privacy and civil liberties

  • Nuclear power may be considered for carbon credits

    Te 2001 Kyoto protocol excluded nuclear power from clean energy technology schemes; now, more and more countries appear to support the idea that developing countries should be given carbon credits if they build nuclear power stations; carbon credits could cut the capital cost of building new nuclear stations by up to 40 percent

  • GPO reveals confidential U.S. nuclear information by mistake

    A 2004 agreement between the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requires the United States to submit to the agency a detailed list of the addresses and specifications of hundreds of U.S. nuclear-weapons-related facilities, laboratories, reactors, and research activities, including the location of fuel for bombs; the Department of Energy (DOE) prepared the report, and Government Printing Office (GPO) printed it so it could be submitted to the IAEA — but the GPO went ahead and, mistakenly, posted 268-page dossier on its Web site

  • Sweden selects location for central nuclear waste repository

    The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project now appears doomed, but in Sweden a location has been selected for that country’s central nuclear waste disposal site

  • New flood warning system developed

    Researchers from the United Kingdom and China develop a software-based flood warning system which takes into account both climate change and corresponding hydrological effects