• Worries about damage to Chinese dam

    Damage to a large Chinese dam near the epicenter of Monday’s earthquake raises worries about more troubles to come in the devastated region

  • The economics of cyber - and infrastructure -- security

    New book explores the economics of protecting cyberspace; the book “links our nation’s critical infrastructures across public and private institutions in sectors ranging from food and agriculture, water supply and public health, to energy, transportation and financial services,” says one of the authors

  • San Francisco aggressively to promote use of electric vehicles

    The City on the Bay to help build charging infrastructure throughout the city and the suburbs to make use of electrical vehicles viable

  • Emergence of violent Islamist groups in U.S. aided by Internet

    The Internet helps fuel – and channel – Islamic extremism in the United States; a congressional report says that the U.S. government has “no cohesive and comprehensive outreach and communications strategy in place to confront this thread.”

  • Nuclear proliferation looms, II

    The growing interest in nuclear power generation will lead to more countries acquiring capabilities which can be converted to military use on a short notice; the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation is exacerbated by the fact the uranium producing countries such as Namibia, South Africa, Argentina, and Brazil, Canada, and Australia are seeking to cash in on the future growth in nuclear power generation by exporting uranium-enrichment technologies to those willing to pay

  • Hacker posts data of six million Chileans

    The personal information of one-third of the Chilean population posted on the Web, including information on the prime minister’s two daughters

  • DOE seeks water power ideas to fund

    The U.S. Department of Energy wants to encourage research into harnessing water power — ocean wave, tidal, current, and other water-based resources – for energy production

  • Modelling the tide off the coast of Wales

    Project aims to examine the viability of a £15 billion tidal-range development scheme which, within fourteen years, could generate about 5 percent of the U.K. supply of electricity

  • Australia to invest in land transportation

    The government of Kevin Rudd says that lack of investment in transportation over the past decade has pushed up the costs of doing business and contributed to inflation and interest rates pressures in the economy; the 2008-9 budget creates a new Building Australia Fund with a $20 billion budget to improve Australia’s infrastructure

  • Nuclear proliferation looms, I

    Owing to rising oil prices and worries about climate change, there is a growing interest in nuclear power generation; forty countries have told the UN nuclear agency of plans to develop nuclear power generation capability; experts worry that this interest in nuclear technology is fueled at least in part by interest in nuclear weapons - especially in Middle Eastern countries terrified about the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran

  • FBI probes counterfeit Chinese network gear

    The FBI launched Operation CiscoRaider aimed at getting to the bottom of a potentially serious problem: Counterfeit Cisco routers made in China and sold to U.S. IT vendors working on sensitive government computer systems; there is fear that the forged hardware would allow a Chinese intelligence backdoor into secret U.S. information

  • Wind boom in the United States

    New wind project in ten states brings U.S. wind power capacity to more than 18,000 MW, or enough to serve the equivalent of five million homes

  • Scientists debate link between climate change and storm ferocity

    Cyclone Nargis, just before it smashed into Myanmar, suddenly changed gear from a Category One to a Category Four cyclone just before it made landfall; similar changes were noted in other recent tropical storms; are changes linked to global warming?

  • China's transportation vulnerability, I

    China has a long history of rail, airline, and vehicle accidents; outdated or relatively unregulated transportation is a given in many parts of the world, but China has also seen an increase in attacks against transportation targets

  • China's transportation vulnerability, II

    China’s intensifying war against separatists groups, and its growing global posture, make it a growing target for Islamic terrorists; lack of gun availability and easy access to explosives make bombing of infrastructure assets the method of choice of terrorists