[Boats]

Cyber warfare

Pentagon “dropping cyberbombs” on ISIS
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work has said that the U.S. military is “dropping cyberbombs” on ISIS. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the U.S. Cyber Command had been given its “first wartime assignment” – attacking and disrupting ISIS cyber infrastructure. in the last few months, the Pentagon has allowed more information to be published about the U.S. military’s cyberwar against ISIS. Work, describing the Cyber Command’s operations at a news conference, said: “We are dropping cyberbombs. We have never done that before.”

Refugee crisis

Norway to offer asylum seekers money to leave the country
Norway is offering people who seek asylum in Norway a £840 “bonus” in exchange for leaving the country voluntarily. The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) said the measure is a cheaper alternative when compared to paying for refugees upkeep in the country’s immigration centers.

Nuclear accidents

Forget Fukushima: Chernobyl still holds record as worst nuclear accident for public health
By Timothy J. Jorgensen
The 1986 Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents both share the notorious distinction of attaining the highest accident rating on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scale of nuclear accidents. No other reactor incident has ever received this Level 7 “major accident” designation in the history of nuclear power. But the IAEA scale isn’t designed to measure public health impact. Chernobyl is by far the worst nuclear power plant accident of all time. It was a totally human-made event which was made worse by incompetent workers who did all the wrong things when attempting to avert a meltdown. Fukushima in contrast, was an unfortunate natural disaster – caused by a tsunami that flooded reactor basements — and the workers acted responsibly to mitigate the damage despite loss of electrical power. In terms of health ramifications, these two nuclear accidents were not even in the same league. While Fukushima involved radioactivity exposures to hundreds of thousands of people, Chernobyl exposed hundreds of millions. And millions of those received substantially more exposure than the people of Fukushima.

Coastal resilience

New Web portal for coastal resilience

William & Mary Law School and William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) are collaborating on a new Web site which will provide key information to support local, regional, and state efforts to adapt to sea-level rise. Tidal and storm surge flooding risks, FEMA flood zone maps, storm history, and critical infrastructure risk assessments are all topics that are likely to be included on the Web site. Information about conditions of shorelines, wetlands, beaches, and coastal forests will also be in the portal.

Public health

Changing climate in Michigan poses an emerging public health threat

Changing climate conditions

Including warmer temperatures and an increased frequency of heavy rainstorms — represent “an emerging threat to public health in Michigan,” according to a new report from University of Michigan researchers and state health officials.

Emerging threats

1.5°C vs 2°C global warming: Half a degree makes a big difference

European researchers have found substantially different climate change impacts for a global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C by 2100, the two temperature limits included in the Paris climate agreement. The additional 0.5°C would mean a 10-cm-higher global sea-level rise by 2100, longer heat waves, and would result in virtually all tropical coral reefs being at risk.

9/11

Obama administration to release secret 28 pages of 9/11 Commission report
The Obama administration will release at least part of a 28-page classified chapter from the 9/11 Commission report which implicates high-level Saudis, both inside and outside government, in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), a co-chair of the commission, said he believed the Obama administration would make a decision on the issue by June.

ISIS

Lasting defeat of ISIS requires a stronger U.S.-coalition strategy
The current effort by the United States and its coalition partners is insufficient to achieve the lasting defeat of ISIS, according to a new study. Successful conclusion of the campaign will require significantly increased effort by the United States across two fronts: First, more-comprehensive training, advising, and assisting; second, political agreements must be forged to resolve key drivers of conflict among Iraqis and Syrians.

Border security

Tighter U.S.-Mexico border enforcement has backfired: Study
From 1986 to 2010, the United States spent $35 billion on border enforcement, but the net rate of undocumented population growth doubled. The rapid escalation of border enforcement over the past three decades has backfired as a strategy to control undocumented immigration between Mexico and the United States, according to new research that suggests further militarization of the border is a waste of money.

African security

Nigerian military accused of covering up mass killing of civilians
Mass killing of hundreds of men, women, and children by soldiers in Zaria and the attempted cover-up of this killing demonstrates a contempt for human life and accountability, said Amnesty International as it publishes evidence gathered on the ground showing how the Nigerian military burned people alive, razed buildings, and dumped victims’ bodies in mass graves.

Infectious outbreaks

Infectious outbreaks must be combatted strategically: Experts
New funding is not enough to guarantee success against emerging infectious diseases around the world. Rather, good governance, a long-term technology investment strategy, and strong product management skills are essential. As momentum builds for an international effort to develop drugs and vaccines for emerging infectious diseases, experts examine U.S. biodefense programs to understand approaches that might work and developed a global strategy for countermeasure development.

In the trenches

General Dynamics completes USAF Space Fence radar array ground structure
General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies earlier this month completed the construction and walk-through of the 7,000 square-foot radar receive array structure which is part of the U.S. Air Force Space Fence radar system. With the array structure complete, the General Dynamics Space Fence team will dismantle the 700,000-pound steel structure and ship it to Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, for reassembly and integration into the Space Fence system.

Forensics

Hair analysis is flawed as a forensic technique
Since 1989, seventy-four people who were convicted of serious crimes, in large part due to microscopic hair comparisons, were later exonerated by post-conviction DNA analysis. A new article highlights the statistical failings of microscopic hair analysis in criminal investigations, noting that more than twenty characteristics can be used to describe or identify a single hair, but many are subjective.

Earthquakes

Citizen seismologists enhance the impacts of earthquake studies
From matchbook-sized sensors plugged into a desktop computer to location-tagged tweets, the earthquake data provided by “citizen seismologists” have grown in size and quality since 2000, according to the field’s researchers.

Terror victims

Families of terror attacks victims can claim $2bn from Iran’s frozen assets: U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the families of victims from several Iran-directed or Iran-related terrorist attacks in the 1980s and 1990s can collect close to $2 billion from Iran’s frozen assets. The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, upheld a lower court’s ruling that Congress was within its remit to pass the law requiring Iran to do so.

Radiation risks

Belgium turns down Germany’s request to shutter two aging Belgian nuclear plants
Belgium on Wednesday turned down a request by Germany to shut down two ageing nuclear power near the German-Belgium border. Belgium said the two plants, while old, still meet the strictest safety standards. Both the Doel and Tihange power stations, in operation since 1974, were scheduled to be shut down and decommissioned in 2015.

Muslims in Europe

Latvia bans wearing Islamic full-face veils in public
There are around 1,000 practicing Muslims living in Latvia, a small Baltic country with a population of two million, and only three women living in Latvia wear the Islamic full-face veil in public. The Latvian government has decided to ban the practice anyway. The government says the new legislation is necessary to protect Latvian culture and prevent terrorists from smuggling weapons under garments.

Cybersecurity

System predicts 85 percent of cyber-attacks using input from human experts
By Adam Conner-Simons

Today’s security systems usually fall into one of two categories: human or machine. So-called “analyst-driven solutions” rely on rules created by living experts and therefore miss any attacks that do not match the rules. Meanwhile, today’s machine-learning approaches rely on “anomaly detection,” which tends to trigger false positives that both create distrust of the system and end up having to be investigated by humans, anyway. But what if there were a solution that could merge those two worlds? What would it look like? Virtual artificial intelligence analyst developed by the MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and machine-learning startup PatternEx reduces false positives by factor of 5.

R&D

DHS, NASA collaborate in search of innovation in homeland security

Crowdsourcing and incentive prizes across industry have led to the successful creation of advanced technologies, such as autonomous vehicles and improved data analytics. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is expanding its efforts to solicit innovations like these through its partnership with NASA.

Public health

Stagnant U.S. funding for tools against infectious diseases leaves U.S., world at serious risk. As Congress grapples with the White House on how to fund an emergency response to fight Zika virus, a new report warns that overall underfunding for development of lifesaving tools against neglected global diseases is putting the United States and the world at risk, and that emergency funding cannot be allowed to substitute for sustained U.S. investment in research and development (R&D) of global health technologies. A recent study that examined the risk of infectious disease outbreaks projected that large-scale global disease pandemics could cost the global economy more than $60 billion a year, while investing in the interventions needed to protect against these outbreaks, including R&D, would cost only a fraction of that — $4.5 billion — each year.

Super bugs

Resistance-proof antiviral can treat many diseases. Scientists and health officials are marshalling forces to fight Zika, the latest in a string of recent outbreaks. Many of these efforts target that virus specifically, but some researchers are looking for a broader approach. The new strategy aims to fight a wide range of viruses that appears to be safe in vivo and could evade a virus’s ability to develop resistance.

ISIS

U.S. deploys more troops, Apache helicopters to Iraq to help in attack on Mosul

Defense secretary Ash Carter said the United States will send 200 additional troops and a number of Apache helicopters to Iraq to assist in the fight against ISIS. He added that the new forces will be used mostly to advise Iraqi forces on the front lines. The decision to deploy the troops has been made in the context of the Iraqi drive to recapture the city of Mosul.