“Several prominent epidemiologists are warning that even though the new swine flu vaccine works much better than expected, it will still come too late to blunt the peak of this season’s pandemic. The epidemiologists said Friday that they expected the peak to come as early as next month, long before enough vaccine to protect all [...]
“It was a slow day for Maryland’s hospitals. But one Baltimore emergency room and an intensive care unit were already maxed out. And the computer monitor tracking the ER and ICU at a medical center in nearby Washington was flashing yellow and red — signaling that they, too, had run out of room. The next [...]
“At least two apartments in Queens were raided on Monday after they had been visited in the last week by a suspected associate of Al Qaeda, according to officials.” (NYT)
“After a 60-day review of the nation’s terror-alert system, a special task force is expected to recommend that the Obama administration keep color-coded alerts, but reduce the number of colors — or levels of risk. There are currently five colors in the coded terrorism advisories, long derided by late night TV comics and portrayed by [...]
Soon after hijackers obliterated the World Trade Center towers, Marin County received more than $100,000 in surveillance equipment to keep its water treatment system safe from a terrorist attack. But four years after the funds were awarded, state authorities found more than $67,000 worth of the gear still boxed in its original packaging. It had [...]
He may have eluded justice and the long reach of the world’s most powerful military force; his followers may (and probably will) strike again at some point in the future, near or distant; but history’s verdict on Osama bin Laden has been in for some time, now: Al-Qaeda failed. The 9/11 attacks on New York [...]
“On the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, our nation pauses to remember a day of sorrow and tragedy, but also a day of heroism and unity. Eight years later, threats to the United States and our allies abroad are persistent and evolving. Homeland security remains a responsibility shared by every individual, [...]
Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day. Every call, text message, email and data transfer handled by your mobile device creates a transaction with your space-time coordinate (to roughly 60 meters accuracy if there are three cell towers in range), whether you have GPS or not. Got [...]
Emergency preparedness is just a sliver of Napolitano’s vast portfolio, which covers issues from counterterrorism to swine flu to cybersecurity. The former Arizona governor oversees a relatively new agency that is still ironing out some kinks, and she must also face more than 100 congressional committees that oversee various parts of her operation. (Washington Post)
The Federal Communications Commission could seek expanded authority from Congress to obtain network outage information from cable companies and other Internet service providers during emergencies, an FCC official said Tuesday. “As our networks, in essence, have merged, we have to think about [more Congressional authority] if our mission really is to ensure communications,” said FCC [...]