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The Alliance for Biosecurity formally recognized the sustained efforts of U.S. Rep. Charles Albert “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md., to improve how the United States prevents and combats biosecurity threats with its Congressional Biosecurity Champion Award.
Congressman Ruppersberger on Oct. 19... Read More »
A 23-year-old resident of Aurora, Illinois, faces 15 years in prison for attempting to travel to Syria and join the designated foreign terrorist organization known as Jabhat al-Nusrah.
The suburban Chicago man, Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, was arrested at O’Hare International Airport four years ago... Read More »
The Eighty-Sixth Session of the Executive Council (EC) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) recently reached a consensus recommendation for the next Director-General of the OPCW Technical Secretariat to be appointed.
The EC recommended that the Twenty-Second... Read More »
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) recently sent a letter to Nuance, a health care technology company affected by June’s NotPetya malware outbreak, asking for additional information about the incident.
The outbreak affected Nuance’s ability to provide transcription... Read More »
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Deputy Director-General Hamid Ali Rao highlighted chemical safety and security as a priority area for engagement during a recent official visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh, for the International Seminar on Advanced Chemical Safety and Security... Read More »
Acting Deputy Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Ronald Vitiello recently visited El Paso, Texas, and Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, for an event promoting cross-border relations between the two countries.
On Oct. 19, CBP personnel were in El Paso to discuss the agency’s... Read More »
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers stationed at the Laredo Port of Entry in Texas recently made significant seizures of methamphetamine in three separate incidents at the port’s Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge.
According to CBP, the seizures were made after officers... Read More »
In a Massachusetts case, a 28-year-old man had been convicted of conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorist group, along with terrorism and obstruction charges.
David Daoud Wright had been indicted back in April 2016 alongside Nicholas... Read More »
A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study identified 16 public or nonprofit programs that encourage safe storage of firearms on the national and local levels and also indicated that safe gun storage has not been extensively studied.
The programs, GAO said, predominantly involved... Read More »
A World Health Organization (WHO) partner laboratory in Paris, France, tested this week samples from patients from Seychelles suspected to be ill with pneumonic plague and returned negative results.
The Seychelles Ministry of Health and WHO shipped the 10 samples to the collaborating centre for... Read More »
France’s Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian recently welcomed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü for a symposium in Paris commemorating the organization’s 20th anniversary.
In his opening remarks, Üzümcü... Read More »
Biologists from the University of California San Diego have made headway in new flu and anthrax treatments through two separate studies focused on bodily defense.
Experiments in both cases unveiled new mechanisms the body uses to defend itself, working their way up from fruit flies. The results... Read More »
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) launched Tuesday the Hidden Signals Challenge, a competition that seeks ideas for novel uses of existing data to discover emerging biothreats.
The competition offers a $300,000 prize.
“This Challenge is... Read More »
A team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently said that Romania has significantly strengthened its regulatory framework for nuclear and radiation safety, which included the approval of a National Strategy on Nuclear Safety and Security (NSNSS).
Conducted by... Read More »
According to a recently published report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) should use sound program management and oversight practices in its technology infrastructure modernization (TIM) plan to avoid repeating past... Read More »
The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is now one of 10 airports in the country to offer automated security screening lanes in an effort to cut down on passenger processing time.
The creation of four automated screening lanes in terminals A and D is a joint effort on behalf of the... Read More »
A jury in Manhattan federal court returned a guilty verdict Monday against Ahmad Khan Rahimi on all eight counts of the indictment that charged him with offenses related to his execution and attempted execution of bombings in New York City on September 17, 2016.
Rahimi faces a mandatory... Read More »
A group of House Energy and Commerce Committee members sent a letter Monday to the General Services Administration (GSA) to request information on its data security vetting for awarding government contracts.
The committee members also sent a letter recently to the Internal Revenue Service... Read More »
The Government of Nigeria recently announced the launch of a 10-day campaign aimed at immunizing 873,837 people against yellow fever in the states of Kwara and Kogi.
Beginning on Oct. 13, the effort mobilized more than 200 health workers and volunteers to immunize individuals between the ages of... Read More »
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced a week-long event to challenge teams from academia, industry, and the software defined radio (SDR) enthusiast community through a series of hacking sessions called the DARPA Bay Area SDR Hackfest on Nov. 17.
According to... Read More »
A joint discovery by the Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden recently found elusive drug resistance genes in bacteria.
Bacteria have been evolving in recent years, mutating to meet our own efforts against them. Even otherwise harmless bacteria can pass... Read More »
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) recently wrote a letter to the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), following the first case of locally transmitted Zika in 2017, asking the organization to prioritize Zika prevention efforts.
"The Zika outbreak isn't over and continues... Read More »
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced a $750,000 Small Business Innovation Program (SBIR) Phase II contract awarded to BlueRISC, Inc. in Amherst, Massachusetts, for the development of a malware attack prediction and identification solution.
“The growth in the frequency,... Read More »
The Seychellois Ministry of Health recently notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of a probable case of pneumonic plague emanating from a man who visited Madagascar, which has been experiencing an outbreak of plague in its major cities and other non-endemic areas since August of this... Read More »
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Field Operations (OFO) officers stationed at the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in New Mexico recently made a seizure of 9.5 pounds of heroin in a single incident.
The seizure occurred on Oct. 12 when a 28-year old male Mexican citizen driving a... Read More »
Officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently convened with representatives from state and federal agencies for the first Government Coordinating Council (GCC) for the Election Infrastructure Subsector.
Joining DHS were representatives from the Election Assistance... Read More »
Several security and health organizations recently launched an initiative to reduce the use of risk-significant radioactive source-based devices in medical and research applications in order to reduce the risk of terrorists acquiring this material.
Radioactive sources are used in various... Read More »
The Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, a privately funded group established in 2014 to ascertain the current biodefense capabilities of the United States and issue expert recommendations to encourage change, has grown increasingly worried about microbial forensics and biological... Read More »
House Homeland Security Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) recently released October’s Terror Threat Snapshot, a monthly assessment of terror threats and efforts to combat them.
The report noted there have been at least 483 plots, attacks, and arrests linked to Islamist extremism targeting... Read More »
Officials with U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) recently said they have begun executing a new limited acquisition authority to speed up its acquisitions processes for cyber-specific tools.
The command awarded its first contract under its new authority of Sept. 29, which covers technology-related... Read More »
The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) recently participated in a ceremony marking the completion of the destruction of the Russian Federation’s remaining chemical weapons stockpiles under OPCW verification protocols.
Held at the residence of... Read More »
In an effort to help federal agencies identify biodefense capabilities and identify priorities for spending, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a study Wednesday tracking national activities that contribute to biological threat awareness.
Key players involved in the study... Read More »
Elusys Therapeutics, Inc. announced Wednesday that it delivered the first doses of its treatment for inhalational anthrax, ANTHIM (obiltoxaximab) Injection, to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).
The company is providing the treatment to the SNS, the U.S. government’s store of... Read More »
Reps. Norma J. Torres (D-CA), Bradley S. Schneider (D-IL), and Eliot L. Engel (D-NY) introduced a bill Wednesday that would require federal firearms licensees to report the sale of two or more long guns within a five-day period.
This requirement already exists for handguns, but long guns, such... Read More »
Two Ebola vaccine candidates pose no major safety concerns and can elicit immune responses by one month after initial vaccination, according to a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted in Liberia
The clinical trial was coordinated by researchers with the Partnership for... Read More »
