SARS May Cost $100 Billion; Terrorism Expert Joins Kerry; Government Will Spend More For IT Security

SARS May Cost $100 Billion

A Cambridge, Massachusetts research firm is predicting that the economic damage caused by SARS could approach $100 billion, making it one of the costliest diseases to emerge in the past decade, according to a story in the Boston Globe. The Globe reports that the firm, Bio Economic Research Associates, said economic risks posed by severe acute respiratory syndrome, mad cow, and other emerging infectious diseases are rising because air travel, international trade, and global communication networks make the world a smaller place. Terrorism Expert Joins KerryNew York Times. The Times reports that Beers will serve in a nonpaying job as a senior adviser on foreign policy, terrorism and domestic security, issues that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, has described as central to his campaign against President Bush.

Rand B. Beers, a former top counterterrorism official at the National Security Council, has joined Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign as a senior adviser for foreign policy, according to a story in the

Government Will Spend More For IT SecurityWashington Post. The Post reports that the federal government spent $1.3 billion on technology security in 2001 and $4.2 billion this year, an increase of more than 220 percent.

Input, a Reston, Virginia-based research firm, said it expects federal spending on information technology security, which has expanded rapidly since September 2001, to slowly grow to about $6 billion a year by fiscal 2008, according to a story in today’s