Ivan Slams Alabama, Kills 12; Russians Blame Plane Bombings on Lax Security; House, Senate Diverge on 9/11 Recommendations; DHS Moves on Cybersecurity R&D Plans

Ivan Slams Alabama, Kills 12

Huricane Ivan hit the Alabama shore early Thursday with winds reaching 130 miles per hour and setting off a series of tornadoes and pummuling the shoreline with waves and intense rain. According to the Associated Press, the storm claimed 12 lives. Mobile, Ala. Police Chief Sam Cochran said that Ivan was not nearly as intense as Frederic, the 1979 storm that devastated the Alabama coast. Forecasters expect the worst of the storm to come later in the day as up to 15 inches of rain are expected to drench the region. At least 260,000 homes and businesses were without power in Alabama, 36,500 in Louisiana and 70,000 in Mississippi. More information on the strom can be found on the National Hurrican Center website.

For more details, read the Associated Press account on Al.com.

Russians Blame Plane Bombings on Lax Security

Even though the two women who killed themselves and 88 others in bombings on two Russian flights last month were detained by police before the incidents, a series of security gaffes allowed the women to board the planes and carry out their destructive missions. According to a report in The New York Times, Russia’s senior prosecutor says that after being released by a senior police official, one woman bribed her way onto the plane she would destroy moments later. Elena Panfilova, director of the Moscow office ot Trasparency International, an international nonprofit group that campaigns against corruption, told the Times, “I am going to say something extremely scary for me as a Russian citizen and a Russian mother, I was always expecting something like this to happen. Nobody in public life has really been linking this problem of petty coruption with security.”

For more information, read the full article in The New York Times.

House, Senate Diverge on 9/11 Recommendations

It looks like the House and Senate will vote on bills based on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission sometime before the November election. However, the two chambers appear to be at odds on some key issues, according to a report by the Washington Post. Although there seems to be broad support for some major proposals, including the creation of a national counterterrorism center and post of national intelligence director, there is a debate brewing on how Congress will oversee the new intelligence landscape. Sources told the Post that Congress is likely to make modest changes in its oversight responsibilities but it won’t have time to build the consensus needed to adopt some of the commission’s more ambitious recommendations before the Nov. 2 elections.

For more details, read the full article in the Washington Post.

DHS Moves on Cybersecurity R&D Plans

The Department of Homeland Security is planning new pilot projects that officials hope will provide researchers with something they seriously lack: real-world attack data. According to a story by Computerworld (a sister company to CXO Media) the new program called Protected Repository for Defense of Infrastructure Against Cyber Threats (Protect) has been underway since February. The project aims to get large private-sector firms to volunteer incident data so that researchers can more effectively test prototype security products.

For more details, read the full story in Computerworld.