Furlough 'Consistency and Fairness'
Innovation in Government Dips
TSP Funds Stay Positive in April
5 Agencies with the Most Disconnected Leadership
No Bonuses for VA Benefits Execs
Will You Be Furloughed?
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
Days After Ricin Mailings, Pentagon Says it Wants a Vaccine
April 30, 2013 The United States needs a vaccine to protect troops against ricin, the Defense Department said in an announcement issued days after envelopes filled with the deadly toxin were mailed to President Obama and two Mississippi public officials. No antidote or means of prevention yet exists for ricin, which can be ...
Tired, Poorly Trained Guard Dogs Could Endanger Nuclear Arms Site
April 29, 2013 A U.S. nuclear arms site in Tennessee could be working its guard dogs to exhaustion during vehicle checks and skipping steps in their training, raising the risk that intruders or explosives could slip into the facility unnoticed, the Energy Department inspector general said in a recent report. "We found that ...
How Pressure Cookers Get Classified as a WMD
April 23, 2013 Accusing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of carrying out a WMD strike at the Boston Marathon could offer prosecutors a clear route to a conviction, even though the two pressure-cooker devices used in last week's attack do not fit the accepted definition of a "weapon of mass destruction," academics and former federal prosecutors ...
Pentagon Saves National Guard WMD Unit That Helped in Boston
April 16, 2013 The U.S. Defense Department was poised as recently as last month to dismantle a National Guard crisis team that assisted in the emergency response to the bombings at Monday's Boston Marathon. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on March 29 informed lawmakers in writing of plans to dismantle the New York-based 24th ...
Pentagon Seeks High-Tech Nuke Radiation Defenses
March 29, 2013 The Defense Department this week said it is looking for technologies to protect people against potentially deadly radiation near the site of a nuclear strike or other atomic disaster. Proposals from government, academic, and private-sector sources could provide fodder for a possible government push to devise new means of "enhancing ...
New Defense Chief Addresses Massive Cuts
February 27, 2013 Newly installed U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday said the nation's armed forces now face the "reality" of implementing across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect in two days. Hagel issued the warning within hours of taking the oath to assume the Pentagon's top post and less than a ...
DOD Aims to Shield Nuke Operations From Budget Cuts
February 12, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Citing Tuesday's nuclear test by North Korea, a senior Defense Department official called U.S. nuclear weapons operations "a national priority" that the Obama administration would seek to shield from across-the-board federal spending cuts set to take effect on March 1. It appears that "a safe, secure nuclear deterrent" will remain ...
Aging technology endangers Pantex security, auditors warn
February 1, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
A deteriorating nuclear-weapon security system at the Pantex Plant in Texas could malfunction if it does not receive maintenance, the U.S. Energy Department inspector general warned in a report made public on Friday. The technology had a projected "useful life" of two decades upon entering use in the 1990s and ...
Lawmakers reaffirm demand for biowatch data
January 31, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
The Homeland Security Department has turned over "substantial" documentation in response to a congressional panel's request for records on a controversial biological agent sensor network, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not been similarly forthcoming in providing related information, two Republican lawmakers said in a Thursday letter ...
U.S. to finalize avian flu funding policy in weeks
January 25, 2013 The United States plans "in the next several weeks" to issue its final policy on how it will consider future grant requests for research intended to produce more virulent or communicable versions of avian influenza, National Institutes of Health leaders said on Friday. More than three dozen scientists this week ...
