Military

"In a recent  annual review, a team at the Department of Homeland Security that works to counter  the threat of attacks  on critical computer infrastructure counted 198 incidents in fiscal 2012. The events reported ranged from the use of malware to sabotage systems to phishing attacks for retrieving  sensitive information. In roughly 40 percent of those cases, the target was the energy sector – 'an alarming rate,' the report said."

"Reviving a 20-year debate over illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, a new scientific paper presents evidence that nerve agents released by the bombing of Iraqi chemical weapons depots just before the ground war began could have carried downwind and fallen on American troops staged in Saudi Arabia."

"With the U.S. intelligence budget shrinking, the CIA has quietly shut down its Center on Climate Change and National Security -- a project that was launched with the support of Leon Panetta when he led the agency, but that drew sharp criticism from some Republicans in Congress."

"A Homeland Security Department undersecretary has told Janet Napolitano she has doubts about a new version of the nation's troubled system for detecting a biological attack."

"America's intelligence community was ordered to track poachers in Africa and Asia on Thursday as part of a new global drive against the illegal trade in elephant tusks and rhino horn."

"ST. LOUIS -- Doris Spates was a baby when her father died inexplicably in 1955. She has watched four siblings die of cancer, and she survived cervical cancer. After learning that the Army conducted secret chemical testing in her impoverished St. Louis neighborhood at the height of the Cold War, she wonders if her own government is to blame."

"Disposed World War II explosives and munitions in the Gulf of Mexico pose a threat to offshore oil drilling, according to Texas oceanographers."

"DA NANG, Vietnam -- In the tropical climate of central Vietnam, weeds and shrubs seem to grow everywhere -- except here."