The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 182 grants to fire departments throughout the United States in the latest funding round of the 2003 Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.

Of the US$38 million in grants announced last week, US$20.5 million went to fire operations and firefighter safety, US$16.5 million went toward new firefighting vehicles, US$1.2 million went toward 36 fire prevention initiatives and a little more than US$300,000 went to fund emergency medical services projects.

The awards announced on July 3 mark the fourth in series of weekly grant announcements expected to continue until late 2004.

Michael Brown, DHS under secretary for the emergency and response division praised the progress of the program.

Questions regarding the Assistance to Firefighters Grant program should be directed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, (866) 274-0960 or via e-mail to usfagrants@fema.gov.

The Department of Homeland Security today announced Operation Predator, a comprehensive DHS initiative designed to enhance the Administration's efforts to protect children from pornographers, child prostitution rings, Internet predators, alien smugglers, human traffickers, and other criminals.

The Department's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will house the initiative from its headquarters in Washington, D.C., coordinating all field enforcement actions from the ICE CyberSmuggling Center in Fairfax, Virginia. Operation Predator draws on the full spectrum of cyber, intelligence, investigative, and detention & removal functions of ICE to target those who exploit children.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is partnering with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to facilitate the exchange of information on missing children, as well as investigative and intelligence leads. For the first time an ICE Senior Special Agent has been assigned to NCMEC to coordinate leads developed by NCMEC that require ICE law enforcement capabilities. In addition, ICE will work with the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Justice to partner with NCMEC in an effort to develop a National Child Victim Identification Program.

As part of its three-pronged strategy of identifying, investigating, and removing child predators from our streets, ICE will use a single web portal to access all publicly available Megan's Law websites. In addition, ICE is creating a new multi-agency unit at its CyberSmuggling Center to oversee and coordinate Operation Predator activities at the national level. Already, Operation Predator is yielding dramatic results, including the following:
- During a weeklong, nationwide enforcement action ending on June 30, ICE fugitive operations teams apprehended 89 foreign nationals who had been convicted of sex offenses, but had subsequently evaded law enforcement efforts to remove them from the country. In Chicago alone, ICE teams arrested 37 convicted alien sex offenders during this period.
- Separately, since March 1, 2003, ongoing ICE investigations into suspected child sex offenders have resulted in 88 arrests, 56 indictments, 77 convictions, and 134 seizures. ICE special agents have also opened 192 new investigations into suspected child sex offenders during this time frame.

The new National Child Victim Identification Program has already positively identified exploited children featured in approximately 300 child pornography images. ICE has provided this information to several law enforcement agencies around the nation for investigative follow-up and judicial action. In one example, the New York State Police sent ICE several child pornography images. Using the new National Child Victim Identification System, ICE agents were able to positively match 5 of the images to actual children. The New York State police used this information to prosecute a child pornography defendant who was claiming that the images were "virtual" or "morphed" images - not actual images of real children. The jury found the defendant guilty based on this evidence proving the images depicted real children. In another example, ICE agents used this system to help North Carolina authorities match 54 child pornography images to actual children. This information was used by state authorities in North Carolina to help bring an indictment.

Influenza has "enormous potential for bioterrorism," posing a far worse risk than diseases like smallpox and anthrax, say lead author Mohammed Madjid, M.D., and fellow researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. A special article in the July issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (U.K.) explains the issues at stake and proposes defensive measures governments should adopt to combat the threat of "weaponized" flu.

A team led by S. Ward Casscells III, M.D., who is the health science center's vice president for biotechnology, the John Edward Tyson Distinguished Professor of Medicine and a professor of cardiology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, pioneered research on the link between flu and fatal heart attacks. Their data suggested influenza may be four times more deadly than previous estimates showed. Once the effect on the heart is taken into account, the team calculated, up to 90,000 deaths per year in the United States may be flu-related.

Scientists have nearly finished sequencing the flu genome from the 1918 epidemic that killed 20-40 million people worldwide. The possibility of "malicious genetic engineering" creating even more virulent strains of flu viruses is "moving from theory to practice," warn the authors.

Although many bioterrorism warnings have focused on diseases like smallpox and anthrax, flu is common enough that a cluster of cases would not cause public health alarms at first.

A terrorist could transmit a genetically engineered flu virus in a passenger plane or subway by using an aerosol spray-a far more effective method of causing infection than relying on direct personal contact, the researchers point out.

Once a flu epidemic has started, it is more difficult to immunize against, because the incubation period is short (1-4 days). Birds, rats and pigs all carry flu, so the virus also is very difficult to wipe out.

The article warns that "even a natural epidemic of influenza can devastate our health care system and render society vulnerable to terrorism attacks of any kind." With the added threat of flu used as a bioweapon, preventative actions should include:
-Better security for key laboratories, vaccine manufacturers and distributors
-Stockpiling antiviral drugs and improving vaccine development programs
-Extending and improving flu immunization programs
-Expanding disease surveillance, perhaps offering incentives for reporting cases of flu
-Antiviral filters, biosensors and inactivation systems for ventilation systems

In addition to Madjid and Casscells, other authors of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine article include Scott Lillibridge, M.D., director of the Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness and professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, and Parsa Mirhaji, M.D., UT Medical School.

The team's research is partly supported by the U.S. Army's Disaster Relief and Emergency Medical Services (DREAMS) grant.

On Wednesday, July 9, Department of Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge announced with, Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani that the Department of Homeland Security is designating the Republican National Convention in New York a National Special Security Event. The announcement comes as a result of an earlier request by Governor Pataki for special designation of the convention scheduled for the summer of 2004.

When an event is designated a National Special Security Event, the Secret Service assumes its mandated role as the lead agency for the design and implementation of the operational security plan and Federal resources are deployed to maintain the level of security needed for the event and the area. The Secret Service forms partnerships with state and local law enforcement and other security and public safety officials with the goal of coordinating federal, state and local agencies to provide a safe and secure environment for event participants and the general public.

Since 1999, the Secret Service has led security operations at 14 of the National Special Security Events (NSSEs) designated by the President, including the 2000 Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the 2000 Presidential Inauguration, the 2001 United Nations General Assembly, and most recently, the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah and Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans.

Scott Lillibridge, the director of the Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, will be giving a presentation on the bioterrorism elements of Homeland Security on July 14 at 4 p.m. at The Conference Center Room 1.120 on The University of Texas at Dallas campus. There is no charge to attend this event. He will discuss his experiences in assisting in the development of a national bioterrorism program at United States Department of Health and Human Services during a time when the nation was experiencing anthrax attacks in October 2001.

Dr. Scott R. Lillibridge is Professor of Epidemiology and Director, Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Most recently, Dr. Lillibridge worked for Secretary Tommy Thompson as the Special Assistant for national security and emergency management. Previously, he developed and was the founding Director of the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) starting in 1998. This office was charged with enhancing state and local capacities to respond to bioterrorism.

In addition to infectious disease concerns, other CDC efforts in support of this program included consideration for chemical terrorism, a national pharmaceutical stockpile, health communication, training and national lab enhancement. His career at CDC focused on emergency public health response issues. He was the lead physician during the initial United States Public Health Service (PHS) response to the Oklahoma City bombing and also led the U.S. Medical Delegation to Tokyo following the sarin release in 1995. During the 1996 Olympics, he served as the HHS Science Advisor to the multi-agency task force that was assembled to protect the public against biological and chemical terrorism. He has worked in emergency response and preparedness roles throughout the world in support of the United States Government and non-governmental organizations.

Dr. Lillibridge was recently appointed by President George W. Bush to the White House Emergency Services, Law Enforcement, and Public Health and Hospitals Senior Advisory Committee for Homeland Security.

For more information, contact keithly@utdallas.edu. This presentation is hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Education at The University of Texas at Dallas.

International terrorism and executive malfeasance have brought about new perspectives on the operations of every modern enterprise. Three area universities are sponsoring an international symposium July 28 - 30 at UTA's Automation & Robotics Research Institute in Fort Worth to explore these challenges and discover potential solutions.

The University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth are sponsoring the symposium, titled Developing Agile Enterprises for Threat Reduction. Topics of discussion will include the accelerating global competition for new customers, changes in the way enterprises transact businesses, renewed emphasis on returns-on-investment, response to terrorist attacks, and improving investor confidence in top management decisions and performance. The symposium will be of great interest to civic and industry leaders responsible for formulating first-response policies.

Speakers at the symposium include Dr. George Wright, Provost, UTA; Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for Research and Graduate Education, UTD, who has organized a special session on bioterrorism; Dr. Ron Blanck, President, UNTHSC and a former US Army Surgeon General; Andrey Kostogryzov, Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, Moscow; and Neil Fisher, director of Secure Capability Focus, United Kingdom. Other speakers will include security and health experts from UTA, the University of Texas at Houston Health Science Center and the University of Texas at Tyler Health Science Center. The UT-Houston experts designed response protocols for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

UTA's David Kellogg and Professor Don Liles are chairs of the symposium's chair. Professor Frank L. Lewis is the program chair. The registration fee covers all three days of the event, plus two breakfasts and lunches. Contact Sarah Densmore at densmore@uta.edu or 817-272-5934. The Automation & Robotics Research Institute is located at UTA's Fort Worth Campus, 7300 Jack Newell Blvd. South, off Handley Ederville Road. More information about the symposium may be found at http://arri.uta.edu/acs/agility/.