Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Los Angeles Times

    Homeland Security replacing troubled biodefense system with another flawed approach

    by David Willman, Los Angeles Times Feb 16, 2019 5 minutes

    WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is moving to replace BioWatch, the nation's problem-plagued system for detecting airborne attacks of anthrax spores or other infectious agents, with technology that also has severe shortcomings, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found.

    The first new device was installed without public notice in December and others are planned at 11 other U.S. locations with a goal of supplanting BioWatch "within the next couple of years," James F. McDonnell, an assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said in an interview.

    McDonnell, who heads Homeland Security's office of countering weapons of mass destruction, said the new system, called BioDetection 21, will be faster and more reliable than BioWatch. He said he hopes to put as many as 9,000 new detection devices in place by 2025.

    But testing at an Army facility last year and use of the sensing devices in previous military operations

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Los Angeles Times

    Los Angeles Times4 min readCrime & Violence
    Robin Abcarian: Criminalizing Homelessness Is Unconscionable, But Is It Unconstitutional?
    On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about whether a small Oregon city can cite and prosecute homeless people for sleeping in public places when they have nowhere else to lay their heads. If the case reveals nothing else about the state
    Los Angeles Times8 min read
    Bit By A Billionaire's Dog? Or A Case Of Extortion? A Legal Saga From An LA Dog Park
    LOS ANGELES -- A dog-bites-woman story usually isn't much of a story at all. But an incident in one of L.A.'s wealthiest enclaves has become something else entirely. What began in a Brentwood park on a summer day in 2022, when a dog owned by billiona
    Los Angeles Times5 min read
    Kevin Baxter: How Former Galaxy Player Eddie Lewis Became A Soccer Training Tech Innovator
    LOS ANGELES — Eddie Lewis played his final soccer game at the age of 36, old for a midfielder but young for just about everybody else. So with more than half a lifetime ahead of him, he had plenty of time to build a new career. Yet like many former p

    Related Books & Audiobooks