Daily Report Friday, December 15, 2006

Daily Highlights


The Department of Energy reports that the country's network of transmission lines has not been maintained and expanded enough to meet growing demand, a problem that already affects 40 million people from New York to Virginia and 18 million in Southern California. (See item 3)
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The Associated Press reports health officials have zeroed in on lettuce as the likely suspect in the E. coli outbreak linked to Taco Bell restaurants, though tracing the vegetable's source may prove difficult. (See item 23)
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The Associated Press reports employees at Troy Cleaners and Launderers in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, discovered a homemade explosive device on Monday, December 11; the Milwaukee County bomb squad dismantled the device. (See item 41)

Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector

36. December 14, eWeek — Microsoft releases bug.fix version of Visual Studio 2005. Microsoft has released to manufacturing Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, which features fixes for user.reported issues. Service Pack 1 of the development platform also includes more than 70 improvements for common development scenarios, including new processor support for code generation and profiling, as well as performance and scale improvements in Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS). Last month, Microsoft confirmed an "extremely critical" vulnerability in Visual Studio.
Source:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2072587,00.asp

37. December 14, IDG News Service — Wireless devices to work Europe.wide. The European Commission is harmonizing radio frequency bands across the European Union (EU) in order to spur use of a wide range of wireless devices such as wireless computer keyboards, headphones and garage door openers, it said Thursday, December 14. Frequency bands will soon be harmonized throughout the EU making life simpler, as anyone in Europe will be able to use the same short.range wireless product anywhere in the EU and manufacturers need only make one product for the whole internal market, the Commission said in a statement. The Commission
hopes the move will decrease the price of wireless devices.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/14/HNwirelesskeyboard s_1.html

38. December 13, IDG News Service — Third exploit for Word released. Hackers have released attack code that exploits a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's Word software .. the third such bug to be disclosed in the past week. The proof of concept code was posted Tuesday, December 12, on the Milw0rm.com Website, making it widely available to the hacking community. It exploits a previously unreported bug in Word. Like the other recent Word bugs disclosed this past week, it could be used by attackers to run unauthorized software on a victim's computer, said David Marcus, security research and communications manager with McAfee Inc.'s Avert Labs
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/13/HNthirdword_1.html