Monday, November 10, 2008

Complete DHS Daily Report for November 10, 2008

Daily Report

Headlines

 The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Energy Department will tell Congress in the coming weeks it should begin looking for a second permanent site to bury nuclear waste, or approve a large expansion of the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (See item 7)

7. November 7, Associated Press – (National) Report: Expand Nevada nuclear dump or OK second site. The U.S. Energy Department (DOE) will tell Congress in the coming weeks it should begin looking for a second permanent site to bury nuclear waste, or approve a large expansion of the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The head of DOE’s civilian nuclear waste program said Thursday the 77,000-ton limit Congress put on the capacity of the proposed Yucca waste dump will fall far short of what will be needed and has to be expanded, or another dump built elsewhere in the country. He said DOE will send a report to Congress in the coming weeks maintaining that the Yucca site will need to be expanded. He said within two years the amount of waste produced by the country’s 104 nuclear power plants plus defense waste will exceed 77,000 tons. Yucca Mountain is not projected to be opened before 2020 at the earliest. If the limit is not removed, he said, the report will urge Congress to give the department authority to begin looking for and evaluating a second nuclear waste repository elsewhere in the country. The law currently prohibits any such search, he said. An alternative could be a temporary above-ground repository, possibly on a federal site. Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/07/nuclear.dump.nevada.ap/


 According to Reuters, Express Scripts Inc. said on Thursday it received an extortion letter threatening to expose millions of patient records and warned of a “potential large data breach.” (See item 25)

25. November 6, Reuters – (National) Express Scripts reports extortion over data breach. Express Scripts Inc. said on Thursday it received an extortion letter threatening to expose millions of patient records and warned of a “potential large data breach.” The letter, which was sent to the pharmacy benefit manager in early October from “an unknown person or persons,” contained information on 75 Express Scripts customers, including names, dates of birth, social security numbers and, in some cases, prescription information. The large U.S. pharmacy benefit manager would be the latest company to face a major data breach in recent years, following discount retailer TJX Cos and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. among others. Express Scripts said it immediately notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating, and it notified the customers named in the letter last week. The St. Louis-based company, which handles about 500 million prescriptions a year, said it is also conducting its own investigation with the help of outside experts in data security and computer forensics. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4A59FX20081106

Details

Banking and Finance Sector


11. November 7, Washington Post – (National) Treasury is working to widen the rescue. The Federal Government is preparing to take tens of billions of dollars in ownership stakes in an array of companies outside the banking sector, dramatically widening the scope of the Treasury Department’s rescue effort beyond the $250 billion set aside for traditional financial firms, government and industry officials said. Treasury officials are finalizing the new program, which could ultimately involve hundreds of billions of the $700 billion rescue package, though the initiative is unlikely to be announced until the end of next week at the earliest. The new initiative would make it easier for the Treasury to aid a wider variety of firms if their troubles put the wider financial system at risk, government and industry officials said. These companies would still have to be financial firms that fall under federal regulators. Several companies, including GMAC, an auto financing company, and CapitalSource, a commercial lender in Bethesda, Maryland, are seeking ways to restructure themselves as banks or thrifts, which entails submitting to much tighter federal regulation. If other firms follow suit, the trend would vastly expand government oversight into a variety of industries. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110604054.html


12. November 6, International Herald Tribune – (National) NY lawsuit: Bear Stearns built a ‘house of cards.’ A company that insured groups of mortgage loans for a subsidiary of Bear Stearns accused the investment bank in a lawsuit Wednesday of building a “house of cards” through fraud and misrepresentations. Ambac Assurance Corp., based in Manhattan, sued EMC Mortgage Corp., of Lewisville, Texas, in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. EMC was a mortgage unit of Bear Stearns Cos., which JPMorgan acquired in February. The lawsuit claims Bear Stearns leveraged its reputation and dominance in mortgage finance to entice companies such as Ambac to insure loans plagued by rampant fraud. The suit seeks unspecified damages to recoup what is projected to be hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. In the lawsuit, Ambac said Bear Stearns promised that its mortgage loans originated through proper means and did not result from fraud, misrepresentations or gross negligence. Yet, the lawsuit charged, Ambac discovered widespread breaches of representations in almost 80 percent of the documents supporting 695 defaulted loans it studied. Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/11/06/business/NA-US-Bear-Stearns-Lawsuit.php


13. November 5, San Antonio Business Journal – (Texas) FDIC will insure 100 percent of

Amegy Bank checking accounts. Amegy Bank of Texas officials said the institution will continue to participate in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s voluntary Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. This program insures 100 percent of deposits that are held in non-interest bearing deposit transaction accounts at Amegy Bank, regardless of the dollar amount, through December 31, 2009. The Amegy Bank president and CEO for the San Antonio region says the bank’s participation in the program gives peace of mind to many Texas-based businesses that have payroll and payment processing accounts that exceed the current $250,000 FDIC insurance limit. Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2008/11/03/daily18.html


Information Technology


Nothing to report


Communications Sector

Nothing to report