Along the shoreline: About 80% of the Louisiana coast is privately owned, giving rise to questions about how the state negotiates to build restoration projects on private land, The Times-Picayune reports. The issue is illustrated by a new petroleum storage facility in St. John Parish that would add $1.5 million to the cost of a high-priority coastal restoration project, but environmental advocates are concerned that negotiations taking place out of public view could be compromising goals to preserve the coast. Read more.
Armed to the teeth: Americans are the most armed civilians in the world, USA Today reports. About 42% of about 650 million civilian firearms in the world are owned by the nation’s citizens, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based research group. The group estimates that the U.S. has a national gun ownership rate of 90 firearms per every 100 people. Yemen, the country with the second highest number of firearms per 100 people—55—is one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and is fighting a bloody civil war. Read more.
The breach widens: Equifax says an additional 2.5 million Americans may have been affected by the massive security breach of its systems, bringing the total to 145.5 million people who had their personal information accessed or stolen. Mandiant, a company Equifax hired to investigate the breach, has concluded its investigation and plans to release the results “promptly.” The information stolen earlier this year included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses—the kind of information that could put people at significant risk for identity theft. Read more.
