Getting served: The Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors has subpoenaed representatives from Pennsylvania-based 84 Lumber to provide company documents and appear in Baton Rouge for a hearing on Aug. 20 to answer questions about how the building supply company handled federal contracts to rebuild two schools and a fire station following Hurricane Katrina. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports the subpoena issued on July 24 indicates the hearing is being called because the licensing board believes 84 Lumber may not have provided bonding and insurance coverage required by the bid proposal and may have failed to properly serve the public in various ways, including not following construction standards. The company says in a statement it is in the process of responding to the subpoenas but does not comment on pending litigation. Read the full story.
At risk: Location-tracking devices that communicate with a major satellite network operated by Covington-based Globalstar Inc. can have their transmissions intercepted or mimicked with false data, a U.S. security researcher says. Globalstar has sold hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of the devices, which are widely used for tracking valuable shipments and assets. The problem, Reuters reports, is that unlike Globalstar’s satellite phone services, data from the devices is not encrypted in transit, says Synack Inc. researcher Colby Moore, who will present his findings at next week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. Instead, the system changes frequencies and transmits a great deal of inconsequential data that can be discarded once an attacker figures out the methods involved, as Moore did. Globalstar representatives did not respond to requests for comment. Read the full story.
Sweating it out: The sweltering Southern summer has consumer demand on track to soar to all-time highs on the grid serving Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and an eastern sliver of Texas, a spokesman for the Midcontinental Independent System Operator Inc. says in an email to Bloomberg. Power in the southern part of MISO’s grid may reach 31,985 megawatts, spokesman Andy Schonert says, which would topple the record of 31,789 set on Aug. 3, 2011. The broader grid, which spans the Midwest and Canada’s Manitoba province, rose to a 2015 high of 120,015 megawatts on Tuesday this week. Sweltering heat this week also boosted electricity consumption on Eastern U.S. grids to its highest levels yet this summer as people cranked up their air conditioners to keep cool. Read the full story.
