Washington, DC - Consumers are apprehensive about the security of their personal information and recent headlines about data breaches have moved the needle substantially on the ometer that measures such things. As a business executive, your customers and employees may be coming to you with questions. Here are answers from the FTC about two topics on consumers’ minds: fraud alerts and credit freezes.

Washington, DC - Here's a bit of advice for parents and teachers.  Next time your kids say history class is boring, tell them they have a right to be bored-it's guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.  Better yet, perhaps you could use the very last weekend of summer to convey the message.  After all, we celebrate Constitution Day 2017 on Sunday, the 17th of September.

Washington, DC - It sounds like there was some “inventing” going on at Florida-based invention promotion firm World Patent Marketing, but a Preliminary Injunction in a case brought by the FTC suggests it wasn’t the kind that unsuspecting consumers bargained for when they forked over millions of dollars based on the defendants’ misleading promises about patenting and promoting their products.

Atlantic Ocean - The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), the amphibious transport dock ship USS New York (LPD 21) and the guided-missile cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56), along with various embarked air and amphibious landing assets, arrived on station off of Key West, Florida, yesterday, to support Hurricane Irma relief efforts.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laboratory instrument that can measure how much of the carbon in many carbon-containing materials was derived from fossil fuels. This will open the way for new methods in the biofuels and bioplastics industries, in scientific research, and environmental monitoring. Among other things, it will allow scientists to measure how much of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere came from burning fossil fuels, and to estimate fossil fuel emissions in an area as small as a city or as large as a continent.

Washington, DC - The installed cost of solar power fell to record lows in the first quarter of 2017 because of the continuing decline in photovoltaic (PV) module and inverter prices, higher module efficiency, and lower labor costs, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).