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  • 911 outages reported in 4 states as emergency call services go down temporarily

    Multiple states lost access to emergency dispatchers late last night, meaning that residents could not call 911. The issue affected parts of Nebraska, Texas and Nevada, and all of South Dakota. The outage was first reported around 10 p.m. local time. Service was restored around midnight, officials said. In Texas, the City of Del Rio Police Department said the outage was because of "an outage with a major cellular carrier." The department did not specify which cellular carrier was responsible....

  • 911: What's your emergency?

    National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week is observed each April to honor the dedication of first response emergency dispatchers for the critical service they provide. Dispatchers at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. provide crucial support to first responders both on and off the installation, handling more than 5,000 emergency calls annually.

  • The case for stopping efforts to contact aliens

    The new Netflix series 3 Body Problem, based on Cixin Liu’s epic science-fiction trilogy, reignites an old debate among researchers concerned with the possibility of extraterrestrial communication. In the fictional account (spoiler ahead!), the trouble starts when one of the characters beams a powerful radio signal out into space. Is that realistic? And is it likely aliens could receive and decode the messages we send? The answer to the first question is a clear yes. In fact, more than 25...