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The folks at the National Protection and Programs Directorate of DHS are offering voluntary online training to improve security at chemical plants in the U.S. and expect about 400,000 employees in the chemical sector to take advantage of this education program.

If those estimates turn out to be accurate, it would mean that approximately 47 percent of the 850,000 chemical industry employees nationwide would take the online training.

The National Biodefense Science Board, an advisory council set up to provide expert advice to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, on chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological agents and their effects, will hold a public meeting in the Washington, DC area on September 22 to hear a report from its subcommittee on disaster mental health.

The meeting will run from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, but the precise venue has not yet been announced.

The DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee will hold a public meeting in Washington, DC, on September 28 to discuss accountability of the department’s compliance assessment process, privacy training at DHS and implementation of DHS privacy policy by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The meeting will be held in the Carl; Hayden Room of the U.S. Government Printing Office at 732 North Capitol Street, NW, 8^th floor, Washington, DC 20401.

The session is scheduled to run from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM, but may end early if the committee’s business is completed.

Honeywell announced on September 1 that JoAnna Sohovich, a company executive  who has held positions in several of its business divisions, has been appointed president of Honeywell Security & Communications for the Americas. Sohovich will report to Ron Rothman, president of Honeywell Security Group.

The Science and Technology Directorate at DHS is planning to gather “comprehensive real-world data” about cyber-attack phenomena, so it can make those data sets available to an estimated 200 different research organizations attempting to develop products and technologies that can better protect the nation’s computing infrastructure.

The Homeland Security Advisory Council, which was established to provide independent advice to the Secretary of DHS, will hold a one-hour public teleconference call on September 16 during which it will review a report from its Southwest Border Task Force.

The conference call will take place between 4:30 PM and 5:30 PM (EDT) on Sept. 16.

Comments from the public can be made by visiting www.regulations.gov and citing docket number DHS-2010-0074.

President Obama signed a proclamation on August 27 that designated the month of September as “National Preparedness Month,” and encouraged all Americans to support FEMA’s Ready campaign and the efforts of the Citizens Corps to promote volunteerism in the homeland security arena.

Smiths Detection has announced that the U.S. Marine Corps will shortly begin installing the company’s HazMatID 360 upgrade to its fleet of chemical detectors as part of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Assessment and Consequence Management (MAGTF ACM) program for chemical agent identification systems. The upgrade maximizes system capabilities and performance in the most cost-effective way, says a press release issued by Smiths Detection on August 27.

After a successful debut earlier this year, National Geographic will premiere a second season of the TV show Border Wars at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time this Sunday, August 29.

The series, which features the men and women of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will then move to its regular time slot on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on Sept. 1, where it will run through January 2011.