We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Elasticsearch 6.0 and Kibana 6.0 on Amazon Elasticsearch Service . Elasticsearch is a popular open source analytics and search engine for log analytics, full text search, application monitoring, and more. Amazon Elasticsearch Service delivers Elasticsearch’s easy-to-use APIs and real-time capabilities along with the availability, scalability, and security required by production workloads. 

Today we are announcing an improvement in performance of Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) Volumes from 20,000 IOPS to 32,000 IOPS and from 320 MB/s to 500 MB/s of throughput per volume.

Now, Amazon Cloud Directory makes it easier for you to apply schema changes across your directories with in-place schema upgrades. Your directories now remain available while backward-compatible schema changes are being applied, such as the addition of new fields. This means you can upgrade your schemas without migrating data between directories or applying code changes to your applications. You also can view the history of your schema changes in Cloud Directory by using both major and minor version identifiers, which can help you track and audit schema versions across directories.  

This new Quick Start deploys a standardized environment that helps support the requirements for the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy version 5.6. These requirements typically apply to systems that must go through a formal assessment and authorization process to ensure sufficient protection of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information and information systems, based on the security category and impact level of the system (low, moderate, or high), and a risk determination. Note that this Quick Start will help organizations get started, but additional effort will be needed for full alignment to the CJIS Security Policy. 

The AWS Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance program has been expanded to include the PostgreSQL-compatible edition of Amazon Aurora , which recently went into general availability . With this update, we are maintaining full HIPAA eligibility for all Amazon RDS database engines. 

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is to loan €300 million ($354 million) to Egypt for a desalination plant at Ain Sokhna, reports Egypt Today.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is to loan $120 million for a desalination project to supply Jaffna Peninsula, Sri Lanka.

Keppel Seghers Hong Kong and Zhen Hau Engineering have won a contract for a large scale integrated waste management project, to include a desalination plant, in Hong Kong.

The LAPSSET Authority is to build a desalination facility in Lamu County, Kenya, reports Kenya News Agency.

Years ago, I cycled extensively in the USA. The part of my trip I look back most fondly was cycling the Burr Trail through the Grand Staircase-Escalante. As a careful lone long distance cyclist, I stopped in at a wilderness office before I set out, and was given advice by a knowledgeable* local woman – that …

This story continues at Fingers crossed for the Grand Staircase Escalante

Or just read more coverage at Electronics Weekly