Militia attack on US Embassy in Baghdad caused $35 million in fire damage, IG says
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Attackers set fire to an entry control point at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 31, 2019. A State Department Inspector General report recently said that damages to the embassy totaled $35 million. (Desmond Cassell/U.S. Army)
An Iranian-backed militia’s New Year’s 2020 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad caused $35 million worth of damage, a government watchdog agency report found.
The losses made up the bulk of over $37 million in total fire damages at U.S. diplomatic facilities overseas in fiscal year 2020, said a footnote to a State Department Inspector General report released last week about the department’s global fire protection program.
Would Bring ATF Into The 21
st Century
Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ-09) Tuesday reintroduced the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act of 2021, their bill to modernize the capabilities of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to trace crime guns.
After a firearm associated with a crime is discovered somewhere in the United States, federal, state or local law enforcement officials contact ATF, which then must recreate the chain of custody of the firearm.
But ATF is prohibited by law from electronically searching millions of gun sales records already in its possession. The absurd result is that ATF must comb through mountains of paper records manually, an extremely laborious process that delays timely investigations and drains law enforcement resources. Their legislation would update this process from the age of paper records to the age of electronic records, to enable electronic
Bengaluru becoming hotbed of Covid
Indian-American civil rights lawyer Vanita Gupta has been confirmed as the US Associate Attorney-General with the help of a breakaway Republican Senator overcoming stiff opposition from her fellow party members who accused the nominee of espousing radical policies.
Senator Lisa Murkowski gave her the crucial vote on Wednesday in the 100-member Senate, which is evenly divided between the Republican and Democratic parties, to assume the third-highest position in the Justice Department.
Gupta is a legendary figure in the US civil rights movement having as a newly-minted lawyer won the release of 38 people, most of them African-Americans, who had been wrongly convicted by all-White juries on drug charges in a Texas town and also got them $6 million in compensation.
Indian-American civil rights lawyer narrowly confirmed as Associate AG
By Arul Louis
New York– Indian-American civil rights lawyer Vanita Gupta has been confirmed as the US Associate Attorney-General with the help of a breakaway Republican Senator overcoming stiff opposition from her fellow party members who accused the nominee of espousing “radical” policies.
Senator Lisa Murkowski gave her the crucial vote on Wednesday in the 100-member Senate, which is evenly divided between the Republican and Democratic parties, to assume the third-highest position in the Justice Department.
Gupta is a legendary figure in the US civil rights movement having as a newly-minted lawyer won the release of 38 people, most of them African-Americans, who had been wrongly convicted by all-White juries on drug charges in a Texas town and also got them $6 million in compensation.