By a Biometrica staffer The latest report in the Cocaine Insights series, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Europol takes a hard look at the trade in the illegal drug around the world, highlighting some of...
By Deepti Govind In the last two decades since 9/11, terror groups, mostly acting through either lone actors or small groups of around 2-3 people, have staged attacks just about anywhere and everywhere in the United States. Aviation, of course, is the...
By Aara Ramesh In and among the 2,996 people who died at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001, were 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority police officers. They were just a...
By a Biometrica staffer In the course of the Labor Day weekend, five people were killed and dozens wounded in a spate of gun violence, CBS Chicago reported. This takes the total number of shootings in Chicago to more than 2,300 in 2021....
By Deepti Govind "We know that shooters don't just stop after one shooting," ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) Special Agent Fred Milanowski told ABC 13 News in May. The first shooting is hard, the second one is a...
By a Biometrica staffer Healthcare workers in the U. S., hailed as heroes at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, have become — over the last several months — the targets of a disgruntled public. The hostility against workers administering Covid-19 vaccines...
By a Biometrica staffer In March, Biometrica did a round-up of some of the key crime, prison, and law enforcement bills with most support in the House in 2021 up to that point. Today, we pick a few crime-related bills in the...
By a Biometrica staffer Approximately 1,000 assaults occurred on federal officers during the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection, prosecutors recently said. A court filing highlighted that they had uploaded 2,900 videos from bodycams worn by police, with a total length of around 2,300...
By a Biometrica staffer The number of instances of individuals pointing lasers at pilots of aircrafts were at a record high, NBC reported recently. In 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported 6,852 laser attacks, the most for any year since 2016. This is...
By Deepti Govind In July, the U.S. government reported that drug overdose deaths last year, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, soared nearly 30% to a record number of around 93,000. That's a massive spike from 2019's 72,000 drug overdose deaths,...
By a Biometrica staffer On Sunday, Aug. 29, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Joe Biden declared a major disaster state in Louisiana as Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 150 mph, made landfall in the...
By a Biometrica staffer President Joe Biden met with chief executive officers (CEOs) from several companies including Apple, Google, and JP Morgan Chase at the White House on Wednesday, Aug. 25, and urged them to play their part in stepping up cybersecurity...
By a Biometrica staffer In 2019, 9.7 million people misused prescription pain relievers, 4.9 million people misused prescription stimulants, and 5.9 million people misused prescription tranquilizers or sedatives. A majority of those misused prescription drugs were obtained from family and friends, often...
By a Biometrica staffer Nearly half of all hospital executives said their systems were either forced or proactively shutdown in the last six months due to ransomware attacks, a study by IPSOS, sponsored by Philips and CyberMDX, published last week found. Of...
By Aara Ramesh For a few months now, it seems like there has been fresh news about the western United States burning almost every day, with record heat-waves and fires sweeping through the region. Per the National Fire Information Center (NFIC), the...
By a Biometrica staffer On Tuesday, Aug. 10, the Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a long-awaited, $1 trillion bipartisan bill, sending it onto the House for approval. All 50 Democrats voted in favor, joined by 19 Republicans. This is...
By a Biometrica staffer Monthly operator revenue at sportsbooks across the country came in at $318 million in June, the highest nationwide win rate for this year, and only the fourth time that the number has clocked in higher than $300 million...
By Aara Ramesh In July, a pilot from Florida was convicted for operating a commercial airplane despite his airman’s certificate having been revoked and his medical certificate being suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on May 7. According to the FAA,...
By a Biometrica staffer The number of nursing home patients and staff infected with the Covid-19 virus rose sharply last week, at a time when the nation is reeling under the menace of the highly contagious delta variant and as total cases...
By Deepti Govind Millions of elderly Americans become the victims of some kind of financial fraud or internet scam each year. Just last year, for instance, senior citizens in the country lost $1 billion to fraud. That's an increase of roughly $300...
By Deepti Govind Sample this: Nearly one-in-three Americans have fallen victim to a phone scam in the past year, according to a report from Truecaller published last week. In total, Americans lost an estimated $29.8 billion, the report added. Of the survey...
By a Biometrica staffer Since the start of this year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has received around 3,100 reports of unruly behavior by passengers, including about 2,350 reports of passengers refusing to comply with the federal mask mandate. In January, the...
By a Biometrica staffer On Thursday, June 17, Europol said 1,203 tons of illegal pesticides were taken off the market by it in a joint operation that involved law enforcement authorities from 35 countries. The amount of pesticides seized during the operation...
By a Biometrica staffer On Wednesday, June 16, the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) released an audit report about the U.S. Marshals (USMS) judicial security activities, concluding that the department “does not have the resources or proactive threat detection capabilities” needed to...
By Wyly Wade Section 13402(e)(4) of the HITECH Act requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights, to post notice of any breach of unsecured protected health information that affects 500 or more individuals. According to...
Photo Courtesy: Rockville Middle School, Miami's, Facebook page showing Agent Laura at the school By a Biometrica Correspondent In February 2020, almost exactly one year to the day she was killed in the line of duty, FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger was...
By a Biometrica staffer Four federal agencies launched a coordinated effort to disrupt and deter Iranian malicious cyber activities targeting the US and the broader international community, the Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement. The DoJ, the Federal Bureau of...
By a Biometrica staffer A teenager was accused of issuing a bomb threat online, while interrupting a virtual lecture conducted by the University of Houston that he wasn’t supposed to have access to. The 19-year old Houston resident also allegedly proclaimed his...
Two female passengers alleged in a federal lawsuit that they were sexually assaulted on Frontier Airlines flights in separate incidents in 2018 | © Joezachs - Dreamstime.com By a Biometrica staffer Two female passengers alleged in a federal lawsuit that they were...
This artwork, in the image of 8-year-old Ryan VanLuchene doing what he loved best, being outdoors, was created especially for us by Germany-based Indian photographer and artist, Priyanka Oberoi. Her work can be found here. By Derek VanLuchene, with Nadia Eley On...
Above: A young child, evidently alone, and at risk, asks for a lift by the side of a road as the sun begins to set. © Alien185 | Dreamstime.com Note: This is the second in a series of “Conversations across Communities,” which will touch...
Above: © Nomadsoul1 | Dreamstime; While young girls are predominant victims of trafficking, about 20% of victims are male. We have a problem — there’s just not enough comprehensive, substantive data. But depending on various accounts, between 100,000 to 1.5 million children are trafficked...