Steve Neavling

An incessant, high-pitched hum coming from a nondescript FBI building in Virginia is driving neighbors crazy, the Washington Post reports.

“You’ve never stood next to such a loud building,” Tom Jackman wrote for the Washington Post. “It sounds like a helicopter is hovering a block away – a helicopter that never goes away. It just keeps buzzing, 24 hours a day.”

The loud noise comes from 23 “dry cooler” air-conditioning units atop the three-story office building. Each with 10 fans, the units make 230 “high-velocity whirring noises,” Jackman wrote.

The building houses the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, which compiles the no-fly list and other national security information.

Steve Neavling

Florida unfairly burdened the state’s minorities by reducing early voting house the Justice Department lawyers argued before a three-judge District panel in Washington D.C., the Chicago Tribune reports.

The new rules are intended to ward off voter fraud by requiring people who moved between counties to fie provisional ballots. Counties also are permitted to reduce the number of early voting days and adjust voter precinct hours.

The Justice Department points out that 55 percent of black voters used early voting periods to cast their ballots, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal approval for electoral changes must be sought by states with a history of discrimination.

Steve Neavling

The city of Seattle and the Justice Department are engaged in intense negotiations with a mediator over how to bring about sweeping changes in the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle Times reports.

Negotiations come six months after the Justice Department revealed troubled findings about a department that engages in a “pattern and practice” of using excessive force, mainly against minorities and the chemically and mentally impaired, according to the Seattle Times.

Also found was inconclusive evidence of biased reporting.

Both sides pledged quick action to avoid a lawsuit, the Seattle Times reported.

Steve Neavling

The Justice Department has filed suit against a fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon sect, saying it discriminates against non-members, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

The suit alleges that members of the sect control government services in the towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Those towns also share a police department that “routinely uses its enforcement authority to enforce the edicts and will of the FLDS; fails to protect non-FLDS individuals from victimization by FLDS individuals; refuses to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies’ investigations of FLDS individuals; selectively enforces laws against non-FLDS; and uses its authority to facilitate unlawful evictions of non-FLDS, among other unlawful conduct,” according to an FBI statement Thursday.

The bottom line is Erika Bonilla, a professional singer and former FBI employee in New Mexico,says don’t hate her cause she’s beautiful.

The 38-year-old has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and Justice Department, alleging she was harassed by her co-workers because they were “jealous of her appearance and Latin singing career,” ABC News reports.

Bonilla, 38, first worked in the Albuquerque FBI field office in 2002 and 2007 was promoted to an Administrative Specialist, “which entailed human resources management, language testing, applicant testing and recruiting matters,” the suit said, according to ABC News.

according to the lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court in New Mexico.

The suit states she “was targeted, harassed and retaliated against because she is an attractive Hispanic female with a career in Latin music,” ABC reports.

The suit also said she has performed at various headquarters at FBI.

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