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Faulty sensor triggers days-long alarm at former Iranian Embassy in DC

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Faulty sensor triggers days-long alarm at former Iranian Embassy in DC


It was an alarm that blared at the former Iranian embassy since last Friday night.

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That’s when D.C. Fire says the original call came in for an alarm going off at the former embassy.

The U.S. State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions preserves and maintains buildings owned by a foreign mission, but no longer occupied by them.

According to the State Department’s website, the U.S. and Iran have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980.

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Faulty sensor triggers days-long alarm at former Iranian Embassy in DC

D.C. Fire was the agency that responded to the building on Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue nearly each time someone called 911 but determined that there was likely no emergency, and couldn’t enter the building until the State Department was able to help them get in.

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“As people passed by, they’ve heard an audible alarm at the former embassy, and the fire department has been sent out to investigate,” said Danny McCoy, D.C. Fire’s deputy chief for special operations and homeland security.

McCoy says, in all, six people called 911 in the last few days, typically passersby.

Serena Wiltshire lives nearby and was thankful she couldn’t hear the alarm from her home, but heard it while walking her dog on Massachusetts Avenue.

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“When I walked the dog up to Massachusetts Avenue, about a block away from it, I started to hear it,” Wiltshire said.

Faulty sensor triggers days-long alarm at former Iranian Embassy in DC

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McCoy says in the case of an active embassy, D.C. Fire is often welcomed in, especially if there’s an emergency, but the process can be slowed a bit when they need to be granted access by another entity.

“Situations like this, when the building is locked up, we can’t get in, we contact the State Department, or the service, and we go through the process of finding out who’s responsible if they can get somebody out to assist us,” McCoy said, while adding fire officials determined there was no emergency when they responded.

Monday, D.C. Fire and the State Department went into the building, determined it was likely a faulty sensor causing the alarm to go off, shut it off, and then left. 

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D.C. Fire confirmed the alarm went off again overnight. 

A State Department spokesperson says the fix is in the works and declined comment on why it took multiple days for the alarm to be shut off.



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Washington, D.C

Boogarins Light Up the Night at Washington DC’s Comet Ping Pong

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Boogarins Light Up the Night at Washington DC’s Comet Ping Pong


From the moment they stepped onstage, Boogarins played like they were commanding a festival crowd ten times the size. There was no scaling down, no “intimate set” compromise. Instead, they leaned fully into the grandeur of their sound, flooding the room with swirling guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and a kind of euphoric intensity that made the walls feel like they were breathing along with the music.

The setlist, anchored heavily in Manual, felt both nostalgic and freshly alive. These weren’t just songs being revisited, they were being reimagined in real time, stretched and reshaped with an almost telepathic sense of musicianship. Every transition felt seamless, every crescendo earned. The band locked into grooves that felt endless, yet never indulgent, always pulling the audience deeper into their orbit.

What makes Boogarins so captivating live isn’t just their technical precision, though that alone would be enough to impress, it’s the emotional current running beneath everything. Sung in Portuguese, the lyrics could easily create a barrier for some audiences, but here, language felt irrelevant. The emotion translated effortlessly, carried through reverb-soaked vocals and shimmering instrumentation that spoke louder than words ever could. You didn’t need to understand the language to understand the feeling, you felt it in your chest, in your bones, in the way the crowd collectively leaned forward as if pulled by gravity.

And that crowd, packed tightly into Comet Ping Pong’s cozy confines, responded in kind. There was a shared sense of awe in the room, the kind that only happens when a band and audience meet at exactly the same frequency. Heads nodded, eyes closed, bodies swayed. It was less a concert and more a communal experience, a psychedelic séance conducted through sound.

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If this tour is a celebration of Manual, it’s also a reminder of why Boogarins have become such a vital force in modern psych rock. They don’t just play music, they create environments, immersive worlds that you step into and don’t want to leave. One thing is certain: if Boogarins are coming anywhere near you on this run, don’t hesitate. This is a band that demands to be seen live, in all their kaleidoscopic glory.

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Confirmed case of measles in DC as country faces significant resurgence – WTOP News

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Confirmed case of measles in DC as country faces significant resurgence – WTOP News


D.C. health officials are warning of the possible measles exposure at Dulles International Airport and multiple Metrorail lines between April 23-27.

Officials with the District’s Department of Health announced a confirmed case of measles in the city on Thursday.

In a release, D.C. Health are warning residents who may have been exposed to the contagious person at multiple locations around D.C.

  • Concourse B, the Aerotrain and the Baggage Claim Area of Dulles International Airport on Thursday, April 23, and Friday, April 24
  • M60 Metrobus northbound toward Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center from April 24 to April 27
  • M60 Metrobus southbound toward Fort Totten station from April 24 to April 27
  • Metrorail Green Line from Fort Totten to L’Enfant Plaza and the Blue Line toward Downtown Largo on Saturday, April 25, from 9 a.m. till noon
  • Metrorail Green Line from Fort Totten to L’Enfant Plaza transferring to the Orange Line toward New Carrolton on Sunday, April 26, from 7:50 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.
  • Orange Line from Minnesota Avenue transferring from L’Enfant Plaza to the Green Line toward Greenbelt on Saturday, April 25, and Sunday, April 26, in the evening
  • Red Line Metrorail from Fort Totten toward Shady Grove on Monday, April 27, from 5 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.

Anyone who was at those locations during the listed times should monitor for symptoms for 21 days and check their vaccination status. Early symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes, followed by a rash.

D.C. Health officials said the virus can stay in the air for up to 2 hours after a contagious person leaves the space.

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As always, vaccination remains a key component in fighting the spread of the disease. Two doses of the vaccine are recommended for children between 12 months and 4 years old

“It is so contagious that about 9 out of 10 people who come near a person with measles will also become infected if they are not vaccinated,” D.C. Health wrote.

Three cases of measles were also confirmed in February among people traveling through the D.C. area.

People who think they might have been exposed to the virus should contact their healthcare provider or D.C. Health at 844-493-2652 for guidance.

Measles outbreaks have surged nationwide. This year through April, there were more than 1,814 confirmed measles cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

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Roughly 2,300 cases were reported in 2025.

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© 2026 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.



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LUCC members tackle housing affordability shortage

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LUCC members tackle housing affordability shortage


County officials representing large urban areas across the country traveled to Washington D.C. April 23 to discuss data-driven approaches to expanding housing supply and affordability at a think tank and relay local housing needs to federal agency staff and members of Congress at NACo’s Large Urban County Caucus (LUCC) fly-in. 

“Housing, especially housing supply and affordability, is one of the most pressing challenges facing our respective metropolitan areas,” said LUCC Chair Adrian Garcia, who serves as a Harris County, Texas commissioner. “It’s a core constraint, not only on quality of life, but also on economic growth and workforce ability.”

 

Best practices

Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Housing Center, outlined three ways local governments can increase housing supply:

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  • Allow houses to be built on smaller lots, increasing the amount of starter single family homes and townhomes
  • Allow lot split flexibilities on existing lots, enabling a variety of dwelling types and sizes to exist on one property (such as duplexes, ADUs and townhomes)
  • Expand flexibility to build homes near jobs

“The three most important things in housing affordability are small lot, small lot, small lot,” Pinto said. “Small lots cost less; you get smaller homes on small lots.”

Local governments should encourage the construction of small residential properties — specifically single-family buildings that contain between one and four separate dwelling units, according to Pinto. 

“That is the way that you actually make housing affordable,” he said. “… The first home I bought in 1975 [was] 1,400 square feet, three bedrooms, on a 4,800 square foot lot. We don’t build those houses anymore. They’re illegal. You need to activate that.”

Into the early 20th century, it was common to have multiple types of residences — small, large, duplexes, triplexes, townhomes — mixed in the same neighborhood as doctor’s offices, grocery stores and other commercial properties, Pinto said. And not just in urban areas, but in smaller cities, as well, he noted. 

That ended when Herbert Hoover, who was the U.S. Secretary of Commerce at the time, appointed a zoning commission to develop a model zoning statute for the states to pass. That statute was based on a Baltimore city ordinance that led to economic segregation, Pinto noted. 

In 1910, Baltimore passed the country’s first racial-zoning ordinance, making it illegal for Black people to live in predominantly white neighborhoods, and vice-versa. In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial zoning, declaring it unconstitutional to refuse to sell a home to someone because of their race, so the city then moved to control how land could be developed and used, requiring lots and homes to be a certain minimum size.   

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“They came upon economic segregation … That’s why they focused on single-family, detached [homes],” Pinto said. “They now could set lot sizes. They could set side yards, front yards, backyards … and they knew there was lots of research that showed that that would just drive the prices up, out of the reach of the people they didn’t want living there.”

Over a century later, it’s these restrictive zoning ordinances that continue to prevent the expansion of housing supply and affordability, Pinto said. In the United States, 38 million people between the ages of 25 to 65 qualify as low-wage workers, meaning they make less than $40,000 a year working full-time. Low-wage workers usually can’t afford to rent one- or two-bedroom units in high-rise buildings. So, if the goal is to expand affordable housing, those types of developments shouldn’t make up such a large share of new construction, he said.

“Of the 40% of low-wage workers that are in rental households, 60% of them live in single family-1 to 4 — the exact things that were being built in Los Angeles that [the Federal Housing Administration] stamped out back in 1935,” he said. 

“And the reason is because you can spread the cost … across more than one wager easily, either you’re married, you have roommates, whatever, you’re able to spread it, but it’s very hard to do that in a one-bedroom apartment.”

If counties do rezone land to maximize housing supply, they need to make the replatting process as simple and inexpensive as possible, so that it’s not dragged out, Pinto said. 

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“If you’re just taking 8,000 square feet, and you’re dividing it into four, 2,000 square foot lots, that should be drop dead simple,” he said. “If it isn’t drop dead simple, you need to make it drop dead simple.”

 

Federal housing priorities 

In December, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) finalized its housing target goals through 2028, which outline that a certain percentage of acquisitions that the enterprises make must support low-income households in low-income areas and multi-family housing, according to Leda Bloomfield, associate director of FHFA’s Office of Housing, Community Investment and Inclusion. 

“We want to make sure that you’re providing liquidity not just for the class A new construction, but also for starter homes and homes where we think the vast majority of Americans and families are,” Bloomfield said. “Thinking about, how do we achieve the American dream, to get them into those kinds of housing? And making sure that we support the spectrum of borrowers there.”

FHFA announced April 22 that it’s implementing VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T for mortgage underwriting, according to Daniel Fichtler, principal readiness adviser for FHFA’s Division of Conservatorship Oversight and Readiness. They are modern, trended-data credit models approved by the FHFA for mortgage underwriting by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA replacing older static models. Both analyze 24-plus months of credit behavior, including rent/utility payments, to better predict risk and expand homeownership opportunities.

“They use what’s called trended credit data, which is more accurate, more reliable,” Fichtler said. 

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“And they also do things like better account for rent payments — those types of obligations that aren’t always as visible on the credit bureau side, but that can give a better picture of certain borrowers’ credit worthiness. 

“We think this is going to be a really important development, because it both improves access and improves safety and soundness.”

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, bipartisan legislation the Senate passed in March, would modernize locally administered housing programs and cut artificial costs from regulatory barriers, according to NACo. 

If enacted, it would be a “very important step that’s going to help Americans access quality, affordable housing,” said Geoffrey Smith, general deputy assistant secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations. 

HUD will continue to work with Congress to expand the housing supply, streamline regulations and lower housing costs for all Americans, Smith said. Deregulation is a “top priority” for the department, he noted. 

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“HUD is taking bold action to help American families with thoughtful proposals to increase housing and opportunity zones, promoting the value of manufactured housing and addressing just the mountain of red tape out there builders are dealing with right now,” Smith said. 



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