Crackdown

The Federal Trade Commission is teaming up with tech companies and regulatory agencies around the world to crack down on tech-support scams that may have already cost U.S. consumers tens of millions of dollars. In a tech-support scam, typically originating out of India, callers claiming to be with a trusted security company tell consumers that their computers may have been infected with a virus or malware. The callers then trick people into purchasing anti-virus software they don't need, which can often range in price from $49 to $450.

HYDRA, Greece - With its whitewashed walls and brightly blooming bougainvillea, Hydra hardly conjures up scenes of confrontation, and certainly not the revolutionary spirit of the Boston Tea Party. Yet not too long ago, a spontaneous exercise of civil disobedience reminiscent of that by enraged Bostonians, ripped through the harbor of this jagged Greek island, laying claim to anti-tax and libertarian principles and awakening a recession-weary public to an autumn of anger. In late August, a team of newly recruited tax marshals - three men and two women - moved to arrest the 54-year-old owner of Hydra's iconic tavern Psaropoula.

MOSCOW - A prominent opposition activist was stripped of his seat in the lower house of the Russian parliament Friday, a move that heightens concern the Kremlin will continue its aggressive crackdown on political dissent. Gennady Gudkov, 52, a protest movement leader and member of the opposition Just Russia party, was expelled by a 294-151 vote of the State Duma, controlled by President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Gudkov, once an ally of Putin, called the action political vengeance by the Kremlin.

MODESTO - Topamax. Depakote. Phenobarbital. The list goes on. Before Jayden David turned 5, he had tried a dozen powerful medications to tame a rare form of epilepsy. The side effects were devastating. There were grand mal seizures that lasted more than an hour. Hundreds of times a day, muscle twitches contorted his impish face. "If he wasn't sleeping, he was seizing," said Jayden's father, Jason David. PHOTOS: Treating son's epilepsy Feeling helpless, David said, he contemplated suicide.

When prosecutors earlier this year filed murder charges against a physician for prescribing to patients who overdosed, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said he was also sending a message to other "Dr. Feelgoods" who over-prescribe. "Enough is enough," he said. "Doctors are not above the law. " But in the months since Rowland Heights physician Hsiu-Ying "Lisa" Tseng was charged, there has been a growing debate among medical professionals about whether prosecutors went too far by alleging murder.

Efforts to more closely regulate a controversial form of healthcare self-insurance being sold to small employers ran into business opposition in the final weeks of the Legislature's session and got shelved for now. But California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and other backers of the crackdown on company self-insurance vow to bring back the legislation, possibly during a special session on healthcare expected in December. "We think with a little more time we will be able to educate lawmakers about the threat posed by this loophole" in the federal Affordable Care Act, Jones said.

Local and federal authorities moved Thursday to break up an alleged drug trafficking ring connecting a major Mexican cartel to San Gabriel Valley street gangs and arrested 17 people in a pre-dawn sweep. A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charges 27 people with making, possessing and dealing methamphetamine imported by La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's most violent cartels, to two Pomona gangs: Los Amables and Westside Pomona Malditos. Thursday's crackdown is the culmination of Operation Crystal Light, a 16-month investigation by the San Gabriel Valley Safe Streets Gang Task Force.

A year-long investigation into one of Anaheim's most entrenched street gangs has resulted in 33 arrests and the seizure of dozens of guns, a crackdown that comes on the heels of weeks of street protests triggered by the fatal police shootings of two men. The investigation, dubbed Operation Halo, involved more than 250 law enforcement officers who fanned out across Orange County and parts of L.A. County as the sun was coming up Friday. The probe was aimed at Eastside Anaheim, a gang that police said has been highly active in crime in recent years.

LONDON -- For the Olympic Summer of Love, the IOC insists on an official form of protection. Kidding aside, you know the Games are creeping to an end when these stories start to pop up in the second week. News gets a little slower, a little sillier. For instance, there was a TV crew doing a piece on the chair massage station in the Main Press Center. But back to the controversy. The Guardian newspaper detailed the story of unofficial condoms ending up in the Olympic Village.

The U.N. General Assembly condemned the Syrian government's latest attacks on rebellious citizens Friday in a symbolic vote that also criticized infighting on the Security Council that has thwarted intervention to halt an escalating civil war. The resolution deplored the violence engulfing Syria's biggest city, Aleppo, and included a call by Arab neighbors for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. As violence surged, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that a flotilla of its warships was heading for the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It issued conflicting accounts of whether the vessels would dock at Tartus, a Syrian port where Russia maintains a naval base.