Investigations

Months before the body of a beaten 6-year-old boy was found on the floor of his home last week, strong evidence existed to suggest that he was the victim of sustained abuse at the hands of the man now accused of killing him, according to documents obtained by The Times. Authorities on Wednesday issued a murder warrant for Marcas Fisher, who police believe beat his ex-girlfriend's son, Dae'von Bailey, to death a week ago.

Out of cash and understaffed, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has suspended its faltering effort to analyze DNA evidence from thousands of rape and sexual assault cases. The department halted shipments of the genetic evidence to private crime laboratories at the end of May after funds allotted for the testing ran dry, according to a report submitted by Sheriff Lee Baca to the county Board of Supervisors late last week.

A day after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resigned, a federal official in her home state dismissed one potential explanation for her sudden and unexpected resignation: a rumored FBI investigation into the former Wasilla mayor on public corruption charges.

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now.

On a clear day, the expanse of blue ocean seen from the living room of this San Clemente home seems almost endless. Sometimes, as day gives way to evening, a line of pink stretches like a crayon scrawl in the sky. When night falls, the sea is an abyss of black. Margrit Ucar fell instantly for the panorama. Even before her husband, Manas, had a chance to see the house, she knew it was where they would raise their two young daughters, twins Margo and Grace.

Los Angeles commuters have been improperly detained, pushed, choked and struck by Metropolitan Transportation Authority security guards, according to interviews and internal law enforcement memos obtained by The Times. Alleged assaults over the last two years have prompted at least 11 investigations by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which has repeatedly complained to MTA officials about abusive security officers, as the guards are called within the MTA.

Peanut Corp. of America, the company that produced the contaminated peanut butter now being widely recalled, lied to Food and Drug Administration investigators about shipping batches of the food known to be tainted with salmonella bacteria, the agency said Friday. The company had previously told the FDA that some lots of peanut butter had initially tested positive for the bacterium, then were retested and found to be negative before they were shipped.

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department. The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp.

In 2005, California real estate mogul Terry Fancher wanted to entice public pension systems to place hundreds of millions of dollars in investment funds he managed. Bypassing seasoned Wall Street advisors such as Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse First Boston, he turned to Darius Anderson, a young and ambitious Sacramento lobbyist known in the Capitol for his political connections and fundraising prowess.

The firestorm over American International Group is spreading beyond executive bonuses, with lawmakers and policy experts now questioning virtually all aspects of the taxpayer-financed rescue package for the insurance giant. Among other issues, critics are asking why AIG was allowed to use federal bailout money to repay $13 billion in debt obligations to Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs, as well as debts to foreign banks.