Law Enforcement

WASHINGTON - The head of the FBI said Thursday that there were lapses in tracking accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's visit to Russia last year, saying that U.S. security officials failed to act on "text" alerts to a U.S. Customs agent about his trip. The inaction came after U.S. officials interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents about Russian concerns that he was traveling there "intent on returning and perhaps participating in jihad," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said. Mueller told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that in March 2011, Russian authorities asked the U.S. for a background assessment on Tsarnaev and his mother.

WASHINGTON - A friend of accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed by an FBI special agent early Wednesday when an interview about the April 15 explosion turned into a “violent confrontation” in Orlando, Fla., that also left the agent injured. Federal law enforcement sources identified the slain man as Ibragim Todashev, 27, a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter like Tsarnaev who was being questioned by the FBI agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement officials.

NEW YORK -- Herbalife stock fell more than 6% after the New York Post reported the company was subject to an unspecified law-enforcement investigation. In early trading on Wall Street, Herbalife shares lost $2.25, or 6.42%, to $32.82. Herbalife's stock is off 44% from where it was a year ago. The Post cited documents the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Federal Trade Commission. According to the Post, the FTC cited "pending law-enforcement action" and withheld some information the Post requested about Herbalife.

WASHINGTON - A friend of purported Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed early Wednesday by an FBI special agent in Orlando, Fla., after lunging with a knife and injuring the agent during an interview about the April 15 explosion and an unrelated triple homicide, officials said. Federal law enforcement sources identified the slain man as Ibragim Todashev, 27, a Chechen immigrant and former martial arts fighter like Tsarnaev. Todashev was being questioned in an apartment by the FBI agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement officials.

Technology executives and law enforcement officials are clashing over a nearly 25-year-old law that protects Internet users' private information. Some of the world's largest technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., are pushing for changes to the law — written before the World Wide Web existed — saying it makes it too easy for government investigators to gain access to their customers' Web-based e-mail and documents. That, the companies say, is bad for the bottom line.

Citing a disturbing increase in gang activity, top Ventura County law-enforcement officials on Friday pledged to crack down on gangs like they never have before. At the county government center, the district attorney and police chiefs unveiled a master plan to unite police agencies throughout the county in a coordinated war against the growing gang problem. The Ventura County Gang Strategy, as the new effort is called, advocates a two-pronged approach to fighting gangs, Dist. Atty. Michael D.

MASINLOC, Philippines - The fishermen were sailing the azure waters off the Philippine coast when Richard Caneda saw the morning sunlight glinting off a vessel "bigger than the biggest ship in the Philippine navy. " Caneda could see a red Chinese flag. The words "Chinese Maritime Surveillance" were written on the ship's side. The ship came close enough that Caneda could see crew members on deck making hand gestures as though to shoo away a fly. Caneda, who had moved from the fishing boat to a tiny skiff to haul in nets left out overnight, soon saw a large gun mounted on the ship's deck pivoting directly toward him. A helicopter whirred overhead.

A system of federal "boot camps" to rehabilitate first-time drug offenders is being studied, drug czar William J. Bennett said Sunday. Bennett, whose formal title is national drug policy director, raised the subject of the need for more and different penal facilities for incarceration of users during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation." He had previously called for an intensified effort to lock up sellers of narcotics, possibly on ships and abandoned military stations, as part of his "war plan" against drugs.

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said. Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

WASHINGTON - While a national debate has erupted over the Obama administration's lethal drone strikes overseas, federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in U.S. airspace, spurring growing concern about violations of privacy. The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known. Some 327 permits are still listed as active.

WASHINGTON - A friend of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev who was shot and killed by an FBI special agent in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday was being questioned primarily about a 2-year-old triple homicide in Waltham, Mass., and about whether Tsarnaev played a role in those killings, officials said. Federal law enforcement sources identified the slain man as Ibragim Todashev, 27. They said he suddenly lunged with a knife and injured the agent in a “violent confrontation” during an interview.  Todashev is a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter like Tsarnaev and was being questioned by the FBI agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement officials.

WASHINGTON - The head of the FBI said Thursday that there were lapses in tracking accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's visit to Russia last year, saying that U.S. security officials failed to act on "text" alerts to a U.S. Customs agent about his trip. The inaction came after U.S. officials interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents about Russian concerns that he was traveling there "intent on returning and perhaps participating in jihad," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said. Mueller told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that in March 2011, Russian authorities asked the U.S. for a background assessment on Tsarnaev and his mother.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.

WASHINGTON - Shortly after the FBI released photos of two Boston bombing suspects on April 18, several college friends texted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on their cellphones. One said Tsarnaev looked like suspect No. 2, who wore a white cap backward over tufts of brown curls. "LOL," Tsarnaev texted back. Later, he wrote again: "Come to my room and take whatever you want. " That night, according to an FBI complaint filed Wednesday in Boston, three young men entered Tsarnaev's dorm room at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where they all had met as students, and removed a laptop and a backpack full of fireworks that had been emptied of gunpowder.

The man suspected of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl from her Northridge home and sexually assaulting her appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday, but did not enter a plea. The arraignment for Tobias Dustin Summers was instead pushed back to May 2. Summers, a 32-year-old felon and reputed gang member, was captured early Wednesday at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Las Misiones, a small community about 200 miles south of the U.S. border, authorities said. He was taken to a Los Angeles jail later that day and held in lieu of $19-million bail.

Like finding new friends on Facebook or a great deal on EBay, it is easy to locate fiery, radical Islamist imams on the Internet who will guide the willing toward the path of bomb making, random slaughter and martyrdom. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the accused Boston Marathon bomber who died in a shootout with police a week ago, seems to have connected with a number of these firebrand theologians in exactly that way. Tsarnaev did not pick up his militant ideas at his local mosque. In fact, it is being reported that, on two occasions, Tsarnaev interrupted Friday prayer services at a mosque in Cambridge to criticize the speaker for being too liberal and accommodating.

In rural Do ñ a Ana County in southern New Mexico, there's a new sheriff in town - a deputy sheriff, that is. He's a tough guy, agile on his feet, and he knows how to handle thugs in the movies and, apparently, in real life. He's film action star Steven Seagal. The 60-year-old actor, producer and martial arts expert is lending star power to the tiny department whose coverage area includes the U.S.-Mexico border. Seagal, who has offered to train officers, was sworn in as a deputy this week by Sheriff Todd Garrison.

It's almost midnight and Melody is walking down Sepulveda Boulevard in the east San Fernando Valley. She's about 30, from Detroit, hair slicked back, checkerboard miniskirt, earrings the size of silver dollars dangling on her black leather jacket. "You sure you're not a cop?" she asks, her cigarette ash falling on her black purse. Melody is a prostitute, and she has good reason to worry about getting arrested.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Bagpipes wailed, law enforcement badges were striped in black, and a squadron of state police helicopters flew by as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and hundreds of officers from around the country paid their respects Wednesday to Sean Collier, one of their own. At an outdoor memorial service for the 27-year-old campus police officer, Vice President Joe Biden called the brothers accused of killing Collier and detonating the...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Vice President Joe Biden declared that terrorists committed to a "doctrine of hate and oppression" have seen again that the American people "refuse to yield to fear," hailing the "incredible heroism" and "resilience" of Boston in the wake of the marathon bombings. Biden spoke Wednesday at a memorial service for MIT campus police officer Sean Collier, who was killed Thursday by the alleged perpetrators of the attacks, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, described by the vice president as "two twisted, perverted, cowardly knock-off jihadis . " "We have suffered.