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WASHINGTON — Representative William R. Keating on Wednesday called on the new FBI director to "answer pressing questions” about the investigation into the Boston marathon attacks, renewing his call for the bureau to be more forthcoming about what it knew of the alleged bombers and when.

In a detailed letter to James Comey, the Bourne Democrat and member of the Homeland Security Committee called on the FBI to share all it knows about Russian warnings about the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev; clarify what intelligence may not have been adequately shared soon enough with law enforcement officials in Boston; and any loopholes that have been identified in the multiple federal databases of potential terrorist suspects to which Tsarnaev’s name had been added prior to the attacks.
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Views: 693 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-31 | Comments (1)

 
Rolling Stone's "Boston Bomber” issue got a rash of bad publicity and retailers like CVS and Stop & Stop pulled it from shelves after a "Boycott Rolling Stone” campaign gained steam on Facebook. But the controversy doesn't seem to have hurt newsstand sales.
 
Retail sales of the issue jumped 102 percent over average per-issue sales for the past year, according to Magazine Information Network. Figures are based on point of sale data from 1,420 retailers from July 19 to July 29. Among those retailers, 13,232 copies were sold, more than double the magazine's average sales for the prior year.
Views: 604 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-31 | Comments (0)


Florida’s law enforcement commissioner has refused to investigate the fatal shooting of a Chechen man in Orlando by a Boston FBI agent, days after the top prosecutor in Massachusetts also declined to look into the case.

In a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union, which urged the state officials to investigate the shooting last week, the commissioner said the FBI and the Justice Department are handling the inquiry.
"This is an active federal investigation,” said Gerald M. Bailey, commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, in a brief letter to the ACLU of Florida released today. "It would be inappropriate for FDLE to intervene.”

Bailey’s refusal to investigate leaves only the F ... Read more »
Views: 553 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-31 | Comments (0)

 
BOSTON — GateHouse Media Inc., the parent company of several Massachusetts-based community newspapers, on Wednesday submitted a letter to federal district court objecting that the public docket maintained in the criminal case against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is missing entries.

According to the letter, "a review of the docket sheet for this case [United States v. Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev] indicates that numerous entries have not even been listed.”

"Wide swaths of court records have been omitted in their entirety from the docket lis ... Read more »
Views: 581 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-31 | Comments (1)


Lawyers for a man sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison for translating al-Qaeda materials on the Web argued to overturn the conviction, saying prosecutors improperly frightened the jury with images of the Sept. 11 attacks.

P. Sabin Willett, an attorney for Tarek Mehanna, told a U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston today that prosecution references to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York were "overwhelmingly prejudicial” to the jury.
 
Jurors saw 28 images of the towers’ collapse and heard mention of videos of five beheadings by Islamic radicals, while Osama Bin Laden, the deceased al-Qaeda leader, ... Read more »
Views: 757 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-30 | Comments (1)


The federal court in Boston has been teaming with reporters over the last few months, primarily to cover the trial of alleged mobster James "Whitey” Bulger and accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. With so much public interest in these cases, debate has renewed about whether federal courtrooms should allow video cameras to record the proceedings, or even broadcast trials live.

The news coverage relies on reporters in the courthouse to relay what happened, including expressions on defendants’ faces or the tone of witnesses’ voices. At Tsarnaev’s hearing, for example, the Boston Globe said his jumpsuit was large, making "him appear younger than his 19 years.” ABC News noted that he "appeared to smirk” while Fox News said he "smiled crookedly” and WCVB reported that he ga ... Read more »
Views: 717 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-30 | Comments (2)


BOSTON — Boston’s federal court is a busy place right now. With the trial of James "Whitey” Bulger and the proceedings against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, there are often big crowds at the waterfront building in South Boston.

But many of those who work in the building are struggling to deal with federal budget cuts.

Miriam Conrad, who leads the federal public defenders office for the districts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, joined WBUR to talk about the impact of the sequester. She says the cuts could force her office to lay off between 25 and 35 percent of its staff, in about a month.

Miriam Conrad: Here in Massachusetts, we have a number of position ... Read more »
Views: 784 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-29 | Comments (0)


The cover of Rolling Stone (8/13), featuring a self-portrait of Dzhokhar Tsaernav taken weeks before the Boston bombing, has fuelled a strong backlash. Discussing the cover, Fox News' Lisa Daftari (7/18/13) said: "In the aftermath of 9/11, if you look back over a decade ago, this country had an awakening, an understanding, that we have a new ideological threat that is on our soil. People became aware.

"But we've since gone very far from that, almost gone too far from that. We are almost becoming overcompensating, for fear of being Islamophobic. Political correctness is leading us to put a terrorist on the cover of a national magazine like this.”

In the same segment, Fox's Trace Gallagher said, "The question many are asking is why the magazine is making him look like a teen heartthrob instead of a terrorist and alleged killer?"

That ques ... Read more »
Views: 691 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-29 | Comments (0)

 
Massachusetts State Police Sergeant Sean Murphy doesn’t deserve public adoration for slipping unauthorized photos of Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Boston Magazine. Murphy let his emotions get the better of him. And the last thing the public should be applauding is a police officer who allows his anger to trump his professional judgment and training.

Murphy, who shoots photos for the department’s Office of Media Relations, was taking aim at a recent cover of Rolling Stone that featured a floppy-haired Tsarnaev looking for all the world like a member of an alternative rock band. Murphy blasted the magazine for "glamorizing the face of terror.’’ Then he countered with a photo of his own de ... Read more »
Views: 725 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-27 | Comments (0)


They dressed like typical American teenagers, enjoyed playing sports, were friendly and strived to fit in after arriving in the United States with their family from the southern Russian province of Dagestan a decade ago.

The schoolmates, teachers and neighbors of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev said they saw little sign of radicalism - or anything extraordinary - to explain why the ethnic Chechen brothers would allegedly carry out the twin bombings that killed three people and wounded 176 at the Boston Marathon on Monday.

Tamerlan, 26, who dreamed of Olympic boxing glory and appeared to have become a more observant Muslim in recent years, was killed in a shootout with police late on Thursday. Dzhokhar ... Read more »
Views: 933 | Added by: freejahar | Date: 2013-07-27 | Comments (0)

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