United States Vice President Joe Biden says the 2014 Boston Marathon will be "bigger, more spectacular" than ever before, and the city’s police commissioner could see that through with some serious changes starting at next year’s race. Notwithstanding last week’s terrorist attack that killed three and wounded hundreds, Boston, Massachusetts is expected to continue its tradition of hosting the annual 26-mile run next spring. Speaking to the city’s Herald newspaper though, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says he’s looking to add at least one new element in 2014: unmanned aerial vehicles.

70,000 Agents Used Over 110 Million Bullets [= well in excess of 1500 bullets pr. agent] - Does anyone remember the big Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gunbattles of the past year? If you don’t, it’s because there weren’t any, and that’s got some in Congress doing some very troubling math. The DHS is buying just a ridiculous amount of ammunition. They have 260 million rounds in stock, and want to buy 750 million more, noting that they went through 116 million bullets in 2012 alone. 116 million bullets, and 70,000 active agents means that the average agent is going through 1,600 rounds of ammunition in a calender year, despite the DHS not shooting a bunch of people. Rep. Jason Cheffetz (R – UT), one of the House oversight subcommittee heads, noted that the US Army only goes through about 350 rounds per soldier, and that’s in the middle of a war. The DHS isn’t questioning any of the numbers, but Congress sure is. DHS officials say that they just need their field agents to be super trained and so they’re doing a lot of shooting, some might say a ridiculous amount.

Eric Peters: If Guns Are Bad... - "[A large amount of] ammunition has been solicited by the DHS. Within the next 4 years, they expect to acquire 200,000 million rounds of .223 rifle bullets. For training snipers, DHS have ordered two types of .308 caliber rounds – blanks and 168 grain hollow point boat tail ammunition. This new purchase adds to the 1.8 billion rounds of ammunition they have solicited for months in preparation for...something." (Susanne Posel)

The private prison population in the US has rocketed 17-fold over the last two decades mostly on the shoulders of the deep-pocketed prison lobby, and the business continues to thrive.

Try confining yourself to a small room in your home, like a bathroom or a closet, and spend a few hours there. One only cringes to imagine the detrimental psychological effects that kind of solitude creates for individuals who are subjected to solitary confinement for years at a time, knowing only the walls of their cell and the shades of light that creep across them. The abhorrent state of affairs at the Guantanamo facility often makes international headlines and arguably overshadows the calamity that is the US domestic prison system – where over six million people are subject to some form of correctional supervision, an amount exceeding those who toiled in the Soviet gulags during Stalin’s reign. In the United States, some fifty thousand inmates pass their days in solitary confinement. While there is undoubtedly no shortage of violent criminals in America’s jails, millions are dolled out annually by privately owned prison lobbies directly to politicians in an effort to influence harsher ‘zero tolerance’ legislation and mandatory sentencing for many non-violent offenses.

The Centers for Disease Control has been quietly rolling out a nationwide program called the Immunization Information Systems (IIS), registering your vaccine information into a database. - This effort has been run in parallel with state vaccine registry implementations. What is the intention of such programs? My colleague Leslie Manookian, writer and director of the movie The Greater Good, wrote in a recent article, the “CDC has openly stated that vaccine registries are a tool to identify areas of ‘undervaccination’ so that they can be ‘addressed’ and brought into ‘compliance.’” I would also add to Leslie’s statement that since the government purchases a large bulk of the vaccines (for example, the Vaccines for Children program), it is in their financial interest to make sure vaccines are consumed regularly. If you exempt your child from being vaccinated, your refusal is also being tracked and put into the database. If you want to know why this is a big deal, read on.

A young Russian couple living in California is struggling to understand the events of the past few weeks, which began with a trip to the hospital and continued days later with police forcing entry into the couple’s home to take their child. - Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex brought their five-month-old boy Sammy to Sacramento’s Sutter Memorial Hospital after he began exhibiting flu symptoms. He had been diagnosed with a heart murmur at birth, according to News 10, a local ABC affiliate. Sammy was admitted to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, at which point his mother witnessed a nurse administering the baby with antibiotics, apparently without instructions from the doctor. “I asked her, ‘For what is that?’ And she’s like ‘I don’t know.’ And then I said ‘You’re working as a nurse and you don’t he know what you’re giving my baby?’” Anna struggled to explain through her tears.

Syria denies that it has used, or even possesses, chemical weapons, accusing the United States and Britain of lying in order to pressure the embattled Damascus government. - Syrian Information Minister Omran Al-Zoubi talked to Russia TV on Friday, dismissing a claim by U.S. officials a day earlier that they had evidence the chemical weapon sarin had been used in Syria on a small scale. "Everything that the American minister and British government have said lack credibility," Al-Zoubi said. "It's baseless, and it's a new tactic to put political and economic pressure on Syria."

PressTV: Syrian officials deny government use of chemical weapons
Russia Today: UN team can’t be trusted ‘politically’ without Russian experts - Syria
Jason Ditz: Syria Allegations Rest on Flimsy Evidence
Stephen Lendman: Creating a Pretext for War on Syria
Bill Van Auken: Washington fabricates chemical weapons pretext for war against Syria

The US Department of Defense conducted urban warfare training drills in Tinley Park, Illinois, a southwestern suburb of Chicago, during the nights of April 23 and 24. The drills, conducted with the coordination of the Illinois state government, came a week after the police shutdown of the city of Boston following the marathon bombings. Similar exercises have been conducted recently in Miami, Florida and Houston, Texas. Stories have emerged in local media only after frightened residents called in reports of explosions. It is not known how many such operations have been conducted in other cities. The drills held in Tinley Park took place at the now-closed Tinley Park Mental Health Center. The center was shut down by Illinois Democratic Governor Pat Quinn last June as part of a series of budget cuts that have targeted education, mental health, and other social services in the state. That a facility once devoted to social services has been so quickly converted into a training ground for military operations clearly reveals the ruling elite's attitude toward the basic needs of the population.

A Documentary about Steven E. Jones, a BYU physics professor who made startling discoveries about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A subway-borne chemical attack is one of those theoreticals that require the willful ignorance of regular passengers—for most of us, it's just better not to think about it. Not so for the NYPD, which yesterday announced a plan to test how a chemical or radiological attack would spread through the city's 200-odd miles of subway, by pumping an invisible gas through the system this summer. The Subway-Surface Air Flow Exchange, or S-SAFE, has actually been in the making for over a year—that's how long it takes to plan a fake airborne toxic event in a city of more than eight million. Led by Paul Kalb, the principal investigator on the $3.4 million Department of Homeland Security-funded grant, the group will track the movement of small amounts of Perfluorocarbon tracers (or PFTs) through the five boroughs on three days in July. "The study will show us the worst case scenario," he explained over the phone today. "It'll be a close representation of how particles from a bioweapon or dirty bomb could move through the air."

WantToKnow: Humans Used as Guinea Pigs By Government, Military, Business - 1966 - The U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant Niger throughout the New York City subway system. Many thousands of civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates. (Wall Street Journal - full text, New York Post)

SF Weekly: Operation Midnight Climax: How the CIA Dosed S.F. Citizens with LSD
Stephen Lendman: MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program

As many as 2,644 people, called subjects, died during the clinical trials of 475 new drugs on human beings in last seven years and only 17 of the medicines were approved for marketing in India, the Centre has informed the Supreme Court. - Responding to allegations by NGO, Swasthya Adhikar Manch, in its PIL that Indians were used as guinea pigs by foreign pharmaceutical majors for human trial of their new drugs, the Union health and family welfare ministry said of the 57,303 enrolled subjects, 39,022 completed the clinical trials. "Serious adverse events of deaths during the clinical trials during the said period were 2,644, out of which 80 deaths were found to be attributable to the clinical trials," health secretary Keshav Desiraju said in an affidavit on behalf of the ministry of health and family

Iceland's Supreme Court has ruled that Valitor (formerly Visa Iceland) must pay WikiLeaks $204,900 per month or $2,494,604 per year in fines if it continues to blockade the whistle-blowing site. - The court upheld the decision that Valitor had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks' donation processor, DataCell. "Today's decision marked the most important victory to date against the unlawful and arbitrary economic blockade erected by US companies against WikiLeaks," the organization's press release stated.

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE Wed Apr 24 17:24:44 BST: Milestone Supreme Court Decision for WikiLeaks Case in Iceland - Today's decision marked the most important victory to date against the unlawful and arbitrary economic blockade erected by US companies against WikiLeaks. Iceland's Supreme Court upheld the decision that Valitor (formerly VISA Iceland and current Visa subcontractor) had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks donations processor DataCell. This strong judgement is an important milestone for WikiLeaks' legal battle to end the economic blockade that has besieged the organisation since early December 2010. Despite the effects of the blockade having crippled WikiLeaks resources, the organisation is fighting the blockade on many fronts. It is a battle that concerns free speech and the future of the free press; it concerns fundamental civil rights; and it is a struggle for the rights of individuals to vote with their wallet and donate to the cause they believe in. If the gateway to WikiLeaks donations is not re-opened within 15 days Visa's Valitor will be fined 800,000 ISK ($6,830) per day.

European Commission enabling blockade of WikiLeaks by U.S. hard-right Lieberman/King, contrary to European Parliament’s wishes - European Commission documents released today by WikiLeaks show that hard-right U.S. politicians were directly behind the extrajudicial banking blockade against WikiLeaks. In the heavily redacted documents, MasterCard Europe admits that Senator Joseph Lieberman and Congressman Peter T. King both “had conversations” with MasterCard in the United States. Lieberman, the then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, boasted of instigating Amazon’s cutting of service to WikiLeaks – an action condemned by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on 7 December 2011. Senator Lieberman tried to introduce the SHIELD Act into the Senate and advocated for prosecuting the New York Times for espionage in connection with WikiLeaks’ releases. Rep. Peter King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, tried to formally designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization, have its staff listed as ’enemy combatants’, and have WikiLeaks put on a U.S. Treasury blacklist. On 13 January 2011 the U.S. Treasury announced it would not do so because there was no evidence that WikiLeaks should be on such a list. While Lieberman and King were unsuccessful in these methods of legally cutting WikiLeaks from its popular donor base, they were successful in doing so extra-legally via VISA and MasterCard, which together hold a monopoly of 97 per cent of the market of EU card payments.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything. You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history. That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.

A Norwegian resistance fighter who led a daring raid to sabotage Nazi Germany's atomic bomb program during World War II has been honoured at a London ceremony. - Joachim Rønneberg led a six-man team for Operation Gunnerside, an attack on the Norsk Hydro heavy water production plant in Vermok, Norway. The operation, in early 1943, destroyed the plant's supplies of heavy water, which the Nazis hoped to use to produce nuclear weapons. An earlier unsuccessful raid involving British paratroopers resulted in heavy casualties when the gliders carrying the men crashed and the survivors were captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo. The Operation Gunnerside raid was dramatised in the Franco-Norwegian film Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water in 1948, and the later US movie The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.

norway.org.uk: Hero From World War II Joachim Rønneberg in London
Ynet News: Norway document reveals Israel nuke secrets [12.07.2005]
Ynet News: Norway rejects Vanunu's asylum request [04.15.2005]
Today's Zaman: Heavy Water and Israel [11.08.2005]

Joseph Kishore: There are a number of possible explanations for the actions of the Tsarnaev brothers. One is that they were driven by hostility to US foreign policy. Indeed there are some reports that the younger brother, Dzhokhar, has told interrogators that he is deeply opposed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another, and not mutually exclusive, possibility is that the brothers, and particularly Tamerlan, were being developed as assets or potential assets of US imperialism’s machinations in Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan. The region is critical to Russian geo-strategic interests because it is central to Russia’s access to the energy-rich Caspian Sea. US intelligence agencies have a long and sordid relationship with Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in Chechnya. The US also has close ties to neighboring Georgia and in 2008 supported Georgia in a war with Russia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Tony Cartalucci: CONFIRMED: Both FBI & CIA Watched Boston Bombing Suspects for Years - Evidence Points to Tsarnaev as CIA Asset - While the establishment media predictably attempts to make the serial lies told by the FBI, and both FBI and CIA's involvement and foreknowledge of the suspects years before the Boston attacks, appear to be just an innocent bureaucratic foul-up, former-FBI translator Sibel Edmonds reported in incredible detail what most likely transpired, even before revelations of the CIA's involvement became public. In a 45 minute interview on the Corbett Report, Edmonds explained that multiple warnings by Russian investigators to the FBI were likely ignored because the CIA was in all probability using Tamerlan Tsarnaev as an asset to travel to Russia's Caucasus region and make contact with US-backed terrorists. It is clear that at the very least, the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and other federal agencies knew well ahead of time of Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and did nothing to prevent him from allegedly carrying out an attack. Understanding the insidious behavior of both the FBI and CIA, opens up a second and more troubling possibility - that the FBI and/or the CIA were directly involved in the Boston bombings themselves, using the Tsarnaev brothers as patsies.

Xymphora: The lifespan of a patsy - We've reached the point in any false flag, when the authorities, perhaps giddy from all the seemingly successful lying, start to lay it on a bit thick (the brothers obviously weren't even prepared to get out of Boston, but I guess Bloomberg was feeling ignored). American officials lied about there being other bombs (or they covered them up - the fire at the JFK Library was some coincidence - as they did on 9/11), they probably lied about the details of the stolen car (in order to cover up the fact the brothers used Tamerlan's car), they lied about the 7-11 robbery, they outright murdered Tamerlan and lied in blaming it on Dzhokhar, and they lied about Dzhokhar having a gun so they could justify their attempt to murder him (his survival, after over an hour of police bullets, is a miracle). Now we are supposed to believe a series of increasingly ridiculous lies to cover up the false flag. It is extra ironic that Tamerlan's CIA trip to Dagestan is being used to explain how he was 'radicalized'. As Lee Harvey Oswald knows, the lifespan of a patsy after an operation is very short.

In the video on top, random people are stopped on the street and are asked to sign a petition to repeal the 6th and 7th Amendments. (These two Amendments guarantee American citizens the right to a speedy and public trial by jury.) As you will see in the video, most people signed the petition without asking any questions. The interviewer should go to Boston. He would likely have great success there. It seems the corporate-controlled mainstream media has done a very effective job of pulling the wool over the eyes of most Americans.

The Gestapo-like tactics that were implemented in Boston last week by the military-style police forces are just a small sign of things to come in America… including a large spike in military-style drones flying over — and spying on — American cities as well as a new influx of high definition security cameras in major U.S. cities. As we expected, the power hungry elites in Washington are using the Boston bombings to force a false choice on the American “sheeple”. After being subjected to martial law, mobs of Bostonians rushed into the streets holding American flags while chanting “U.S.A, U.S.A.” It was appalling to witness the birthplace of early revolt applaud the military-industrial complex rolling through its streets armed to the teeth. Bostonians have just had their most basic rights infringed upon. It is no jubilant matter. Any American who considers this type of police behavior commendable or even acceptable should be ashamed to call themselves a patriot. You can watch the brainwashed, but jubilant, Bostonians in the second video...

Lee Rogers: Many Bostonians Love And Worship The Militarized Police State

The United States Department of Defense says they suspect Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on a “small scale” in that country’s ongoing civil war. - US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the claim Thursday while speaking in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, adding that the American intelligence community has determined “with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin." US President Barack Obama said previously that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a "red line" that could trigger US reaction if crossed.

Naharnet/AFP: Ban Renews Call for Syria to Allow Chemical Arms Probe
Russia Today: US lacks evidence in accusing Syria of using chemical weapons - Video
The Guardian: US says Syria "may have used" sarin gas in chemical weapons
New York Times: White House: U.S. Intelligence Has 'Varying Degrees of Confidence' That Assad Used Chemical Weapons

Tony Cartalucci: US Unveils Iraq WMD "Curveball-Style" Lies Vs. Syria - As NATO terror front collapses in Syria, US attempts to justify intervention by drumming up familiar WMD lies. The last two weeks have seen a series of victories for the Syrian Army across Syria. It appears that 2 full companies of so-called "Free Syrian Army" fighters have been annihilated near Damascus, while government forces have restored order in parts of Homs and along the previously porous Lebanese-Syrian border. Time has run out for the West, and it appears that they are desperately seeking any excuse to rescue their failing proxy war. When urgent, but otherwise unjustified military intervention is needed, a "humanitarian" pretext is usually invented - as it was in Libya. Failing that, as the West has already clearly done in Syria, an even more tenuous narrative has been resurrected from its well-earned grave.

Bill Van Auken: Washington’s threat to invade Syria - Charges by the White House and US secretaries of state and defense Thursday that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons have brought Washington to the brink of another war in the Middle East. One decade after the Bush administration invoked the infamous pretext of “weapons of mass destruction” to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, the Obama administration is preparing to follow the same route to launch its own war for regime change in Syria. Today, just as a decade ago, these claims are employed purely as a pretext for aggressive war in pursuit of US geo-strategic interests in the Middle East.

Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands. - Miraculously rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble - 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight - two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka. But there were fears that hundreds of people were still trapped in the wreckage of the building, which officials said had been built illegally without the correct building permits. "Some people are still alive under the rubble and we are hoping to rescue them," said deputy fire services director Mizanur Rahman. A spokesman for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she had ordered the arrest of the owners of the building and of the five factories that occupied it. Army spokesman Shahinur Islam said the death toll had reached 304 and H. T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister, said it could exceed 350.

The Iberian Peninsula has once again been engulfed in protest, as police used brute force to disperse thousands in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid while in Portugal citizens climbed on top of a tank to make themselves heard.

Police detained at least 15 in Madrid, including one minor, as they used force to quell an angry mob of protesters near the Spanish parliament, united under a “Besiege Congress” slogan calling for the government to quit. The riots come as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is set to announce a raft of measures on Friday aimed at tackling the country's recession. An estimated 1,400 policemen were deployed around the chamber as politicians cancelled the session for the day. Protesters held signs that read “6.2 million reasons” in a reference to the latest jobless figures and when police charged them they chanted “You have jobs, we do not.” Law enforcement charged the protesters with batons and shot blanks in the air as the demonstrators threw bottles and rocks at the police. The protest coincided with the latest jobless rate announcement that stands at a record high of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to National Statistics Institute. The number of unemployed is now 6.2 million as the Spanish economy finds it impossible to climb out of the burst property bubble of 2008.

Bloomberg: Spain Jobless Rate Breaches 27% on Recession Woes - Spanish unemployment rose more than economists forecast in the first quarter to the highest in at least 37 years as efforts to tackle the European Union’s biggest budget deficit crimped economic growth. - The number of jobless increased to more than 6 million for the first time, climbing to 27.2 percent of the workforce, compared with 26.02 percent in the previous three months, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said today. That was more than the 26.5 percent median forecast of eight economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will tomorrow unveil measures aimed at halting a six-year economic slump. Spain’s recession dragged into a seventh quarter in the first three months of 2013, leaving the country with more than a fifth of all jobless people in the EU.

Mass protests have erupted in Bangladesh over the collapse of a textile factory near the capital, Dhaka—the latest in a series of devastating industrial disasters in the impoverished country. - Many of the demonstrating workers carried black flags and blockaded highways in at least three industrial suburbs. A local police inspector told Associated Press that workers attacked several factories whose management had refused to suspend production. Protests erupted in several parts of the country, with the British Guardian reporting that several thousand garment workers staged actions in the Savar industrial zone, around 20 miles outside the capital. A reported 1,500 workers also marched to the Dhaka headquarters of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), to demand that the execution of the owners of the collapsed factories. The deputy commissioner of the Dhaka police claimed that some workers had smashed windows and vehicles before they were “chased away” by police.

An analyst says the Pentagon wants no part of an attack on Iran and that threats of war against Iran are because they can’t tolerate it’s independence and regional influence.

In response to Israel’s recent threats against Iran saying it is able to invade Iran on its own and the US remark from Chuck Hagel that they are willing to let Israel take control of that course of action, Iran has given Israel a harsh warning about possible preemptive war moves against Tehran saying its first mistake will be its last. Iran thinks Israel will not be so foolish as to act in line with their violent threats. Iran’s defense minister said the threats hold no value and reveal Israel’s false and aggressive nature. In regards to US officials that have threatened to attack Iran, the Iranian response is that the US should sort out its own problems and not make threatening remarks. Press TV has interviewed Stephen Lendman, writer and radio host, Chicago about this issue. The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Even as Americans grieve over the Boston Marathon bombings, they should know that US assassination drone strikes worldwide kill many more people weekly and continue unpunished, an analyst says. - “While we mourn the horrific events in Boston, we must remember that our government perpetrates a Boston bombing weekly in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan,” political commentator Sean McElwee says. He adds that although the White House administration alleges that it prefers trials for the rule of law, the true reason for its targeted killing program across the globe is that: it’s cleaner, simpler and less embarrassing to just off the suspected terrorists. The government uses mafia logic - why waste time and energy risking the rule of law when you can just swoop in and launch a smart bomb?

Israeli forces have shot down a Hezbollah drone over Israeli skies, the Associated Press reports. - This is not the first time Israel shot down a Hezbollah drone, they had to target one over their skies on October 6 of last year. Most Hezbollah drones in Lebanon make their way in from Iran piece by piece, and are then assembled by local forces there. The Israeli military is largely dismissive of Iranian drone technology, finding them easy to track and then shoot down once they enter Israeli air space. "We view this incident of attempting to enter Israeli airspace very severely and we will consider our response later," said former Defence Minister Ehud Barak after last year's drone incident.

Al-Arabiya: Israel shoots down drone from Lebanon
CSM: Israel shoots down drone, Hezbollah denies it's theirs

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not have gun in boat. - Two U.S. officials say the surviving suspect in the Boston bombings was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard. Authorities originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation, say investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun believed to have been used by Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan, from the site of a gun battle Thursday night, which injured a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer. Dzhokhar was believed to have been shot before he escaped. The officials tell The Associated Press that no gun was found in the boat. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said earlier that shots were fired from inside the boat.

Russia Today: Boston bombing suspect goes silent, parents vow to seek the truth in the US

Gaye Levy: Americans Under Siege – Has Tomorrow Become a Reality? - Just a little over a year ago, President Obama signed an Executive Order titled National Defense Resources Preparedness. This act stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy – both for and against. At one end of the spectrum were those that thought this was an overt act signalizing unilateral militarization of our country. Others felt this was a ho-hum restatement of existing presidential controls. Whatever your feelings at the time, it is now a year later and events of the past couple of weeks bring more questions than answers to those who seek the truth. Sadly, it is my opinion that Americans are under siege by our own government and by the mysterious and secretive powers that control our elected officials. More and more, ordinary citizens are filled with angst as we witness the wholesale cannibalization of our freedom and of the Constitution. To echo my own words: I begin to wonder whether there is some grand plan. Perhaps there is some master puppeteer poised to pull our strings when and if the rise to elitism reaches the pinnacle. So with much personal angst, I have begun to believe that the rank-and-file citizens of the United States of America are being herded down the path to a Police State. Or, better put, will soon be running from the rising tsunami of the police state. [...] What is the truth and what are the lies? I suspect that with the abundance of disinformation being perpetuated by both the mainstream and alternate press, we may never know.

Scared that CISPA might pass? The federal government is already using a secretive cybersecurity program to monitor online traffic and enforce CISPA-like data sharing between Internet service providers and the Department of Defense. - The Electronic Privacy Information Center has obtained over 1,000 pages of documents pertaining to the United States government’s use of a cybersecurity program after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, and CNET reporter Declan McCullagh says those pages show how the Pentagon has secretly helped push for increased Internet surveillance. “Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws,” McCullagh writes.