Horschel takes first PGA win at Zurich Classic

AVONDALE, La. (AP) ? Billy Horschel shot an 8-under 64 in the final round of the Zurich Classic, maintaining his composure through a pair of weather delays for his first-career PGA Tour victory on Sunday.

The 26-year-old former Florida Gator began the day two shots behind third-round leader Lucas Glover and surged into the lead with six straight birdies after the first weather delay. He finished at 20 under, narrowly holding off Shell Houston Open winner D.A. Points, who shot a final-round 65 to finish one shot behind.

The second delay happened before Horschel could take his second shot on the 18th hole, giving him 50 minutes to reflect on what was at stake ? $1.19 million and a two-year exemption.

Kyle Stanley shot a 5-under 67 to finish third, while Chinese 14-year-old amateur Guan Tianlang finished 71st after making his second cut in two PGA events, the first coming famously at the Masters.

Horschel sealed the win with a 27-foot birdie putt on 18, after which he pumped his arms and screamed in triumph, before sinking into a crouch and briefly pulling his cap over his face as the crowd roared.

Although Horschel had never won on the Tour, he had been playing the best golf of his young career lately, with three top 10 finishes in his past three tournaments ? tying for second in Houston, tying for third in San Antonio and tying for ninth in Hilton Head Island, S.C., a week ago.

He has also made a PGA Tour-leading 23 straight cuts, and had already earned $1.3 million this year. Now he has nearly doubled that, thanks to a final round which tied a single-round course record that has been matched several times, including by Rickey Barnes in Thursday's first round.

Horschel began the day at 12-under, two shots behind third-round Glover. He began to make his move up the leaderboard with his first birdie on the fifth hole.

His string of six straight birdies ran from seventh through 12th holes move him to 7-under on the round and 19-under for the tournament.

On the par-5 seventh hole, Horschel chipped from about 89 feet to within 2 feet to set up his first birdie putt. He made a 9-foot birdie putt on eight and then hit a 191-yard tee shot about 4 feet from the pin to set up a birdie on the par-3 ninth.

He made a birdie putts from 13? feet on 10, from 6 feet on 11 and 15? feet on 12.

Horschel bogeyed 15th hole after twice hitting in the right rough to fall back into a tie with Points.

But Horschel then birdied 16 by hitting a 109-yard approach within 5 feet, putting him back at 19-under and restoring his one-shot lead.

Points, playing in the same crowd-pleasing group as Horschel, birdied the 10th through 13th holes to stay on Horschel's heels. However, he left a 98-yard approach shot 30 feet short and left on 16, where he lost the lead.

Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open winner who was looking for his first Tour victory in about two years, took a two-shot lead into the final round and opened with five pars ? narrowly missing birdie when his put rimmed out on the first hole. He was about to line up a birdie putt from 27 feet when a horn sounded, signaling nearby lightning. Play was halted immediately and a downpour ensued shortly after, causing a 2-hour, 54-minute delay.

Glover two-putted for par when play resumed, then struggled on the seventh hole, hitting his drive to an uphill lie in the rough on the edge of a pot bunker. That forced him to lay up, and he chipped over the green and wound up with a bogey on a hole that many players birdied or eagled.

That dropped him out of the lead for good, and he wound up finishing tied for fourth with Bobby Gates, five shots off the lead.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/horschel-takes-first-pga-win-zurich-classic-232722088.html

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Report: Algeria's president has mini-stroke

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, right, shakes hands with his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma as they pose for photographers prior to their meeting at the presidential palace in Algiers, Algeria, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul)

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, right, shakes hands with his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma as they pose for photographers prior to their meeting at the presidential palace in Algiers, Algeria, Monday, April 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul)

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) ? Algeria's president was hospitalized Saturday after having a mini-stroke without serious complications, the state news agency said.

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 76, had a brief blockage of a blood vessel ? called a transient ischemic attack ? around noon, Rachid Bougherbal, the director of the national center of sports medicine told the state news agency.

"His excellency the president of the republic must observe a period of rest for further examinations," he said, adding that "there was no reason for worry."

Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said the president was hospitalized, "but the situation is not serious."

Bouteflika has ruled the oil-rich North African country since 1999 and has long believed to be in poor health and rarely appears in public. The state news agency rarely carries any reports on the president's health

The announcement also comes as speculation is rife that Bouteflika will run for a fourth term in presidential elections just a year away, despite promises to step down. In Algeria, power is delicately shared between civilian politicians and the powerful military.

Algeria is one of Africa's richest countries, as the No. 3 supplier of natural gas to Europe, with $190 billion in reserves, up $8 billion in the last year alone.

On Jan. 16, a band of al-Qaida affiliated militants attacked the Ain Amenas gas plant and took dozens of foreign workers hostage. After a four-day standoff, the Algerian army moved in and killed 29 attackers and captured three others. At least 37 hostages, including one Algerian worker, died in the battle.

According to the American Stroke Association, a TIA, as it is known, is caused by a temporary blood clot and lasts just a short time and "usually causes no permanent injury to the brain." A third of those suffering from TIA, also known as "warning strokes," go on to have a full stroke within the next year, according to website of the association.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-27-Algeria-President%20Stroke/id-e4bf422ef18c4ceda1c5ad28a03fa264

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efemr Is Snapchat For Twitter Which Can Only End Well

So yeah, efemr is a web app that scrubs tweets after the amount of time you hashtag. Want a tweet gone after five minutes? #5m. Two hours? #2h. You get the gist. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/J5jJAarOxd4/efemr-is-snapchat-for-twitter-which-can-only-end-well

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kikay trekkie: PRODUCT REVIEW: THE FACE SHOP - NATURAL ...

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PRODUCT REVIEW: THE FACE SHOP - NATURAL SUN SMART CUSHION SPF 50 PA+++

DISCLAIMER: This product was sent to me by The Face Shop Philippines?as a gift. ?This is now available in?The Face Shop Philippines?branches in major malls all over metro manila and retails for PhP1195. (you can question me on this as far as i can recall this product is NOT MORE THAN php1300, so di sya mamahal sa 1300 pero lampas ng 1100, better yet, tanong nyo mismo sa the face shop ^_^ )
The product description is below:
A liquid type of sunscreen that enables easy application with a cushion sponge.
Just like my beloved, this, too, comes in a compact type of container
has a mirror and a rubber sponge applicator
the mirror is covered with a plastic sheet
and these things, i love the application of these rubber sponges.
there is no grain so application is smooth and without streaks
the product has a lid and below it a safety seal
as shown here below once i've peeled off the seal
this is a little less sticky than my beloved. ?this has more of a foundation feel
but it blends out well and gives my skin a nice healthy looking sheen
the directions are below.
and below are the ingredients
product description from the box
a picture of me with no flash used. ?the smart bb on the right side of my face while no product on the left side of my face.
with the flash on, the smart bb on the right side of my face while no product on the left side of my face.
and with the powder to set and some blush. ?the thing i like about most bb products is that they really make me look healthy. ?they brighten up my skin yet unlike full on foundations, you can still see my skin underneath. ?so most bb creams are like tinted veils. ?
LIKES:

DISLIKES:

• none that i can think off except maybe the price, my my beloved costs php1950 for the compact and a refill while this is php1195 without refill.?

RECOMMENDATIONS: Apart from samples, which you know from my beloved, that it is possible for Korea to release samples for these, in the tiny little tubs and cute little 1 inch diameter sponges with 4 grams of product, this product from the face shop is a good investment for you to try if you think that shelling out 2k on my beloved is too high and for two that you may end up not liking. ?[MEANING - kahit wala pang ni-rerelease na samples ang face shop korea / ph for this smart cushion, kahit alam nating posibleng magka samples ng mga ganintong item, I RECOMMEND for you gals to try this anyway isa lang naman di gaya ng kabila 2 agad eh baka naman di nyo magustuhan, at least itong sa the face shop isa lang.]

?

Source: http://kikaytrekkie.blogspot.com/2013/04/product-review-face-shop-natural-sun.html

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Hope Against Hope

Anti-gun activists gather in McPherson Square in Washington D.C. on April 25, 2013

Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters

In its heyday, Occupy D.C. spread like kudzu over most of McPherson Square, conveniently located right between the White House and K Street. The encampment was razed 14 months ago; the only evidence that dozens of humans used to sleep, book-share, and ?mic check? there is the sad, randomly patchy state of the grass.

On Thursday, the grass was trampled one more time, for a cause. Occupy the NRA was starting its marquee media event in the park. The collective handed out new Shepard Fairey-designed posters, which featured an ironic NRA logo of a bird with a target on its chest and a slogan slightly less catchy than HOPE:

AMERICA, the Land Where God Saves & Satan Invests in Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines

A crowd of 60 or so activists gathered in front of a stage, flanked by novelty-sized checks that thanked lobbying groups ?for shooting down common-sense gun laws.? Two dozen reporters flitted around, making the most of a rally that had been scheduled to happen nine days earlier, before the Boston Marathon bombing Occupied the news cycle. It was up to ?activist and teacher? Justin Wedes to explain the connection between the movement, the march, and the restless anger over gun control?s April defeat.

?I?m not speaking for Occupy Wall Street,? he said. ?Nobody speaks for Occupy Wall Street. I?m a teacher, and a concerned citizen. I?m seeing the violence happening across this country. I?m seeing young kids die. I?m seeing mothers crying. It?s unacceptable, and to Occupy Wall Street, and to every Occupier, it should be unacceptable because these deaths are profitable. It?s profitable to the groups whose names you see on these checks here.? So he?d join their march, walked as close as possible to the lobbyists? offices, and shamed those names. ?I consider this a form of economic vigilante justice,? he said.

The recent gun control debate, which lasted roughly from the week of the Newtown shooting to last week, saw an oddly controlled spasm of political activism. The Obama administration and pro-gun bill Democrats basically got to pick their advocates?victims? families, Gabrielle Giffords, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg?s bottomless checking account. The angry people let into the Senate gallery last week were siblings and mothers of shooting spree victims, not Occupiers. These were the people Joe Biden met with, just today, not far from the Occupy gathering.

But that didn?t work. The next gun control campaign is more anarchic. Democrats pulled their Senate reform package because doing so meant?theoretically!?tweaking it and winning a vote later in the year. But they haven?t updated their applause lines. Democrats still describe ?background checks,? however constructed, as something supported by ?90 percent of Americans.? That?s after the White House?s pollster Joel Benenson told them that the support was soft, and told them why. ?The American people already think that these gun safety proposals are in place,? said Joe Biden last month. After the other pollsters moved on, Princeton Survey Research made the calls and found support for any kind of gun bill slipping to a 49-45 yes-no margin.

Any gun control advocate who was honest with himself had to expect that. The Newtown shooting was in December; people have short memories, even for most sorts of national traumas. Some Democrats whisper that another shooting, another media frenzy, could restart the clock. In the meantime, they?re aimless. On Wednesday, Bloomberg?s Mayors Against Illegal Guns belatedly released a report fretting about the ?terror gap,? the fact that people on terror watchlists can buy guns. But there?s no evidence that the Tsarnaev brothers were on such a list. In 2007, Wayne LaPierre smacked down one legislative version of a fix by warning that it would bestow upon ?a future attorney general of the United States?think, a Hillary Clinton administration?power to declare anyone to be a ?prohibited person? on a par with a convicted felon or fugitive from justice, all done in total secrecy.?

The goal of the December-through-April gun fight was simply to win, on anything. ?There?s a cultural problem you need to deal with first,? said one of the Thursday organizers, Steve Clermont, as leaders told the marchers with the novelty checks to head to the front. ?Once you pass a bill, then people who are up for re-election in 2014 win anyway, the attitude changes.?

The grassroots and the White House agree on that, completely. The entire Thursday march was structured to accuse lobbyists of literally profiting from murder?no other motivation was possible. But where?s the proof that a top-down strategy, a Senate win on something called ?the gun control compromise,? would change this? The month of Obama-Biden gun control speeches during the pre-Manchin-Toomey lull got incredibly specific about the NRA, with the president mocking anyone who would worry about losing an A-plus rating from the group.

Shaming rural state politicians who crib NRA rhetoric doesn?t move them. It freezes them in place. ?I'm so frustrated by the tenor of this discussion that this will solve a problem that it won't solve,? North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told the Williston (N.D.) Herald this month, before voting against the Toomey-Manchin gun compromise. ?People who have always been opposed to guns are making this about guns, when we should be making it about mental health.?

I walked in the mix with the Occupy NRA crowd as they crowded the first of the targeted lobby shops. They didn?t get close; police, who?d kindly let the marchers walk freely on D.C.?s main streets, formed a line in front of the building, several floors below the target?s office. (Also, no one leading the march remembered who the target was?Crossroads Strategies, maybe.)

?We need to get clever, like the NRA,? said Leah Gunn Barnett. She was the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, one of the speakers at the rally, right after a mother whose daughter had been shot in D.C. ?They?ve been working away at passing concealed carry laws in the states for years. That?s how you win, not with something at the federal level. We have to change norms, and that starts at the local level.?

Just then the protest actually got underway, and drowned out our conversation.

Down with lobbyists! Down with the NRA!

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=bce13241a36f8a6e9f4854bd7f48f173

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A look at North Korea's military capabilities

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? North Korea's military, founded 81 years ago Thursday, is older than the country itself. It began as an anti-Japanese militia and is now the heart of the nation's "military first" policy.

Late leader Kim Jong Il elevated the military's role during his 17-year rule, boosting troop levels to an estimated 1.2 million soldiers, according to the South Korean government. The military's new supreme commander, Kim Jong Un, gave the Korean People's Army a sharpened focus this year by instructing troops to build a "nuclear arms force."

The secretive army divulges few details about its operations, but here is an assessment from foreign experts of its strengths and weaknesses:

___

ARTILLERY

North Korea provided a chilling reminder of what its artillery is capable of when it showered a front-line South Korean island with shells, killing four people in November 2010 and underscoring the threat that its artillery troops pose at the disputed sea border.

South Korea says North Korea has more than 13,000 artillery guns, and its long-range batteries are capable of hitting the capital Seoul, a city of more than 10 million people just 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the border.

"North Korea's greatest advantage is that its artillery could initially deliver a heavy bombardment on the South Korean capital," Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. State Department official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email.

South Korea's defense minister estimates that 70 percent of North Korean artillery batteries along the border could be "neutralized" in five days if war broke out. But Sohn Yong-woo, a professor at the Graduate School of National Defense Strategy of Hannam University in South Korea, said that would be too late to prevent millions of civilian casualties and avert a disastrous blow to Asia's fourth-largest economy.

___

SPECIAL FORCES

Experts believe guerrilla warfare would be the North's most viable strategy in the event of conflict, since its conventional army suffers from aging equipment and a shortage of firepower.

Seoul estimates North Korea has about 200,000 special forces, and Pyongyang has used them before.

In 1968, 31 North Korean commandos stormed Seoul's presidential Blue House in a failed assassination attempt against then-President Park Chung-hee. That same year, more than 120 North Korean commandos sneaked into eastern South Korea and killed some 20 South Korean civilians, soldiers and police officers.

In 1996, 26 North Korean agents infiltrated South Korea's northeastern mountains after their submarine broke down, sparking a manhunt that left all but two of them dead, along with 13 South Korean soldiers and civilians.

"The special forces' goal is to discourage both the United States and South Korea from fighting with North Korea at the earliest stage of war by putting major infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, and their citizens at risk," said Kim Yeon-su, a professor at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. "The North's special forces are a key component of its asymmetric capabilities along with nuclear bombs, missiles and artillery. Their job is to create as many battlefronts as possible to put their enemies in disarray."

___

ON LAND, BY SEA AND IN THE AIR

In March 2010, 46 South Korean sailors died in a Yellow Sea attack on their warship that Seoul blamed on a North Korean submarine. Pyongyang denies involvement. Separately, since 1999, North and South Korean navies have fought three bloody skirmishes near their disputed western maritime border. Experts say those battles show while the South has an edge in naval firepower and technology, the North relies on the element of surprise.

North Korea has 70 submarines while South Korea has 10, according to Seoul's Defense Ministry. The most menacing threats from the North's navy are small submarines that would deposit commando raiders along the South Korean coast, said John Pike, head of the Globalsecurity.org think tank.

North Korea also has 820 warplanes, more than South Korea, though Seoul is backed up by American air power. The South says most of the North's aircraft are obsolete. North Korea also suffers chronic fuel shortages that have forced its air force to cut sorties, experts say.

"North Korea would not be able to prosecute a full-fledged war for very long," Fitzpatrick said. "Its biggest problem is that North Korea would quickly lose control of the skies because of the vastly superior (South Korean) and U.S. air forces. The reported number of North Korean aircraft is meaningless, because many of them cannot fly, and North Korean pilots have little training in the air."

The U.S. stations 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and has recently flown nuclear-capable stealth B-2 bombers and F-22 fighter jets during joint drills in a show of force aimed at deterring North Korea.

Logistics and supplies are another issue. Heavy equipment deployed by naval and air forces requires extensive repairs, especially on rugged terrain like the Korean Peninsula. South Korea's Defense Ministry estimates North Korea's wartime resources, mostly stored underground, would last only two to three months.

"North Korea's only chance of winning any war depends on how quickly it can end one," Sohn said.

North Korea could try to compensate for its lack of effective equipment with sheer manpower. North Korea, a country of about 25 million, has an estimated 7.7 million reserves.

___

MISSILES AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

North Korea says it needs to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent against U.S. aggression. It has conducted three underground nuclear tests since 2006, the most recent in February.

Pyongyang is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for four to eight nuclear bombs, according to Siegfried Hecker, a nuclear expert with Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

But he doubts Pyongyang has mastered the technology to tip a missile with a nuclear warhead. "I don't believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles and won't for many years," he said on the website of Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies this month.

Bruce Bennett, a Rand Corp. expert, said earlier this month that it's very unlikely the North has a nuclear missile capable of hitting the U.S. but said there is a "reasonable chance" that Pyongyang has short-range nuclear missile capability.

___

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

North Korea denies it runs any chemical and biological weapons programs. South Korea claims that Pyongyang has up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons.

The IISS says that although the figures are "highly speculative," the North probably does possess chemical and biological arms programs.

"Whatever the actual status of North Korea's chemical and biological capabilities, the perception that it has, or likely has, chemical and biological weapons contributes to Pyongyang's interest in creating uncertainties in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo and raises the stakes to deter or intimidate potential enemies," it said on its website. North Korea is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, but it has acceded to the non-binding Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

___

Follow Sam Kim on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/samkim_ap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-25-NKorea-Military/id-77ae1fb7183f48619e62bc27ced05dc1

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Officials: Dead bomber name in terrorism database

FILE - This combination of undated file photos shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The FBI says the two brothers are the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, and are also responsible for killing an MIT police officer, critically injuring a transit officer in a firefight and throwing explosive devices at police during a getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar captured, late Friday, April 19, 2013. The ethnic Chechen brothers lived in Dagestan, which borders the Chechnya region in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, one of their uncles reported said. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young, File)

FILE - This combination of undated file photos shows Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19. The FBI says the two brothers are the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, and are also responsible for killing an MIT police officer, critically injuring a transit officer in a firefight and throwing explosive devices at police during a getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left Tamerlan dead and Dzhokhar captured, late Friday, April 19, 2013. The ethnic Chechen brothers lived in Dagestan, which borders the Chechnya region in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, one of their uncles reported said. Since Monday, Boston has experienced five days of fear, beginning with the marathon bombing attack, an intense manhunt and much uncertainty ending in the death of one suspect and the capture of the other. (AP Photo/The Lowell Sun & Robin Young, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The federal government added the name of the dead Boston Marathon bombing suspect to a terrorist database 18 months before the deadly explosions, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The CIA made the request to add Tamerlan Tsarnaev's name to the terrorist database after the Russian government contacted the agency with concerns that he had become a follower of radical Islam. About six months earlier, the FBI had separately investigated Tsarnaev, also at Russia's request, but the FBI found no ties to terrorism, officials said.

The new disclosure that Tsarnaev was included within a huge, classified database of known and suspected terrorists before the attacks was expected to drive congressional inquiries in coming weeks about whether the Obama administration adequately investigated tips from Russia that Tsarnaev had posed a security threat. Shortly after the bombings, U.S. officials said the intelligence community had no information about threats to the marathon before the April 15 explosions.

Tsarnaev died Friday in a police shootout hours before his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was discovered hiding in a boat in a suburban back yard.

The terrorist database is called TIDE, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. Analysts at the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center submit names and even partial names into TIDE. About a year ago, there were some 745,000 people listed in the database. Intelligence analysts scour TIDE, trying to establish connections and update files as new intelligence is uncovered.

For entries with a full name, date of birth and intelligence indicating a reasonable suspicion that a person is a terrorist or has terror ties, the person's name is sent to a terror watch list, which feeds into lists like the one that bans known or suspected terrorists from traveling on planes.

Officials say they never found the type of derogatory information on Tsarnaev that would have elevated his profile among counterterrorism investigators and placed him on the terror watch list.

Five days after the U.S. determined who was allegedly behind the deadly Boston marathon terror attacks, Washington is piecing together what happened and whether there were any unconnected dots buried in U.S. government files that, if connected, could have prevented the bombings.

Lawmakers who were briefed by the FBI said they have more questions than answers about the investigation of Tsarnaev. U.S. officials were expected to brief the Senate on the investigation Thursday.

"The review is just beginning, but I haven't seen any red flags thus far," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and was briefed on the investigation Wednesday. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., however, said lawmakers intend to pursue whether there was a breakdown in information-sharing.

U.S. officials described to the AP what the government knew about Tsarnaev since he was first placed on the intelligence community's radar 18 months ago. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation.

Russia's internal security service, the FSB, sent information to the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev on March 4, 2011. The Russians told the FBI that Tsarnaev, an ethnically Chechen Russian immigrant living in the Boston area, was a follower of radical Islam and had changed drastically since 2010. Because of the subsequent FBI inquiry, Tsarnaev's name was added to a Homeland Security Department database used by U.S. officials at the border to help screen people coming in and out of the U.S. That database is called the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS.

The FBI's Boston office opened a preliminary review of Tsarnaev and searched government databases for potentially terror-related communications. Investigators looked into whether Tsarnaev used online sites that promoted radical activity. They interviewed Tsarnaev and his family members but found nothing connecting him to terror activity. The FBI shared that information with Russia and also asked for more information on Tsarnaev, but never heard back. The FBI's review into Tsarnaev was closed in June 2011.

Then, in late September 2011, Russia separately contacted the CIA with nearly identical concerns about Tsarnaev. The Russians provided two possible birthdates for him and a variation of how his name might be spelled, as well as the spelling in the Russian-style Cyrillic alphabet.

The CIA determined that Tsarnaev should be included in TIDE, and the National Counterterrorism Center added it into the database. The spelling of Tsarnaev's name in TIDE was not the same as the spelling the FBI used in its investigation. The CIA also shared this information with other federal agencies in October.

In January 2012, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia and returned to the U.S. in July. Three days before he left for Russia, the TECS database generated an alert on Tsarnaev. That alert was shared with a Customs and Border Protection officer who is a member of the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. By that time, the FBI's investigation into Tsarnaev had been closed for nearly six months because the FBI uncovered no evidence that he was tied to terror groups.

On Jan. 21, 2012, the airline on which Tsarnaev was traveling misspelled his name when it submitted its list of passengers to the U.S. government for security screening. Airlines are required to provide the list of passengers on international flights so the U.S. can check their names through government databases, including the terrorist watch list. Because his name was misspelled, there was not another alert like there was three days earlier.

In July 2012, Tsarnaev returned to the U.S., and another alert was generated in TECS. This information was again shared with the Customs and Border Protection officer on the FBI's Boston joint terrorism task force. But because the FBI had closed its investigation into Tsarnaev a year earlier, there was no reason to be suspicious of his travels to Russia.

"Later on, these agencies will be judged," said Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "But right now, it's way too soon to criticize or to start making political arguments or who failed or whatever."

___

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

___

Follow Eileen Sullivan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/esullivanap

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-24-Boston%20Marathon-Washington/id-cc46b79e47b1477d98fe94d31b4fc042

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