Hitman Ties Bulger to '75 Murder: "I Heard the Shots"
AP
Confessed murderer John "The Executioner" Martorano testified Tuesday that James "Whitey" Bulger gunned down a Boston bar owner in 1975 for bragging about his ties to Bulger's "Winter Hill Gang." "They took him out in the phone booth," Martorano said of the victim, Edward Connors. "I heard the shots. They came back and said, 'He's gone.'" Martorano committed 20 murders as enforcer for Bulger but served just 12 years in prison after striking a plea deal. He’s now a star witness against his former boss at Bulger's racketeering and murder trial. On Monday, Martorano testified that Bulger watched from a car as he killed another victim in 1974.
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Chrysler Recalls 1.56 Million Jeeps
AP
Chrysler is throwing in the towel in its dispute with the feds over millions of Jeeps and will recall 1.56 million vehicles that federal regulators said could erupt in flames if rear-ended. The deal puts to bed a very public disagreement between the auto maker and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had demanded a recall. Until Tuesday, Chrysler had appeared poised to refuse to comply with it, and it was expected to file papers Tuesday doing just that. Instead, it said that although it had found the vehicles weren't defective, it was voluntarily recalling all 1993 through 2004 Grand Cherokees and all 2002 through 2007 Liberty vehicles.
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Boehner: Immigration Bill's Border Rules "Laughable"
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House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that he would not bring an immigration bill to the House floor without a "majority support" of Republicans in his chamber. He said that the bipartisan "Gang of Eight's" bill working its way through the Senate was "weak on border security" and “laughable.” Democrats have balked at Republican calls for tying a "path to citizenship" for immigrants to stricter border security requirements in an attempt to make the bill more appealing to House GOP members. Boehner, for his part, accused Democrats of trying to sabotage the bill.
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Too Soon? Clinton Gets Key Presidential Endorsement
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hasn't announced a run for the White House, but Sen. Claire McCaskill endorsed her for president Tuesday. The Missouri senator is just one of many Democratic activists who are pushing Clinton to run in 2016. McCaskill made the announcement on a super PAC website, "Ready for Hillary," which hopes to build a support for a potential Clinton campaign. Clinton is not affiliated with the group. “It’s important that we start early, building a grassroots army from the ground up, and effectively using the tools of the Internet – all things that President Obama did so successfully – so that if Hillary does decide to run, we’ll be ready to help her win,” McCaskill said.
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FBI: Snooping Thwarted NYSE, Subway Bomb Plots
Government surveillance programs disrupted plots to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and subway system, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce revealed on Tuesday. The snooping also linked an American citizen in Chicago to the 2008 terror attacks on hotels in India and to a plot to bomb the offices of a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, Joyce also told members of the House Intelligence Committee. National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, meanwhile, testified that the programs helped stop more than 50 "potential terrorist events" since the 9/11 attacks. Alexander said he would provide classified details on all of the plots to committee lawmakers on Wednesday.
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"Standing Man" Inspires Silent Protests in Turkey
AP
A Turkish man who held an 8-hour silent vigil in Istanbul's Taksim Square where police have clashed with demonstrators has inspired hundreds to follow his lead there and across the country, Reuters reported. Erdem Gunduz is dubbed the "Standing Man" on social media for having stood at attention silently while facing the Ataturk Cultural Center in protest of a police crackdown on demonstrations. He was briefly searched and questioned by police, according to reports.
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Jimmy Hoffa's Rumored Resting Places: From the Everglades to the End Zone
AP
Federal authorities are digging up a field in suburban Detroit as they search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, potentially ending one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in American history, NBC 4 New York reported. The feds are searching for a shallow grave in the spot where a reputed former gangster said Hoffa was buried, about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen. The FBI did not find human remains Monday, but did find cement under the grassy field, law enforcement sources told NBC 4 New York. Click through to read about other places where tipsters have claimed over the years that the labor leader was buried, including in the swamps of Florida and under the artificial turf of Giants Stadium.
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"Day of Honor": Afghans Take Over Security from U.S.
AP
U.S.-led international troops handed over control of Afghanistan's national security to local forces on Tuesday in a historic day that was also marked by violence in Kabul, NBC News reported. The formal transfer is a significant step in the withdrawal process from the country after a 12-year NATO-led mission to end Taliban rule. NATO forces will continue to play a supporting role in training soldiers and police. Shortly before the handover, a botched car bomb that targeted prominent lawmaker and Shia Muslim cleric Mohammed Mohaqiq killed at least three civilians and wounded 30 others, Reuters reported. The violence raises renewed questions about how the country's 352,000-strong security forces will handle the militant insurgency.
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Obama Defends Syria Handling on "Charlie Rose"
AP
President Barack Obama went on the defense regarding his administration's handling of the Syrian civil war following the government's revelation on Friday that it would provide military and economic assistance to Syria's rebels looking to oust Bashar al-Assad, NBC News reported. Obama, who appeared on an interview with Charlie Rose that aired on Monday night, said earlier action to arm the rebels would not have slowed the violence in a meaningful way. Obama added that the use of chemical weapons and the growing frustration over the lack of a solution to the war prompted the U.S. to act. The increased involvement by the U.S. was justified on both humanitarian and geopolitical grounds, Obama said.
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Military Considers Having Women Join Special Ops
AP
Military brass are considering allowing women to begin training as Army Rangers and Navy SEALs by 2016, Pentagon officials said on Monday. Branches have been studying how to best deploy women in combat since former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta cleared the way in January for women to serve in some of the military's 237,000 combat-related positions. U.S. defense sources told NBC News military leaders are hoping to open up positions as soon as possible in combat-support roles like communications, intelligence and mechanics in forward combat deployments. Women now make up 14 percent of the armed forces and are already deployed as combat pilots and flight crews for the Army, Navy and Air Force.
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More Than 100,000 Protesters Take to the Streets of Brazil
AP
More than 100,000 people took to the streets of at least eight cities in Brazil on Monday to voice frustrations over few improvements in education, health, security and transportation despite high taxes, The Associated Press reported. At least 65,000 protesters in Sao Paulo gathered at a small plaza and broke into different directions in a Carnival atmosphere while chanting anti-corruption slogans that focused on the 10-cent bus and subway fare hike that initially sparked the uprising. With the exception of a small group of protestors that set a car on fire and threw rocks at the police, the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful.
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3 Naval Academy Students to Face Sex Assault Charges
AP
Three U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen will face charges for allegedly sexually assaulting another midshipman, a woman, last year, a military official told NBC News on Monday. The woman said she was assaulted by the men, all Academy football players at the time, at an off-campus party in April 2012. It is unclear if all three will face charges, which will come as soon as Tuesday. A lawyer for the woman has told NBC News that her client was "ostracized" for the allegations against men she had considered her friends and has been critical of the Academy in its handling of the investigation, saying the victim was disciplined for drinking while her alleged attackers went unpunished for more than a year.
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Former Boston Hitman Says Whitey Bulger's Dealings "Broke My Heart"
AP
James “Whitey” Bulger, the Boston crime boss charged with killing 19 people, was accused on Monday of emotionally wounding a Boston hitman, NBC News reported. Star witness John "The Executioner" Martorano told the jury that Bulger "sort of broke my heart" when he learned that he was an FBI informant. He said Bulger and Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi had been his "partners in crime," his best friends and godfather to his children. When Martorano learned that his friends were working for the feds, he decided to become a government snitch in retaliation. His cooperation agreement meant that he only had to serve 12 years in prison even though he admitted to 20 murders, some of which he recounted in his first hours on the stand. Martorano is one of three former Bulger accomplices testifying in the prosecution.
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Obama's Ratings Suffer Amid Gov't Data-Mining Flap
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President Barack Obama's approval ratings have suffered under the weight of the host of controversies rocking his administration, one new poll shows. A CNN/ORC poll out Monday found Obama's approval rating underwater, with 45 percent of Americans saying he is doing his job well while 54 percent disapprove — a drop from just three weeks earlier, when a series of national polls, including CNN's, found his rating holding steady despite the controversies. But those polls were taken before the explosive new revelations of the National Security Agency's data mining of phone and internet records. The new CNN poll registered the biggest shift among independent voters, while it also showed a sharp shift among younger voters as well as a big drop in whether respondents found Obama honest and trustworthy.
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U.S. Trails in Creating Rich Entrepreneurs
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The U.S. is falling behind developing countries in entrepreneurial activity, according to a new Barclays report. The study found that foreign millionaires were almost twice as likely as U.S. millionaires to cite the sale of their business as their source of wealth. A much larger percentage of U.S. millionaires cited savings or personal investments as their sources of wealth. That could be evidence that the U.S. is losing its edge as a haven for entrepreneurs — and so could be data from the Kauffman Foundation showing just 514,000 new business owners a month in the U.S. in 2012, the lowest number in five years.
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