FBI agent kills man after questioning him about link to Boston bombing suspect

An unidentified FBI agent shot and killed a man in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday after questioning him about his link to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects.

Dave Couvertier, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI’s Tampa field office, told Yahoo News the shooting is under investigation. He identified the man as Ibragim Todashev, a 27-year-old Chechen-born Orlando resident and apparent acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected of planning and carrying out the terror attack at last month’s Boston Marathon.

Law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Todashev lunged at the FBI agent with a knife.

The shooting occurred just after midnight at an apartment complex in Orlando. The agent, along with two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement personnel, were interviewing Todashev ”in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual,” Couvertier said. ”An FBI post-shooting incident review team has been dispatched from Washington, D.C., and expected to arrive in Orlando within 24 hours.”

The agent, Couvertier added, ”sustained non-life-threatening injuries.”

Khusen Taramov, a friend of Todashev, told local television reporters in Orlando that he and Todashev were interviewed by the FBI for about three hours on Tuesday.

”They were talking to us,” Taramov told WESH-TV. ”And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back. … He felt inside he was going to get shot. I told him, ’Everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it.’ He said, ’I have a really bad feeling.’”

According to NBC News, Todashev was not suspected of having a role in the Boston bombings, but confessed to investigators ”he played a role” in an unsolved triple murder case in which three men were discovered in an apartment in Waltham, Mass., their throats cut and bodies covered in marijuana. Todashev was about to sign a confession related to those slayings when the confrontation occurred.

Todashev met Tsarnaev in Boston while competing in mixed martial arts, Taramov said.

”They met a few times because [Todashev] was an MMA fighter and [Tsarnaev] was a boxer,” Taramov told WKMG-TV. ”They just knew each other. That’s it.”

Taramov said Todashev had planned to travel back to Chechnya. ”He had a [plane] ticket to New York,” Taramov said. ”From there, he was going to go home. [The FBI was] pushing him to stay, saying, ‘We want to interview you one last time.’”

According to the Orlando Sun Sentinel, Todashev was arrested earlier this month on aggravated assault charges:

In that incident, Todashev told deputies he got in a fight with a man over a parking space at the Orlando Premium Outlet mall and ”was only fighting to protect his knee because he had surgery in March,” according to the arrest report.

The Sheriff’s office report says that two men were fighting and one—later identified as Todashev—was leaving the scene in a vehicle, while the other was on the ground, appeared unconscious, and surrounded by ”a considerable amount of blood.”

Deputies pursued Todashev, pulled him over and ordered him out of his car at gunpoint, according to the report. The victim, who had a split upper lip and ”several teeth knocked out of place,” did not want to press charges, according to the report.

Four days after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a late-night shootout with police in Watertown, Mass. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was later arrested and charged in connection with the April 15 bombings, which left three people dead and wounded 275.

By Dylan Stableford

Roger Goodell: Draft shifts to May

Roger Goodell confirmed Tuesday at the NFL’s spring meetings in Boston that the draft will be moved to May in 2014, sometime between the 8th and 17th of the month.

Goodell said the change was needed next year because the venue, Radio City Music Hall, will host an Easter show in April.

”At this late stage, for us to do it the right way, we don’t see having any choice but to move the date,” he said.

However, Goodell said he expects the draft to remain in May, with other adjustments to the NFL’s calendar, including the dates for the combine and the opening of free agency, to be discussed with the players’ union.

He said trying to stage the draft in April would mean the NFL would have to find a different venue or city. He emphasized, however, that the league is pleased with its experiences at Radio City Music Hall.

”We think we have found a location in New York that meets our requirements and where we think we can continue to grow the event,” he said.

Under the current collective bargaining agreement, Goodell can set the date of the draft without the NFLPA’s approval, although he would prefer to have the union’s blessing to maintain league harmony.

Goodell said owners ”didn’t reach any conclusion” in their discussion about changing the dates of the combine and free agency.

”We are negotiating that with the union,” he said. ”We have a discussion with them sometime in the next couple of weeks, and I am sure that will come up. We think that is a good change for fans and for football.”

A source has told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter that in changes to the calendar being discussed, the league year would start before the combine beginning in 2015. The NFLPA wanted to give free agents a chance to find new teams sooner.

The commissioner said it was important to him that the union signs off on any changes to the league’s calendar.

”This is not secretive. We share what the overall strategy is and what we are trying to accomplish with the players,” Goodell said. ”We went to them initially to do that, to get their feedback. We want to make sure we do it right, and that includes getting player input.”

Eric Spoto benches 722 pounds

You lift, bro? Yeah? You don’t lift as much as Eric Spoto, who claims to have set a world record by raw-benching 722 pounds.

This video, taken on Sunday, actually shows the third of Spoto’s three lifts, two of which broke the record of 715 pounds. In the initial lift, Spoto benched 661 pounds, following that with 716 pounds and, finally, 722 pounds.

The ”raw” in the record comes from the fact that Spoto doesn’t wear a bench shirt or any other kind of supportive clothing; he’s there in a singlet and leather belt, plus gloves. Bench shirts are insanely taut, made of denim or polyester, and both cushion the lifter as the weight depresses and help the lifter get the weight back in the air. As a result, the current shirted world record stands at 1076.9 pounds, more than half again as much as the raw record.

There’s a bit of controversy around Spoto’s lift, because no one can have any kind of success on the Internet without somebody else coming along to dump on it. For a raw bench press to count, the bar has to be motionless at the bottom of the lift, and Spoto gets it off his chest in a hurry. You would too, if you could. Could be trolling, could be legitimate questions. We’re going with trolling, mainly because we don’t want Spoto mad at us.

Spoto’s ultimate goal? 730 pounds. No sweat, right? Your lift, bro.

By Jay Busbee

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REVOLT TV DIDDY BLOG: #STATE OF MUSIC

Last night with @JD after he tore up Sub51 out here in Chicago