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Apple used a “complex web” of offshore entities — with no employees or physical offices — that allowed it to pay little or no taxes on tens of billions it earned overseas, according to a Senate investigation unveiled Monday.

Between 2009 and 2012, the company shielded at least $74 billion in profits from U.S. tax laws by setting up subsidiaries in Ireland under a special arrangement, the report said. While the practice of using foreign operations to avoid U.S. taxes is legal and common among multinationals, Apple’s scheme was unprecedented in its use of multiple affiliates that had no semblance of a physical presence, Senate staffers said.

The electronics giant’s rootless subsidiaries had just one purpose: to funnel much of the company’s global profits and dodge billions of dollars in U.S. tax obligations, according to the report by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

One of Apple’s Irish affiliates reported profits of $30 billion between 2009 and 2012, but because it did not technically belong to any country, it paid no taxes to any government. Another paid a tax rate of 0.05 percent in 2011 on $22 billion in earnings, according to the report. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

“Apple sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee. “It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

Apple is the latest high-tech giant to have its offshore accounting practices come under congressional scrutiny. And the company’s high profile — it was the most valuable company in the world as of Monday — highlights the debate over how companies use legal loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying into U.S. tax coffers.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook plans to vehemently defend the company’s record on taxes before the Senate subcommittee Tuesday morning, arguing that Apple does not break any tax laws, according to a copy of the firm’s prepared testimony.

Cook and other senior executives are set to argue that their Irish subsidiaries help the U.S. economy by funding research and development projects and assist the company’s expansion in Asia and Europe, according to the testimony.

“Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” the company wrote in the prepared testimony. The Irish subsidiaries contributed more than half of Apple’s R&D costs in 2012, the company said. Apple declined to comment and referred questions to its prepared testimony.

The Senate investigation provides a rare window into the operations of one of corporate America’s most secretive companies. The arrival of its top executives in a congressional hearing also marks a departure for a firm that has deliberately chosen to keep a minimal profile in Washington. Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died in 2011, notoriously called Washington policy issues distractions from the creation of new technology. Even as its chief rivals — Google, Facebook and Amazon.com — have beefed up their lobbying operations, Apple has kept a remarkably small presence.

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Two FBI agents from an elite counterterrorism unit based in Northern Virginia were killed Friday during a training exercise in the Virginia Beach area, the FBI said Sunday.

The agents were part of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team, which is part of the Critical Incident Response Group, and is based at Quantico.

The agents were identified as Christopher Lorek, 41, and Stephen Shaw, 40. The FBI said the incident occurred off the coast of Virginia Beach, but gave no further details. An FBI spokeswoman in the Virginia Beach area said the deaths did not involve gunfire.

The FBI said in a statement that the cause of the incident was “under review.”

The deaths brought to at least four the number of agents killed during Hostage Rescue Team training since the group was established in 1983 as a national counterterrorist unit.

TV station WAVY, based in the Tidewater/Hampton Roads area, quoted a Navy spokesman as saying that the accident happened aboard a Military Sealift Command ship that the FBI had leased for training.

At the Sealift Command headquarters in Washington, inquiries were referred Sunday night to the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman said Sunday night that the bureau had released no information beyond the statement posted on its website.

A Virginia Beach police spokeswoman said she had no information about the incident. An investigator in the state medical examiner’s office for the Tidewater District said no cause of death could be obtained before Monday.

The two agents were brought by helicopter Friday to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, the highest-level trauma center for the area, a spokesman for Sentara Healthcare said. He could provide no information about their treatment or injuries.

Lorek joined the FBI in 1996, the bureau said, and is survived by his wife and two daughters, ages 11 and 8.

Shaw, who joined the FBI in 2005, is survived by his wife, a 3-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III issued a statement mourning the loss of “two brave and courageous men.” Like the others on the hostage rescue team, he said, they accepted “the highest risk each and every day,” whether on missions or in training.

“Our hearts are with their wives, children, and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply. And they will always be part of the FBI family,” Mueller said.

According to the FBI Web site, the rescue team responds to the “most complex and urgent FBI cases in the United States and abroad.

The team is based at the FBI Academy in Quantico, which is on the Marine Corps base there, about 40 miles south of Washington.

A 2006 federal report described a key capability of the hostage rescue team as the capacity to “fast-rope,” in which an assault team rappels from a helicopter. The report said the technique is particularly useful in assaulting a maritime target because it allows the FBI to place a team aboard a ship quickly.

Fast-roping was described as an advanced skill requiring “great coordination’’ between helicopter pilots and the assault teams.

The FBI Web site indicated that the unit places great emphasis on “extensive, continuous” training.

The first of the two previous deaths to occur in rescue team training came in April 1986, less than three years after the unit was established. James K. McAllister died after falling from a helicopter during training at the FBI Academy, according to the bureau.

According to the bureau’s Web site, Gregory J. Rahoi, a supervisory special agent, was accidentally shot and fatally wounded Dec. 6, 2006, at Fort A.P. Hill, in Virginia’s Caroline County. Rahoi was killed during a live-fire training exercise intended to prepare hostage rescue-team personnel for deployments to Iraq.

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A 21-year-old Hofstra University student who was killed in a home invasion on Friday was mistakenly shot in the head by an officer who fired eight times at a man who was holding a gun to the student’s head and then pointed it at him, the police said on Saturday. Seven of the bullets hit the man, who was also killed.

The student, Andrea Rebello, and her twin sister, Jessica, who also lived at the home, just blocks from the university, were among several people taken hostage on Friday morning in an apparent robbery attempt.

The Nassau County police identified the gunman as Dalton Smith, 30, a Hempstead, N.Y., resident with an extensive criminal record who was wanted for violating parole on a robbery conviction.

About 15 or 20 minutes elapsed from the time Mr. Smith burst into the home about 2:20 a.m. Friday until the last shot was fired, the police said.

Several hostages had already escaped when police officers arrived and surrounded the house at about 2:30 a.m., Detective Lt. John Azzata said at a news conference on Saturday. The police, who had been alerted to the invasion by one of the people who had escaped, initially thought that only Mr. Smith remained in the house, he said.

At least one officer had entered the home as Mr. Smith, clutching Ms. Rebello in a headlock with a gun to her head, tried to get to the back door, Detective Azzata said. After noticing the officer in the hallway, Mr. Smith brought Ms. Rebello closer to his body, Detective Azzata said. Mr. Smith then pointed his gun at the officer.

“At that point, the police officer fires several rounds,” Detective Azzata said. “Seven of those rounds struck our subject; one of those rounds struck the victim.”

Ms. Rebello was taken to the hospital, where she died. Mr. Smith’s weapon, a 9-millimeter handgun, had one bullet in the chamber and another in the magazine, Detective Azzata said. He never fired a shot.

Detective Azzata said the officer who fired the shots was a 12-year veteran of the force, but would not identify him or say whether the officer had acted according to protocol. He said the authorities were still investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

At the news conference, Thomas V. Dale, the Nassau County police commissioner, said he had gone to Ms. Rebello’s parents’ home in Tarrytown, N.Y., to personally inform them that it had been a police officer’s bullet that killed their daughter.

Telephone calls made to Ms. Rebello’s parents on Saturday night went unanswered.

Given Mr. Smith’s criminal past, questions are likely to be raised about how he was being monitored.

The authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on April 25, after he failed to check in with a parole officer. He had served multiple sentences in prison, mostly for robbery convictions, and was released on parole in February after serving a nine-year sentence.

It is unclear why Mr. Smith chose the house on California Avenue where Ms. Rebello lived to break into, the police said. At the time of the invasion, Detective Azzata said, the front door of the home had been left open by another resident, who had gone upstairs to get his keys with the intention of moving his car.

While the authorities said Mr. Smith lived in Hempstead, there is no address for anyone by his name in public records.

The invasion left residents near the university fearful at a time when many would be preparing for graduation. Hofstra officials said commencement ceremonies on Sunday would go ahead.

On Saturday, many students were preparing to leave for summer vacation. While many said they felt secure on campus, some expressed concern about security in the neighborhoods surrounding it, where some students prefer to rent houses. Ms. Rebello and her sister lived on a typically quiet block in Uniondale that some said was uncomfortable to walk through after dark.

“Walking after class after 7 p.m. or 9 p.m., it feels really unsafe to walk outside of campus across Hempstead Turnpike,” said Jack Qiu, 20, a sophomore who said he preferred to live in the dorms because they are safer. “If you walk around California Avenue and the streets around them, there are streets there that don’t have street lamps.”

A funeral for Ms. Rebello is set for Wednesday in Tarrytown, N.Y., the Coffee Funeral Home said. She will be buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

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PARIS (AP) — Thieves ripped a safe from the wall of a hotel room near the Cannes Film Festival and made off with around $1 million worth of jewelry, in a brazen late-night burglary just hours after the screening of a film about break-ins at the homes of Hollywood celebrities, French officials said Friday.

The apparently well-planned robbery at the Novotel hotel took place in the room of an employee of Chopard, the Swiss-based watch and jewelry maker and festival sponsor that was hosting a splashy gala event in a far ritzier hotel around the same time, officials said.

Chopard has loaned jewelry to A-list stars who walk on the festival’s famed red carpet under rapid-fire flashes of photographers’ cameras. Already this year model Carla Delevingne and actress Julianne Moore have walked the carpet in Chopard gems.

“The jewels stolen are not part of the collection of jewels that are worn by actresses during the Cannes film festival,” Chopard spokeswoman Raffaella Rossiello told reporters in a brief statement Friday.

Cmdr. Bernard Mascarelli, a judicial police spokesman in the nearby city of Nice, said he didn’t know the exact type of jewelry taken, or its exact value. “Numbers have been put forward that we’re still trying to verify, but the figure of $1 million … we’re in that range,” he said. Jean-Michel Caillau, a state prosecutor in nearby Grasse who is leading the investigation, said early estimates were that the loot could have been worth as much as $1.4 million.

Rossiello countered that, saying: “The value of the pieces stolen is far lower than those in the figures circulating in the media.” She did not say why the jewelry was brought to the Novotel during the film festival, or take reporters’ questions.

The theft was believed to have taken place sometime between 7 p.m. Thursday and 3 a.m. Friday, said Mascarelli, when the Chopard employee returned to the hotel room and noticed the damage. Mascarelli said he did not know whether the employee had been attending a Chopard gala that was running late into the night at the 5-star Hotel Martinez across town, where the company has a suite during the festival.

News of the robbery sent journalists scurrying to the Novotel, a business hotel about a 15-minute walk from Cannes’ seafront promenade. Dozens of police were involved in the investigation, and police vehicles could be seen outside the hotel Friday afternoon. Authorities were going over hotel surveillance cameras and questioning potential witnesses who might have seen any culprits.

“It seems pretty unlikely to us that it was just one person,” Mascarelli said. “Apparently this (hotel guest) was someone who was targeted because it wasn’t someone who had been seeking attention. … There must have been either inside complicity, or people who were in contact with this person and knew that the person had jewels,” he said.

Melissa Levine, a spokeswoman for Accor, the French hospitality giant behind Novotel, declined comment about the case.

On Thursday night, Chopard hosted a star-studded gala, and the festival screened Sofia Coppola’s “The Bling Ring” — a deadpan drama about celebrity-obsessed teenagers in Los Angeles who break into the homes of Paris Hilton and other stars. It’s based on a true story about high-school students who, after seeing online when certain stars are expected at a premiere or other event, take the opportunity to steal items from their homes.

Chopard manufactures the crystal and gold Palme d’Or trophy awarded each year to the festival’s top film. Festival organizers would not disclose the Palme’s whereabouts Friday, but said it was kept in a safe place. They had no comment on the robbery.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A mother whose 4-year-old was being abducted chased the suspect down and crashed her vehicle into his car, triggering a manhunt and the arrest of the suspect, Albuquerque police said Thursday.

The young girl was playing in her yard at St. Anthony’s Plaza Apartments in Albuquerque’s North Valley about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday when a group of teenagers saw the kidnapping and ran to alert the girl’s mother, police said.

The family called 911 and the mother jumped into her vehicle and gave chase for about seven miles, unaware the man had pushed the girl out of the silver Buick before fleeing the apartment complex, authorities said. The girl was found wandering nearby, uninjured, police said.

According to police, the mother followed the suspect and finally rammed into his car near an intersection. The suspect fled on foot, police said.

Melissa Torrez, the mother, told KOAT-TV she didn’t mean to hit the suspect’s car and struck it accidentally when she lost control of her car. Torrez said didn’t even have time to cry when she jumped to chase the suspect.

“I don’t ever want to lose my kids,” said Torrez, a mother of three.

Torrez said after the crashed she looked in the back seat of the suspect’s car and saw an empty baby car seat.

“I was like…what a sick man,” she told the station.

The attempted kidnapping sparked a massive manhunt Wednesday as more than two dozen officers went door-to-door in the area looking for the suspect. A helicopter with heat-sensor cameras also was sent in for the search, authorities said.

Police arrested David Hernandez, 31, on Thursday afternoon in Rio Rancho after he saw his picture on television and called police. After being interviewed, he was charged with kidnapping, police spokeswoman Tasia Martinez said.

As he was being taken to jail, Hernandez told reporters that he was innocent. It was not known if Hernandez had an attorney.

Kevin Abar, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, confirmed to The Associated Press that federal agents also helped

Albuquerque police with the investigation.

In February, HSI and local enforcement agencies launched the Sexual Predator and Exploitation Enforcement Detail, or SPEED — a task force aimed at finding missing and abducted children.

Police were also investigating a possible connection to the abduction and sexual assault of a 6-year-old from the same apartment complex last week. The suspect in that case was described as a male in a silver or gray vehicle.

Gilbert Hernandez, 25, a resident at the St. Anthony’s, said he found the 6-year-old last week and was the one who contacted police.

“This place isn’t safe. People always let their kids run around here,” Hernandez said. “We are all on the lookout now.”

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President Obama on Wednesday demanded and accepted the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven T. Miller, as part of a multi-pronged effort to quell controversies that threaten to dominate his second term.

The action was Obama’s first substantive step to address a political uproar stemming from the IRS’s disclosure that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. It capped a day when the White House tried to dampen two other furors that had put Obama on the defensive — the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and the administration’s editing of talking points about the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, last year.
In a brief but fiery evening statement in the East Room of the White House, Obama labeled the IRS’s actions “inexcusable.”

“Americans are right to be angry about it, and I’m angry about it,” he said, adding that he “will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has.”

The administration also took the extraordinary step of releasing a letter from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in which he demanded that Miller resign in order “to restore public trust and confidence in the IRS.”

The forceful response underscored just how damaging the IRS scandal and the other issues could become for a second-term president trying to secure an ambitious array of legislative achievements. Obama and his aides have been criticized in recent days by opponents and supporters alike for a slow and seemingly passive response to the controversies.

The White House also released 100 e-mails Wednesday detailing discussions among administration officials on how to respond to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. The release of the e-mails was an effort to rebut GOP allegations that the White House had edited talking points about the attack to play down the possibility it was terrorism.

Earlier in the day, the White House signaled that it would support a renewed effort by lawmakers to pass a “media shield law” that gives new protections to journalists facing subpoenas. That followed growing criticism of the Justice Department for obtaining the phone records of Associated Press journalists as part of a national security leak investigation.

Republicans said Obama’s efforts at the IRS did not assuage their concerns.

“More than two years after the problem began, and a year after the IRS told us there was no problem, the president is beginning to take action,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “If the president is as concerned about this issue as he claims, he’ll work openly and transparently with Congress to get to the bottom of the scandal — no stonewalling, no half-answers, no withholding of witnesses.”

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. defended his agency’s decision to obtain AP’s phone records and vowed to pursue any criminal wrongdoing by IRS officials.

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MOSCOW — He arrived at the meeting with two wigs — the blond one on his head held in place by a baseball cap, a brown one in his knapsack, which also held a compass, a Moscow street atlas and $130,000 in cash. He was an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, Russian officials say, and his goal was to recruit a Russian security officer as a spy.

He even carried a letter offering “up to $1 million a year for long-term cooperation” and signed affectionately, “Your friends.”

On Tuesday, the American, identified as Ryan C. Fogle, who had been officially posted in Russia as the third secretary of the political department of the United States Embassy, was ordered to leave the country by the Russian government, which officially declared him “persona non grata.”

In a move that appeared to be as much stagecraft as spycraft, the Russian Federal Security Service, the F.S.B., took the unusual step of releasing a video showing the arrest of Mr. Fogle, including him face down on a street as a Russian agent pinned his hands behind his back.

President Vladimir V. Putin has long expressed suspicions that Washington is working covertly to undermine him, and it was unclear if Tuesday’s incident would further damage an already fragile bilateral relationship. The Russian Foreign Ministry publicly summoned the American ambassador, Michael A. McFaul, to a meeting on Wednesday to address the accusations.

Reveling in the chance to embarrass the United States in a seemingly amateurish act of espionage, the F.S.B. also released photographs of the wigs and other odd gear that Mr. Fogle had been carrying, as well as a second video showing three American officials, including the embassy’s chief political officer, Michael Klecheski, listening silently to a harangue by a Russian official.

The official said Mr. Fogle had tried to recruit a counterterrorism agent with expertise in the Caucasus, an area that has recently become of intense interest to the United States because the men accused of the bombings at the Boston Marathon had lived there.

The circumstances of Mr. Fogle’s unmasking seemed bizarre, even given the long, colorful history of spying by the Soviet Union, Russia and their rivals.

Over the years, American diplomats have found bugs and other devices in a wide variety of locations — including the undersides of typewriter keys and the beak of a wooden eagle presented to the ambassador as a gift. The United States once tore down and rebuilt an entire new embassy building in Moscow after discovering the walls were filled with listening devices.

Last year, British officials quietly confirmed a Russian accusation from 2006 that its spy service had used a fake rock to hide communication equipment used to download and transmit classified information.

Much discussion on Tuesday centered on the paradox of why the United States, a country that can kill terrorists with remote-controlled drones, would feel the need to send a man with a map and a compass to navigate the traffic-choked Russian capital.

“It seems to me quite odd,” said Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who has written several books about the Russian intelligence services, and founded a Web site called Agentura.ru, which monitors the activities of intelligence agencies worldwide.

Mr. Soldatov said he suspected that the entire episode was a sting operation run by the Russians.

Yevgenia M. Albats, the author of a 1994 book on the K.G.B., the Soviet-era spy agency, had a similar reaction. “I’m just surprised that the guy was such an idiot,” she said. “Why did he have to do it in such an old-fashioned way? It sounds like the ’70s.”

Had the Russians viewed Mr. Fogle as a serious threat, Mr. Soldatov and other intelligence experts said, they most likely would have stepped back and let his apparent recruitment effort continue, and perhaps even led him to believe that he had successfully enlisted a double agent, pocketing the money while trying to learn more about the Americans’ interests.

Instead, the Russians released the videos and photographs of Mr. Fogle’s assortment of props, which also included two pairs of sunglasses, a pocketknife and a protective sleeve made to shield information held on the electronic chips now routinely imprinted on passports, transit passes and identification cards.

He also carried a decidedly un-smart phone that from a distance looked like an old-model Nokia. Unlike its counterpart in the “Get Smart” television series, it was not built into the bottom of a shoe.

The most recent comparable spy folly came at the Russians’ expense. In 2010, the American authorities arrested 10 “sleeper” agents who had been living in the United States for a decade, posing as Americans. Some were couples with children; some had well-developed careers in real estate and finance.

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ON FEBRUARY 25, 2009, a then 34-year-old career con man named David Anthony Whitaker left the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and slid into the backseat of an unmarked government car. He was dressed in traditional prison garb—khaki pants, brown shirt, handcuffs, leg irons. A federal agent sat beside him. A second car followed to make sure nobody trailed them or attempted an ambush. Not that anyone expected trouble. This was merely standard procedure when transporting a government cooperator.

That’s what Whitaker was now: a cooperator. It felt surreal. One year ago he was in Mexico, living the most fulfilling life he’d ever known in his chaotic, troubled years on the planet. He had been bringing in obscene amounts of money by selling black-market steroids and human growth hormone online. He had a multimillion-dollar apartment in a country club in Guadalajara. He had a cabin in the mountain town of Mazamitla. He had lots of cars—an orange 4Runner, a BMW, a Jeep. He’d even funded the construction of a local hospital. Sure, he had to live under an alias and was on the run from US Secret Service agents who were trying to nail him for a long-standing multicount fraud complaint. But he had a lawyer on retainer, and at least the local cops were easy to pay off.

That life ended on March 19, 2008, when a Mexican immigration agent nabbed Whitaker and brought him back to LAX, where the Secret Service promptly arrested him. He was facing a potential sentence of 65 years in prison. Sixty-five years. That meant spending the rest of his life behind bars. The thought was unbearable.

Whitaker began thinking of ways to knock years off his sentence. He considered providing the names of the drug users, pushers, and doctors who had patronized his online steroid business. They were mostly easy marks, and Whitaker was quick to take advantage of them. For a while he bottled sterile water in 1-milliliter vials, marketed it as a steroid called Dutchminnie, and sold it for $1,000 a pop. Not only did clients fall for the scam, they sent back photos showing how they’d bulked up after using the “drug.”

But he quickly realized that he could offer the government much more than the names of a few juicers. At one point during a meeting with Whitaker and his lawyer, the Feds asked him how he had grown his online enterprise. Whitaker’s answer was immediate: He had used Google AdWords. In fact, he claimed, Google employees had actively helped him advertise his business, even though he had made no attempt to hide its illegal nature. It was reasonable to assume, Whitaker said, that Google was helping other rogue Internet pharmacies too.

If true, this would be a bombshell. This was Google, after all. Since its founding, the search giant had prided itself on being a different kind of corporation, the “don’t be evil” company. And for almost as long, its open-to-all-comers ad policy had come under scrutiny. Online pharmacies were a particular sticking point; in 2003, three separate congressional committees initiated inquiries into the matter. On July 22, 2004, a month before Google went public, Sheryl Sandberg—at the time Google vice president of global online sales and operations—testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Legislators had proposed two bills that would regulate online pharmaceutical sales, but Sandberg argued that the measures would be unduly burdensome. She said that Google employed a third-party verification service to vet online pharmacies. She also described Google’s own automated monitoring system and the creation of a team of Google employees dedicated to enforcing all of the company’s pharmaceutical ad policies. “Google has taken strong voluntarily [sic] measures—going beyond existing legal requirements—to ensure that our advertising services protect our users by providing access to safe and reliable information,” she testified. Neither bill made it out of committee. (Sandberg, now Facebook’s chief operating officer, declined to comment or be interviewed for this story.)

The agents seemed skeptical of Whitaker’s claims and spent the next 10 months following up on them. But they apparently found the story plausible, because now Whitaker was being driven to a Providence, Rhode Island, postal inspector’s office to launch the US government’s undercover investigation into one of the world’s most admired, profitable, and powerful companies.

As soon as they entered the postal inspector’s office, the Feds explained the ground rules. Whitaker had to be completely honest with them; one lie and any possible deal was off. From now on, he would be known as Jason Corriente, the fictional CEO of a fake Rhode Island–based marketing firm called Maxwell and Associates. The FDA had already secured an 800 number, a bank account, and an answering service. His job: to buy advertising for SportsDrugs.net, a website that sold HGH and steroids from Mexico, no doctor’s prescription required.

With his talent for prevarication, Whitaker was well suited to the task. Throughout his checkered past, he had assumed false identities, sold nonexistent products, and written bad checks. But he’d never faced such high stakes. If he couldn’t somehow lead Google into breaking the law again, he’d probably die in prison.

An agent handed Whitaker a list of phone numbers of Google employees and a phone hooked up to a recorder, then told him to dial.

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NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans police hope a $10,000 reward and blurry surveillance camera images will lead to arrests in a Mother’s Day shooting that wounded 19 people and showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies the city’s festive image.

Angry residents said gun violence — which has flared at two other city celebrations this year — goes hand-in-hand with the city’s other deeply rooted problems such as poverty and urban blight. The investigators tasked with solving Sunday’s shooting work within an agency that’s had its own troubles rebounding from years of corruption while trying to halt violent crime.

“The old people are scared to walk the streets. The children can’t even play outside,” Ronald Lewis, 61, said Monday as he sat on the front stoop of his house, about a half a block from the shooting site. His window sill has a hole from a bullet that hit it last year. Across the street sits a house marked by bullets he said were fired two weeks ago.

“The youngsters are doing all this,” said Jones, who was away from home when the latest shooting broke out.

Video released early Monday shows a crowd gathered for a boisterous second-line parade suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground. They appear to be running from a man in a white T-shirt and dark pants who turns and runs out of the picture. The image isn’t clear, but police say they hope someone will recognize him and notify investigators.

Police were working to determine whether there was more than one gunman, though they initially said three people were spotted fleeing from the scene. Whoever was responsible escaped despite the presence of officers who were interspersed through the crowd as part of routine precautions for such an event.

No arrests had been made as of Monday afternoon, but Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said investigators were making significant progress. Ballistic evidence gathered at the scene was giving them “very good leads to work on,” he said.

“I can assure whoever did this we know a lot more about you than you think we do. And my reccomendation to you is to collect yourself and turn yourself in,” he said.

Witness Jarrat Pytell said he was walking with friends near the parade route when the crowd suddenly began to break up.

“I saw the guy on the corner, his arm extended, firing into the crowd,” said Pytell, a medical student.

“He was obviously pointing in a specific direction; he wasn’t swinging the gun wildly,” Pytell said.

Pytell said he tended to one woman with a severe arm fracture — he wasn’t sure if it was from a bullet or a fall — and to others including an apparent shooting victim who was bleeding badly.

Three gunshot victims remained in critical condition Monday, though their wounds didn’t appear to be life-threatening. Most of the wounded had been discharged from the hospital.

It’s not the first time gunfire has shattered a festive mood in the city this year. Five people were wounded in a drive-by shooting in January after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and four were wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. Two teens were arrested in connection with the MLK shootings; three men were arrested and charged in the Mardi Gras shootings.

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(CNN) — Police burst into a home early Sunday in Trenton, New Jersey, finding a woman and her 13-year-old son dead, and three of her other children being held hostage, authorities said.

The suspect, Gerald Tyrone Murphy, 38, was shot by police and died from his wounds, authorities said at a news conference Sunday. The hostages were ages 18, 16, and 4, police said.

The raid ended a 37-hour standoff that began Friday afternoon when police responded to a phone call from a family member of Carmelita Stevens, who had not heard from her for a period of time. They received additional information that Stevens’ two daughters had not been to school in 12 days.

Police received no response at the door. Fearing for the safely of the family, authorities made a forced entry into the home and immediately smelled an odor “consistent with a decomposing body,” police said. The officers also noticed maggots throughout the house, Trenton Police Director Ralph Rivera said.

Following a male voice upstairs, police spoke to Murphy, who informed them that there was a body in the room with him, as well as another body in the rear bedroom. Police also determined that Murphy had three people barricaded in the room with him: two females aged 18 and 16 and a 4-year-old boy.

Police later discovered that Stevens’ 19-year-old son was hiding in the basement.

Murphy told officers that he was armed with guns and explosives. Police observed Murphy brandishing a black handgun through a window, said Mercer County Prosecutor Joseph Bocchini.

“There are also allegations that the 16- and 18-year-old girls were abused and assaulted during the time they were held hostage,” said Bocchini.

Hostage negotiators maintained contact with Murphy on and off throughout the standoff. Meanwhile, police sent supplies to the children and waited for the right moment to confront Murphy.

“The welfare of the children being held hostage was of paramount concern. We passed food and bottled water through an upper window, watching and waiting for the best opportunity to end this standoff safely,” said New Jersey State Police Col. Rick Fuentes.

About 3:45 a.m. Sunday, authorities entered the upstairs room, confronted Murphy and rescued the three hostages. A single shot was fired by New Jersey

State Police “to stop a threatening action against one of the children by Murphy,” said Fuentes.

Murphy was wounded, taken into custody and taken to a nearby medical center, where he later died of his injuries. No law enforcement officers were injured.

A preliminary investigation found that Stevens, 44, and her 13-year-old son were killed approximately two weeks ago, police said. They believe both were killed around the same time.

Investigators also found that an arrest warrant was out in Pennsylvania for Murphy for failing to register as a sex offender. Additionally, they found

Murphy had an extensive record of violence, including convictions for aggravated assault and criminal conspiracy, as well as arrests for robbery, weapons offenses, and child endangerment.

The three people held hostage have been taken to a medical center for treatment and evaluation. The 19-year-old was also medically evaluated and is now staying with family.

Police said Murphy was Stevens’ boyfriend, but was not the father of any of the children involved. A motive has not yet been determined and the case remains under investigation.

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