The online blueprints for a fully functional 3D-printed gun have disappeared faster than a speeding bullet.

On Wednesday, the State Department ordered the company that posted the schematics, Defense Distributed, to remove them from the web. (Watch a Defense Distributed video explaining the gun above.) According to the State Department, publicly posting the instructions may have violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs the "transfer of, and access to" certain weapons and their technical details. By posting the files to the web where anyone in the world could download them, the company may have inadvertently violated those export restrictions.

"Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or transferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export," the State Department  in a letter.

However, the State Department did not say that the instructions must remain offline for good. Rather, the department asked that Defense Distributed file the necessary paperwork for the government to determine if the blueprints are, in fact, a violation of ITAR. In the meantime, State wrote, the company "should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled."

That letter came just two days after Defense Distributed, through its open-source printing project DEFCAD, posted the instructions for its "Liberator" handgun to the Internet. In just three days, the instructions had already been downloaded more than 

Here's how it works, :

Fifteen of the gun's 16 pieces are constructed on the $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, Forbes said. The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin, that can be found in a hardware store. []

And indeed, by Thursday evening, the webpage to download the instructions had been updated with the : "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

Still, the federal order does not mean all copies of the blueprints have been be wiped from the web. The instructions have been posted to the file-sharing sites Pirate Bay and Mega, among others, meaning they're still available for download.

Wilson, who claims to have been inspired by anarchist writings, himself made that point in an , saying he thought he would ultimately be free from the government's oversight.

"I still think we win in the end," he said. "Because the files are all over the Internet, the Pirate Bay has it to think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about."

Lawmakers at the state and federal level have already moved to ban printable firearms.

In California, Democratic state Senator Leland Yee said in athat he would soon introduce a bill to ban weapons that "are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check." At the federal level, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have likewise called for legislation to ban such firearms.

"A terrorist, someone who's mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage," Schumer

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There are, though, men in military fatigues who log the license plates of vehicles approved to enter Kleinfontein, a rural enclave that is home to about 1,000 Afrikaner whites. And there is a bust of Hendrik Verwoerd, the former South African leader who spearheaded white racist rule.

This exercise in separate, self-sufficient living near the South African capital, Pretoria, is more than just a throwback to the apartheid era that ended with the country's first all-race elections in 1994. In recent days, Kleinfontein and its campaign to be formally recognized as a township have become a touchstone for fresh debate about law, freedom and the kind of "rainbow nation" that South Africa is trying to be.

Kleinfontein, which is all private property, requires its residents to be Afrikaners, descendants of settlers who arrived from Europe centuries ago and speak Dutch-based Afrikaans, the idiom of South Africa's former overseers. That brings accusations of racism in a nation whose population of over 50 million is mostly black, but the community skirts race references in its manifesto. Descendants of British settlers, for example, would not be welcome to live here.

The community is not organized "on the basis of race," said Jan Groenewald, chairman of the board of directors of Kleinfontein, which means "Little Fountain" in Afrikaans. Instead, he said, the goal is to preserve a cultural bedrock that stretches back to the lore of the hardy Voortrekker settlers.

The dig-in mindset at the austere settlement echoes that of its ancestors, who drew ox wagons into a defensive circle, a tactic that helped them defeat a much bigger Zulu force at the Dec. 16, 1838 Battle of Blood River. The date has near-mystical import for staunch Afrikaners, though the vast majority of whites accepted South Africa's new, multi-racial order in 1994 as part of a negotiated settlement.

"We are here to stay," read Afrikaans-language signs outside modest brick-and-tile homes linked by dirt roads in Kleinfontein.

Residents don't pay taxes on municipal services because they don't receive them. They draw water from a spring and are building a sewage system. There is a cafe, a primary school and a care center for the elderly. Zebra, antelope and wildebeest roam in one part of the fenced, 721-hectare (1,780-acre) property. Residents buy many of their goods from outside the fence.

"If I was a racist, we wouldn't speak to a black. We wouldn't do business with them," said Annatjie Oncke, a 49-year-old house cleaner living in a caravan park. She and other poor residents do the kind of menial labor reserved for blacks in the era when whites were in charge. Kleinfontein also has engineers and other skilled workers, as well as retirees.

In the past, small bands of Afrikaners have sought to establish enclaves elsewhere in South Africa, notably in the Northern Cape community of Orania, founded in 1990. Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, traveled to Orania in 1995 and had coffee there with Verwoerd's widow in a show of racial reconciliation. Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966.

Kleinfontein has been around almost as long as Orania, but is now under scrutiny in part because it wants local authorities to recognize it as an entity with the right to run its own affairs. The Times, a South African newspaper, reported that provincial lawmakers were informed last year that black police officers were barred from entering the enclave.

Last week, members of the Democratic Alliance, a political party, protested outside Kleinfontein.

"By creating a 'whites-only' area, this community is saying that it has no respect for people who are different from them. It is saying that it fears people who are different," said Mbali Ntuli, the party's youth leader.

On Wednesday, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, the mayor of Pretoria and surrounding areas, visited Kleinfontein as part of an inquiry into its alleged failure to comply with municipal planning laws. Delegations of the two sides met in a hall with a corrugated iron roof, a church bell mounted outside in a scaffold.

Ramokgopa noted the right of every citizen to "reside in any part of the country," while Groenewald, Kleinfontein's chairman, spoke of the right to "self-determination."

The mood was diplomatic, and jovial at times. Ramokgopa joked about "koeksusters," a fried, sugary snack favored by his Afrikaner hosts. Groenewald referred to Mandela's leadership, but also hinted at his resolve with a mention of Koos de la Rey, a general in the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer war who did not want conflict but fought hard when it began.

South Africa's national flag does not fly in Kleinfontein, though some residents were seen recently with the "Vierkleur" ("Four-color"), the flag of the Transvaal republic, which in the 19th century formed part of what is now South Africa. A community member handed out a declaration that complained of betrayal and persecution of the "Boer-Afrikaner nation," and described South African democracy as a sham.

"We find ourselves exiles in our own fatherland," the statement said. "We experience this new dispensation not as a democracy, but as the dictatorship of an alien majority."

For some observers, any uproar over Kleinfontein masks bigger challenges about racial integration in South Africa, where average income levels of whites still outstrip those of blacks. Unemployment is high and residents of some districts have protested violently against the government's failure to provide basic services, a fact that Kleinfontein's leaders did not let slip in their discussions with Pretoria officials.

Author Eusebius McKaiser said the country is still wrestling with the legacy of "apartheid geography," in which some districts originally designed for different races still remain largely segregated.

"We need to stop gloating about the anger we feel towards people like those who live in Kleinfontein," McKaiser wrote in The Star newspaper. "They are honest and crude about their revulsion of people who are different to themselves. We are not fundamentally different to Kleinfontein's people. We are just less honest, more subtle."

Ramokgopa, the mayor, toured Kleinfontein in a convoy of vehicles that kicked up dust and had residents peering at the commotion from their windows. He said the "inherent contradictions" at play over Kleinfontein would emerge elsewhere.

"The nature of the conflict in South Africa is defined by race and that's something that we need attend to," he said. "The next generation will still be grappling with this question."

The Food and Drug Administration said it approved the drugs, Tafinlar and Mekinist, to be used as single agents and not in combination after the medicines delayed tumor growth in separate clinical trials.

After decades with virtually no progress in the fight against advanced melanoma and little to offer patients facing a virtual death sentence, Tafinlar and Mekinist mark the third and fourth new drugs approved by the FDA for metastatic melanoma in the past two years.

Tafinlar, known chemically as dabrafenib, belongs to a class of cancer drugs called as BRAF inhibitors. Mekinist, known chemically as trametinib, inhibits a protein associated with cancerous tumors known as MEK.

Tafinlar was approved to treat patients with melanoma whose tumors express the BRAF V600E gene mutation. Mekinist was approved to treat patients whose tumors express either the BRAF V600E or V600K gene mutations. About half of skin melanomas have a BRAF mutation.

The FDA also approved the THxID BRAF test, made by France's bioMrieux , which will be used to determine if a patient's melanoma cells have the V600E or V600K mutation in the BRAF gene.

Analysts at Cowen and Co forecast sales reaching about $350 million for each drug in 2016.

An estimated 76,690 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma and 9,480 will die from the disease in 2013, according to the National Cancer Institute.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by John Wallace)

The company Made in Space is partnering with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on thein Zero G Experiment (or 3D Print for short), which aims to jump-start an off-planet manufacturing capability that could aid humanity's push out into the solar system.

"The 3D Print experiment with NASA is a step towards the future. The ability to 3D-print parts and tools on demand greatly increases the reliability and safety of space missions while also dropping the cost by orders of magnitude," Made in Space CEO Aaron Kemmer said in a statement. []

"The first printers will start by building test coupons, and will then build a broad range of parts, such as tools and science equipment," he added.

The isslated to blast off in August 2014, tagging along with a cargo mission private spaceflight company SpaceX is launching to the orbiting lab for NASA.

The device will build objects layer by layer out of polymers and other materials, using a technique called extrusion additive manufacturing. The blueprints for these objects will be pre-loaded onto a computer bound for the orbiting lab or uplinked from Earth, Made in Space officials said.

Advocates say 3D printing can help make living in space easier and cheaper. For example, more than 30 percent of the spare parts currently aboard the International Space Station can be manufactured by Made in Space's machine, company co-founder and chief technologist Jason Dunn told NASA chief Charles Bolden and congressman Mike Honda (D-Calif.) during a presentation today (May 24) at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"3D printing is an exciting technology," Niki Werkheiser, 3D Print project manager at NASA Marshalls Technology Development and Transfer Office, said in a statement. "It will allow us to live and work in space with the same efficiency and productivity that we do on Earth, with the ultimate objective being to eliminate reliance on materials and parts launched from the ground."

While off-Earth manufacturing will get its start at the International Space Station, NASA officials say the technology's potential goes beyond low-Earth orbit. Werkheiser described 3D printing as "absolutely a critical enabler for NASAs exploration missions."

Indeed, NASA recently funded the development of a prototypeproducts out of cheap raw materials that have a long shelf life. This "" could help feed astronauts on long space journeys, such as the 500-day trek to Mars, agency officials say.

California-based Made in Space was awarded a Phase 3 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from Marshall for this mission, and the two organizations will work together to make it happen.

3D Print won't be Made in Space's first foray into microgravity printing. The company tested out various 3D printing technologies in 2011 on parabolic airplane flights that produced short periods of weightlessness.

While 3D Print is primarily a demonstration mission, Made in Space is also developing a more permanent space-printing capability called the Additive Manufacturing Facility that's expected to arrive at the orbiting lab in 2016.

The Additive Manufacturing Facility will likely be used to build components for ongoing off-Earth experiments, Made in Space officials said.

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MONACO, May 25 (Reuters) - Some Formula One teams face a fight for survival next season when engine costs more than double, Force India deputy principal Bob Fernley said on Saturday.

"You shouldn't underestimate the resolve of Formula One teams, they are incredibly resilient and probably will come through," the Briton told Reuters in an interview at the Monaco Grand Prix.

"But to add to the level of costs to the teams at this time in an economic cycle, one has to question whether they can all survive."

Formula One is introducing a new 1.6 litre V6 turbocharged unit with energy recovery systems in 2014 to replace the existing 2.4 litre V8.

Under a now-lapsed Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA) between teams, the V8 was priced at around 9 million euros ($11.64 million) a season. The new engine will cost more than 20 million.

In-season testing could also be reintroduced next year and teams also face a hike in entry fees.

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh said the teams must also shoulder some of the blame: "F1 badly mismanaged the cost of the development and supply of those new power plants," the Guardian newspaper quoted him as saying.

"We allowed the engineers to be unfettered in dreaming up the regulations, which means teams are now facing big bills."

Fernley said champions Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren would get a bigger share of revenues under a deal with Bernie Ecclestone, who represents commercial rights holder CVC, but that was of no help to those further down the pecking order.

"How much money is being put into the sport and how much money is being taken out of the sport?," asked Fernley, whose team is owned by Indian liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya and the Sahara Group.

Both Mallya and Sahara have been regularly in the financial headlines with the former's Kingfisher airline grounded by debts of $2.5 billion.

Unlisted Sahara has been ordered by the Indian supreme court to repay billions of dollars it raised from millions of small investors.

Mallya insists the team is separate from his business empire as a privately-owned entity.

CUSTOMER TEAMS

"CVC have got an agenda as bankers to make as much money out of their investment as they possibly can and that involves minimal investment. And that is not in the sport's interests. It's the worst combination that you can have," Fernley added.

"I only question the logic of it. Are we actually trying to stack it in a way that is to get rid of teams so they can bring customer teams in maybe?"

CVC could not be contacted immediately for comment.

Ecclestone recently revived talk of top teams being able to provide others with cars, something that Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has long been pushing for and others such as Frank Williams are firmly opposed to.

Fernley said Force India were in the Williams camp.

"It's not just Frank. Once you bring in 'customer teams' you've lost the identity of Formula One. And you as a team have lost your identity. So you're now just an appendage," he declared.

"There are four teams that have been given special privilege and those four teams would be the ones that are likely to supply the customer teams. So everything is now moving in the way of the four teams."

The confidential Concorde Agreement that has governed the sport expired at the end of last year and a new one is still being pored over by lawyers with no indication that any signing is imminent.

Ten of the 11 teams - tailenders Marussia being the exception - have signed individual agreements with Ecclestone which will lapse once a new Concorde Agreement is signed.

However, the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) have yet to agree to anything.

"There isn't a governance process in place at this time. The sport isn't being governed in the way that it has historically been," Fernley said.

"The teams still have to comply with the Concorde Agreement under the agreements they have with the commercial rights holder, CVC. But for the FIA there is no Concorde Agreement. So you're working in a vacuum."

($1 = 0.7734 euros) (Editing by John O'Brien)

It happened all right. After years of clamoring from fans and rumors firing them up while the cast hung on for a green light, "Arrested Development" has risen from the dead with 15 half-hours premiering en masse on Netflix on Sunday at 3:01 a.m. EDT.

"Arrested Development" is the cock-eyed comedy blessed with a king's ransom of talent and the twisted vision of its mastermind, Mitch Hurwitz, that aired on Fox for three seasons as a cult favorite, then was canceled for low ratings and maybe because it befuddled everyone who wasn't hooked on its lunacy. (Those original three seasons are available for streaming on Netflix, too.)

"I think the show scored some 'cool points' for dying before its time," says Cera. "But there are still a lot more places for it to go."

Yes, "Arrested Development" died young with a beautiful, if funny-to-look-at, corpse. But its fans weren't ready to bury it. And said so.

"Clearly a lot of people DIDN'T like the show," Jason Bateman allows, "so I guess all we were hearing from were those who do and that happens to be a brand of people who are not afraid of speaking their minds."

Now reanimated by public outcry, "Arrested" is going new places.

"Mitch and the cast didn't want to do something not as good as the old series," says Bateman (who plays Michael Bluth, the fractious family's would-be mediating presence). "We didn't want to do something lateral or just a retread."

"I think it's new at every opportunity," says Cera (who plays Michael Bluth's straight-arrow son), "while retaining the show's original heart."

The new Netflix season takes the form of what you might call an anthology as it updates viewers, character by character with each episode, on the Bluth family that once-wealthy, now-broke and at-each-other's-throats clan squabbling in Newport Beach, Calif.

A wicked homage to the scandals of Enron and Tyco and a loopy foreshadowing of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, "Arrested" premiered in 2003 as a sendup of high-end vanities, greed and corruption as displayed within the Bluth family circle.

Besides de Rossi, Cera and Bateman, the cast of "Arrested" Redux brings back Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter, who reconvened in a strategic yet catch-as-catch-can fashion.

"There was no reality where we could get everybody for a full 7- or 8-month period," explains Hurwitz. "That gave birth to the form we came up with for the new series."

The 15 episodes dwell on individual characters during the six-year span from when the series was canceled in 2006 up through 2012. That structure was supposed to make it simple to book each actor for an isolated shooting schedule.

Then Hurwitz took his creativity another step. Since all the episodes are happening simultaneously, he couldn't resist including crossover appearances from other actors in each episode. He wanted characters and story lines from different episodes to intersect. But his ambition made it all the trickier getting all the actors he needed in place for any given episode.

"In a quarter of the scenes, someone is green-screened in," says Hurwitz, who goes on to concede that what began as a solution to a problem of logistics inspired him to create new problems for himself. For instance: "If two characters are having a conversation in one of those characters' episodes and that character's life changes, then in the other character's episode you show the other side of the conversation and the result of it on THAT character."

The overall effect is a sort of hypertext array for the 15 episodes.

"Mitch made it a choose-your-own-adventure season, in that you can watch any episode out of order and it makes sense but, depending on which order you watch them, the series kind of tells a different story," says de Rossi (who plays spoiled materialist sister Lindsay).

Not that "Arrested Development" has ever chosen the simple or obvious path. From the start, it was dense, convoluted and layered, packed with sight gags, self-referential jokes, flashbacks, hand-held cinematography with run-on sequences (promoting improvisation to enhance Hurwitz's scripts) and, of course, its droll, documentarylike narration by Ron Howard, one of the show's executive producers.

On Fox, the show won six Emmys and a Peabody as well as critics' love while always fighting for its life in the ratings. But Hurwitz is philosophical about the obstacles his show has faced. They seem to have given him license to obliterate boundaries that otherwise would have hemmed him in.

"All of the limitations," he says brightly, "are great creative opportunities."

That applied to the new episodes' shooting pace, which Arnett describes as "run-and-gun and crazy."

"But it really worked to our advantage. It was 'OK, get over here, here we go,' and we were right back into it," says Arnett (who plays Lindsay's older brother, Gob, a preening, mediocre stage magician). "After working together on the series before, all of us just kind of knew what we're doing. There's an implicit trust there. I know that sounds corny, but it's true."

This is a mutual admiration society: The cast heaps praise on Hurwitz, who volleys it back at his actors. And they all join in celebrating "Arrested" viewers, but for whom the show would be long dead and forgotten.

"There are way, way more fans of 'The Big Bang Theory,'" notes David Cross (who plays Tobius Funke, a quack-psychiatrist-turned-actor-wannabe). "But they're not as passionate as 'Arrested Development' fans because there's more to be passionate about."

"In either a conscious or unconscious way, our audience thinks and rightly so it's THEIR show," says Jeffrey Tambor (who plays jailbird-patriarch George Bluth Sr.).

"A lot of people have told me over the years that they would build friendships around the show," Ron Howard adds. "They would judge first dates on whether that person likes 'Arrested Development' or not. It was a means of evaluation."

Does that mean there might be children walking around today whose parents were united by "Arrested Development"?

"I think that's fair to assume," Howard says with a laugh.

___

Online:

http://www.netflix.com

___

EDITOR'S NOTE Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org and at http://www.twitter.com/tvfrazier.

Up by 14 in the fourth, the Spurs failed to score in the last four minutes of regulation and were pushed to overtime by the rallying Grizzlies.

However, Duncan scored his team's first six points in the extra session to put the Spurs back on track for the Game Two win. The series now shifts to Memphis for Game Three on Saturday.

Memphis also trailed in their opening two series, against the Clippers and Thunder, and will hope they can once again win four straight to advance.

They have yet to lose a home game during the postseason.

Despite trailing for most of Game Two, the Grizzlies ended the fourth quarter on a high and put in seven unanswered points.

Tony Allen drew a flagrant foul with 26 seconds left and cut the deficit to 85-83 with two free throws and Mike Conley hit a short, game-tying jumper.

But Memphis seemed to lose momentum in overtime and their hopes disappeared when Jerryd Bayless missed a potential game-tying three-pointer in the closing seconds.

Bayless tied Conley for a team-leading 18 points, and Zach Randolph finished with 15 and 18 rebounds.

The Spurs' Duncan finished with a team-high 17 points and nine rebounds while Tony Parker added 15 points, 18 assists and three steals.

(Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

WASHINGTON, May 6, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) today applauded the United States Senate for the passage of The Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 in a 69-27 vote. The bipartisan legislation gives states the authority to choose to require online sellers to collect sales taxes just like brick-and-mortar retailers already do. The bill, which provides a common-sense solution to a decades-old problem that has created a distorted marketplace, is designed to promote fairness and compliance, without burdening free enterprise.

"The shopping center industry would like to thank Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) for their resolute dedication to moving this critical piece of legislation through the Senate," said Michael P. Kercheval, president and CEO of ICSC. "The Marketplace Fairness Act creates a fair marketplace that protects retailers, restores the states' ability to manage their own fiscal policies and strengthens the United States' free enterprise system."

Sixty-nine Senators from both parties voted in favor of S. 743, demonstrating the tremendous momentum for creating a fair, competitive marketplace. The bipartisan passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act sends a strong message to the House of Representatives, where a companion bill, H.R. 684, was introduced in February.

"For the past two decades, the retail environment has dramatically changed. To keep pace with those changes, our laws must evolve," said Betsy Laird, senior vice president of global public policy of ICSC. "The Senate acknowledged this through the passage of this legislation and we now look to the House to continue the momentum and bring H.R. 684 to a vote."

ICSC has promoted sales tax fairness for over a decade, advocating that a "sale is a sale" regardless of whether the purchase takes place on Main Street, at shopping centers, over the Internet or with a smart phone. For more information about sales tax fairness and how the current sales tax system is unable to support the 21st century retail marketplace please visit .

About ICSC Founded in 1957, ICSC is the premier global trade association of the shopping center industry. Its more than 58,000 members in over 90 countries include shopping center owners, retailers, developers, managers, marketing specialists, investors, and brokers as well as academics and public officials. As the global industry trade association, ICSC links with more than 25 national and regional shopping center councils throughout the world. For more information, visit

SOURCE International Council of Shopping Centers

Douglas Shulman, the former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, said today he was "dismayed and saddened" that his agency had improperly targeting conservative groups, but declined to offer a direct apology and dismissed suggestions that he mislead Congress.

The testimony from Shulman, who was making his first public appearance since the IRS controversy broke into the open two weeks ago, did not satisfy members of the Senate Finance Committee. He faced more than three hours of stern questioning from Democrats and Republicans, but said "I don't believe I was aware" when asked why he had not informed Congress about potential problems percolating at the IRS office in Cincinnati.

"I agree that this is an issue that when someone spotted it, they should have brought it up the chain and they didn't," Shulman said. "Why they didn't, I don't know."

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Shulman, who was first appointed by President George W. Bush, acknowledged that the scandal had placed a "blemish" on the IRS. But he said the task facing the IRS was "very, very, very, very difficult," given the rapid rise of groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Shulman, whose term ended last year, said he was aware back then that the inspector general overseeing the IRS was reviewing reports of conservative groups' being targeted. But he said he didn't know the details and only became aware of them recently, six months after leaving his post.

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He said he was not directly involved with approving tax-exempt requests by groups. He said he thought it would be "inappropriate to get involved with cases" because he was a political appointee.

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the committee, ordered a second round of questioning after he said the answers had been unsatisfactory.

"The American people have every right to be outraged," the Democrat said.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was among the committee members who expressed outrage with Shulman.

"The buck doesn't stop with you?" asked Cornyn, who repeatedly pressed for an apology.

"I certainly am not personally responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it," Shulman said.

He added, "This happened on my watch. I very much regret that this happened on my watch."

With a stern tone, Cornyn replied, "I don't think that qualifies as an apology."

The senators also repeatedly pressed Steven Miller, the outgoing acting IRS commissioner who was dismissed last week by President Obama, for new details about what officials in Washington were aware of the targeting practices - and when.

Miller said he assumed responsibility for the unusual nature of how the controversy burst into public view. A question was planted at a May 10 meeting with tax lawyers, a week before the Treasury Department's inspector general was set to release an investigation accusing the IRS of misconduct in its treatment of tea party and other conservative groups.

"We thought we'd get out an apology," Miller said. "Obviously, the entire thing was an incredibly bad idea."

As he did during an appearance before a House committee last week, Miller also apologized "for the mistakes made and the poor service."

He said "partisanship or the perception of partisanship does not belong in the IRS," but adding that the decisions were not politically motivated.

"I think foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient," Miller said, "not partisan."

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the committee, pressed the two IRS officials on why they have not corrected their previous testimony to Congress when they denied that tea party and other conservative groups were being singled out for exhaustive reviews. He accused Miller of committing a "lie by omission."

"Why did you mislead me?" Hatch said.

"I did not lie, sir," Miller replied.

The inspector general overseeing the IRS, J. Russell George, said he had no reason to believe the conservative groups were targeted because of political bias by IRS agents. But he said his office continued to investigate.

"This matter is not over as far as we are concerned," George said.

In a country with the highest homicide rate in the world and where only a fraction of crimes are prosecuted, the victims' families say the police are literally getting away with murder.

In March, two mothers discovered the bodies of their sons after the men had called in a panic to say they were surrounded by armed, masked police.The young men, both members of the 18th Street gang, had been shot in the head, their hands bound so tightly the cords cut to the bone.

That was shortly after three members of 18th Street were detained by armed, masked men and taken to a police station. Two men with no criminal history were released, but their friend disappeared without any record of his detention.

A month after the AP reported that an 18th Street gang leader and his girlfriend vanished from police custody, they are still missing.

The 18th Street gang and another known as Mara Salvatrucha are the country's biggest gangs, formed by Central American immigrants in U.S. prisons who later overran this small Central American country as their members were deported back home. Both engage in dealing drugs and charging extortion fees under threat of death. Now the 18th Street gang says its members are being targeted by police death squads, described by witnesses as heavily armed masked men in civilian dress and bullet-proof vests who kill or "disappear" gang members instead of bringing them to justice.

In the last two years, the United States has given an estimated $30 million in aid to Honduran law enforcement. The U.S. State Department says it faces a dilemma: The police are essential to fighting crime in a country that has become a haven for drug-runners.It estimates that 40 percent of the cocaine headed to the U.S. and 87 percent of cocaine smuggling flights from South America pass through Honduras.

"The option is that if we don't work with the police, we have to work with the armed forces, which almost everyone accepts to be worse than the police in terms of ... taking matters in their own hands," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield told the AP via live chat on March 28."Although the national police may have its defects at the moment, it is the lesser evil."

Alba Mejia, Deputy Director of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, said her group has documented hundreds of death squad cases in the country since 2000. The squads burst into homes with no warrants and take away young men, she said.

"We are convinced that there is a government policy of killing gang members and that there is a team dedicated to this activity," Mejia said. Federal prosecutors say they have received about 150 complaints about similar raids in the capital of Tegucigalpa over the last three years.

The 18th Street gang originated in Los Angeles and spread through Central America after many of its members were deported in the 1980s and early 1990s. In Honduras, the gang controls entire neighborhoods, with entrance impossible for outsiders, while gangsters extort what is called a "war tax" on small business owners and taxi drivers, even schools and corporations.

Drug cartels, which are much larger than the gangs, oversee the movement of cocaine from South America northward to the United States. It is widely believed that the cartels pay the gangs in drugs for protection and assistance in moving the narcotics, and as a result the gangs fight each other over the territory.

Honduran National Police spokesman Julian Hernandez Reyes denied the existence of police units operating outside the law. He asserted that the two gangs are murdering each other while disguised as law enforcement.

"There are no police death squads in Honduras," Hernandez said in an interview. "The only squads in place are made of police officers who give their lives for public safety."

But there is mounting evidence of the existence of squads of police in civilian dress, apparently engaged in illegal executions.

An AP reporter covering the aftermath of an April 7 shootout between police and gang members saw one such squad, whose masked members were directing more than 100 uniformed policemen in an offensive against gang members. The officers had surrounded a house where two gangsters had holed up after a chase with police. Witnesses said that when one walked out with his hands up, masked police shot him dead. "Killers! Killers!" a crowd of women shouted.

Last year, the U.S. Congress withheld direct aid to Honduran police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla after he was appointed to the top law enforcement post despite alleged links to death squads a decade earlier.Bonilla, nicknamed "the Tiger," was accused in a 2002 internal affairs report of involvement in three homicides and linked to 11 other deaths and disappearances. He was tried in one killing and acquitted. The rest of the cases were never fully investigated.

The U.S. State Department has resumed funding to the Honduran police, but said the money only supports units vetted by the U.S. So far this year, the U.S. has provided $16 million to the police force, and argued last month that the money isn't sent directly to Bonilla or any of his top 20 officers.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the State Department and foreign operations, has led a group in Congress concerned about the alleged human rights abuses, and has held up $10 million, despite State Department pressure.

"A key question is whether we should provide aid, and if so under what conditions, to a police force that is frequently accused of corruption and involvement in violent crimes," Leahy said. "If there is to be any hope of making real progress against lawlessness in Honduras, we need people there we can trust, who will do what is necessary to make the justice system work. That is the least Congress should expect."

Two weeks before a visit to Central America by President Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey toured Honduras amid questions over how U.S. aid is spent.

"I understand that there are concerns among my colleagues in both the Senate and House about certain U.S. assistance to Honduras," said Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee."The U.S. has a moral and legal authority to ensure U.S. assistance is not tainted by human rights concerns."

The latest string of attacks began with gang leader Kevin Carranza Padilla, who disappeared with his girlfriend, Cindy Yadira Garcia, on Jan. 10. Witnesses said he was arrested, and a police photo leaked to the local press showed Carranza with his hands tied and face duct-taped.The couple has not been seen since, and police say they were never arrested.

In March, Carranza's close friend, Billy "Babyface" Jovel Mejia, 23, and another gang member, Wilder Javier "Sadboy" Alvarado, 20, were on the run, changing houses every couple of days, when they called a friend to say they had been surrounded by police.

A woman named Kelsa, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of reprisals, had helped the two hide out. She told the AP of a call one night from a panicked Jovel, whom she quoted as saying: "The police are coming for us. They are going to enter the house. Tell our families that they are coming to kill us."

"I could hear pounding." she said. "Billy told me he couldn't explain what house they were at. ... I could hear screams. Billy left the phone and then the call dropped."

As often happens in such cases, his mother, Maria Elena Garcia, went from station to station in search of information from police.

"I went to the 4th district, from there they sent me to the 7th, then to the metropolitan police headquarters," Garcia said. "At 5 a.m. they called me to tell me that they had found two bodies."

Garcia and Alvarado's mother identified their sons, whose bodies were found dumped at the edge of the capital. Each had a single 9 millimeter gunshot to the head, and their hands were tightly bound. Jovel was missing his right eye, Alvarado his left.

"The blood was still fresh and the bullets were still there," Garcia said.

Alvarado's mother, Norma, said police had raided her home at least six times in search of her son in a neighborhood called the United States, one of many named for a country.

She described the same routine each time: They would come in civilian clothes with bullet-proof vests and ski masks and identify themselves as police. They were teams of six to eight men in large, expensive SUVs without license plates.

"There were times when I would close the door to give him time to escape," she said. "They even came on New Year's Eve."

In the middle of the night on Feb. 14, six masked men who identified themselves as police took Alvarado's 13-year-old grandson.

She told them he was studying, that he was a good boy.

"I begged them not to take him, not to kill him," Alvarado told the AP, crying. "There was only one car outside our door, but at each end of the street there were more cars. It was a big operation."

The boy, whose name is being withheld because he is a minor, said in an interview that they covered his face with his own shirt and pushed him to the floor of the SUV. Two agents kept him down with their feet while another drove the car around for half an hour, asking about Wilder, the boy's cousin.

"They wanted to know where my brother was. They thought Wilder was my brother. They wanted to know where the weapons were," the boy said. "They kept punching me, and because I wasn't telling them anything, they would punch me more."

The boy was taken to an office.

"They were six men. I could only see them when they took the shirt off of my face to put a black, plastic bag over my head. They always wore the ski masks. I was sitting down and they were asphyxiating me with the bag.When I would faint they would beat me up to wake me up and they would do it again," he recalled.

The boy said he could see photos of 18th Street gang members pinned to the walls.

He doesn't know why, but suddenly they let him go, and the following day his family filed a complaint with the prosecutors' office.They have heard nothing about the investigation.

The 18th Street gang leaders told the AP that the attacks against its members are not the work of rival gangs. Members say police have declared war on them, especially in the southeast Tegucigalpa neighborhood once led by Carranza.

Carranza's partner, Elvin Escoto Sandoval, known as "Splinter," was detained by police on March 13, according to his wife, Doris Ramirez, now seven months pregnant with their first child. Nilson Alejandro "The Squirrel" Padilla, 21, said he was taken into custody along with Splinter and another member identified only as "Chifaro."

"There were seven in civilian clothes, bulletproof vests, ski masks, automatic rifles, and a police badge hanging with a string from their neck. They pushed me against the ground and told me not to lift my head. They were traveling in two cars," Padilla recalled.

"They took us to the National Criminal Investigations offices," he added. "They told me and Chifaro that we didn't have a record and we were released that afternoon. They didn't even question us."

By then, Ramirez was at the station, asking police about the fate of her husband, "Splinter."

Police told her they had only detained two men, not three, she said.

"We then went to all the police stations in the area and finally filed a complaint on his disappearance at the police headquarters," she said.

Ramirez still goes to the morgue every time she hears of an unidentified body. She has also been to the "little mountain," a known dumping ground outside Tegucigalpa for bodies of murdered young men. Her husband has disappeared.

Chifaro is missing now, too.

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Associated Press writer Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington contributed to this report.