Death certificate details Boston suspect's wounds

BOSTON - A suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso, a funeral director said Friday.

Worcester funeral home owner Peter Stefan has 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body and read details from his death certificate. The certificate cites Tsarnaev's "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities" and lists the time of his death as 1:35 a.m. on April 19, four days after the deadly bombing, Stefan said.

Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with authorities who had launched a massive manhunt for him and his brother, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago. Police have said he ran out of ammunition before his younger brother dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing.

Tsarnaev's family on Friday was making arrangements for his funeral as investigators searched the woods near a college attended by 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured less than a day after his brother's death.

Israel launches airstrike at Syria weapons site

WASHINGTON -Israel launched an airstrike into Syria, apparently targeting a suspected weapons site, U.S. officials said Friday night.

The strike occurred overnight Thursday into Friday, the officials told The Associated Press. It did not appear that a chemical weapons site was targeted, they said, and one official said the strike appeared to have hit a warehouse.

The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Israel has targeted weapons in the past that it believes are being delivered to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Earlier this week, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said his group would assist Syrian President Bashar Assad if needed in the effort to put down a 2-year-old uprising.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Aaron Sagui would not comment Friday night specifically on the report of an Israeli strike into Syria.

Obama: We won't send ground troops to Syria

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - President Barack Obama said Friday he doesn't foresee any circumstance requiring the U.S. to send ground troops into Syria, even as Washington pursues more evidence about the regime's purported use of chemical weapons.

"I do not foresee a scenario in which boots on the ground in Syria, American boots on the ground, would not only be good for America but also would be good for Syria," Obama said at a news conference.

The president's declaration was in line with the apparent prevailing sentiment in Washington. Even one of Obama's chief antagonists on Syria, Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., has said he does not advocate sending ground troops, arguing that would be "the worst thing the United States could do right now."

Obama also said he had consulted with Mideast leaders who want to see Syrian President Bashar Assad's departure and agree with his assessment that the U.S. shouldn't send ground forces. After long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, another U.S. intervention in the region could further inflame anti-American sentiment.

Let's move past drugs, Obama tells leaders

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - President Barack Obama came to Latin America eager to move the region's relationship with the U.S. beyond fighting drugs and organized crime, yet the pervasive problems still trailed him throughout his three-day trip to Mexico and Costa Rica.

In the Costa Rican capital Friday, Obama defended his administration's efforts to stem U.S. demand for drugs that many regional leaders see as a driving factor in their security issues. He said the U.S. and Latin America share "common effects and common responsibilities" for the troubles and argued that his country has suffered from the drug epidemic as well.

"There's a cost obviously in the United States as well," Obama said during a joint news conference with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla. "It's not as if we don't have tragic drug problems in the United States."

The president singled out the violence that has raged in his hometown of Chicago, where the murder rate has soared, saying there are young people killed there "every day as part of the drug trade."

Experimental plane reaches hypersonic speed

LOS ANGELES - An experimental, unmanned aircraft developed for the U.S. Air Force went hypersonic during a test off the Southern California coast, traveling at more than 3,000 mph, the Air Force said Friday.

The X-51A WaveRider flew for more than three minutes under power from its exotic scramjet engine and hit a speed of Mach 5.1, or more than five times the speed of sound.

The test on Wednesday marked the fourth and final flight of an X-51A by the Air Force, which has spent $300 million studying scramjet technology that it hopes can be used to deliver strikes around the globe within minutes.

The previous three flights ended in failure or didn't reach the intended speed.

Though the WaveRider was designed to reach Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound, program officials were satisfied with its performance in the latest test.

- The Associated Press