Leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and other Jewish organizations gathered last week at the first Jewish Communal Security Summit in New York to strategize with top experts in the field how best to keep the community safe.Security providers from around the country had a chance to learn about best practices in threat assessment and response in the current climate.

In March 2011, after being contacted by the Russian security services, the CIA added the name of Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the U.S. government’s terror watchlist. DHS secretary Janet Napolitano said that Tamerlan’s travel to Dagestan, and his arrival back in the United States, were “pinged” by the department. Leading lawmakers have raised questions about whether the U.S. intelligence community and law enforcement agencies have dropped the ball on the Tsarnaev brothers.

More details have emerged to shed light on the last few hours before 19-year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured hiding on a boat in Watertown, Massachusetts. Tsarnaev had no weapons or explosives with him in the boat where he was hiding. Boston police officers say that the heavy fire directed at the boat was probably the result of chaos of the moment. In a tense and charged atmosphere, one accidental shot could have caused what police call “contagious fire.” Tsarnaev sustained severe injuries, some of them to his neck and lower jaw, preventing him from talking. This led to rumors in the press that he tried to take his own life, but failed. We now know that he could not have tried to take his life because he had no firearms with him on the boat.

Reactions to the Boston Marathon bombings could become threaten the passage of immigration reform in Congress. Conservative Republicans who oppose an immigration reform along the lines offered by the bipartisan Gang of Eight have spoken out on the Hill, talk radio, and social networks saying that the bill should be reconsidered in light of the fact that  the suspects were born outside the United States.

In 2011, at the request of Russia, the FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsatnaev to see whether he was affiliated with Chechen Islamic terrorist networks. The FBI’s investigation did not find anything, and his case was dropped. In the months following the questioning, Tsarnaev adopted more radical views, and gave expression to his militant views on his Facebook page. Even though his name was already in the FBI’s files, the agency’s ability to continue tracking him was limited by law. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) wants Congress to see whether the FBI’s authority to track extremist activity in the United States should be expanded.

Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Representative Peter King (R-New York), the former chairman of the committee, sent a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking answers about the Tamerlan Tsarnaev investigation by the FBI.In 2011, Russian security authorities requested that the FBI question Tsarnaev on suspicion that he was affiliated with Islamic Chechen insurgents, but after interviewing Tsarnaev and doing a background check, the FBI concluded there was not enough to justify continuing tracking of cTamerlan.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, was captured Friday evening. The 19-year old suspect was found, covered in blood, on a boat which was parked in the backyard of a house on Franklin Street in Watertown, covered with a tarp. The police used a robot to remove the tarp off the boat. After trying to negotiate with the suspect, a SWAT team stormed the boat and captured the suspect. He was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is listed in serious condition.

Boston police earlier this morning shot and killed one of the suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing. The shooting took place in Watertown, a suburb of Boston. The police says that suspect no. 1 – the one seen wearing a dark baseball cap in the images the FBI releases Thursday afternoon – was apparently killed by an explosive device he was carrying on him or with him. The explosives went off after an exchange of heavy fire with the police.

Timothy McVeigh used two tons of fertilizer and $3,000 of racing fuel to detonate a bomb outside the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The blast killed 168 people. The Obama administration is currently not allocating money or resources to preventing fertilizer bombing attacks like the one McVeigh used, according to a former DHS official with direct knowledge of the department’s budgeting and operations.