Breaking News – 3 more bombing suspects in custody

BOSTON (AP) — Three more suspects have been taken into custody in the marathon bombings, city police said Wednesday.

The police department made the announcement in a tweet Wednesday morning, saying more details would follow. Police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca confirmed the tweet but referred all other questions to the FBI.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured on April 15 when two bombs exploded near the finish line.

Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with police several days later. His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured and lies in a hospital prison.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s relatives will claim his body now that his wife has agreed to release it, an uncle said. Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner’s office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, the Rhode Island attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to releaseTsarnaev’s body and that she wants it released to his side of the family.

Police said Tsarnaev ran out of ammunition before his 19-year-old brother dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing the scene. His cause of death has been determined but will not be made public until his remains are claimed.

“Of course, family members will take possession of the body,” uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. “We’ll do it. We will do it. A family is a family.”

He would not elaborate. Tsarnaev’s parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives on his side of the family in the U.S., including Tsarni.

Tsarnaev’s father, Anzor, announced plans last week to travel to the U.S. in the hope of burying his elder son, but he told the AP on Wednesday that those plans are off because he is suffering from bad headaches and high blood pressure. The 46-year-old Tsarnaev said he still hopes to go when he is feeling better.

Dzhokhar was wounded in the shootout with police as he and his brother made their getaway attempt. He is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill, a crime that carries a potential death sentence.

Russian agents placed the older suspect under surveillance during a six-month visit to southern Russia last year, then scrambled to find him when he suddenly disappeared after police killed a Canadian jihadist, a security official told the AP.

U.S. law enforcement officials have been trying to determine whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev was indoctrinated or trained by militants during his visit to Dagestan, a Caspian Sea province that has become the center of a simmering Islamic insurgency.

The security official with the Anti-Extremism Center, a federal agency under Russia’s Interior Ministry, confirmed the Russians shared their concerns. He said that Russian agents were watching Tsarnaev, and that they searched for him when he disappeared two days after the July 2012 death of the Canadian man, who had joined the Islamic insurgency in the region. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Security officials suspected ties between Tsarnaev and the Canadian — an ethnic Russian named William Plotnikov — according to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which is known for its independence and investigative reporting and cited an unnamed official with the Anti-Extremism Center, which tracks militants. The newspaper said the men had social networking ties that brought Tsarnaev to the attention of Russian security services for the first time in late 2010.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday at a news conference that the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy “did what it was supposed to be doing” before the Boston Marathon bombing as his top intelligence official began a review into whether sensitive information was adequately shared and whether the U.S. government could have disrupted the attack.

“We want to go back and we want to review every step that was taken,” Obama said. “We want to leave no stone unturned. We want to see, is there in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack.”

In Rhode Island, DeLuca said Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow met with law enforcement “for many hours over the past week” and will continue cooperating. FBI agents on Monday visited her parents’ North Kingstown, R.I., home, where she has been staying, and carried away several bags.

“Katherine and her family continue to be deeply saddened by the harm that has been caused,” DeLuca said Tuesday.

Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday evening that the state had not yet received Russell’s request to release her husband’s body.

He said arrangements must be made to release the body and once that happens a death certificate will be filed and the cause of death made public. He said it is too soon to speculate on when that might happen.

Airline Reunites Boy With Deceased Dad’s ‘Daddy Shirt’

A 7-year-old boy from Casselton, N.D., who lost his dad also lost his most prized possession — his father’s shirt — on a March 27 Delta flight from Fargo to San Diego.
Cole Holzer’s dad died two years ago when he fell hanging Christmas lights, ABC affiliate WDAY reported. The well-worn Nike shirt that goes with Cole everywhere was the one his dad, Bryan, was wearing when he died.
“Ever since he will lay out and spray his dad’s cologne on it and cuddle up with it and sing the daddy song to go to bed,” Tonya Holzer, Cole’s mom, told the station.
But in the rush to leave the plane when it landed, the shirt was left behind. The family didn’t realize it until they were driving away from the airport.
“I started to cry a little bit,” Cole told the station.
A letter written to the airline by a family friend who was instrumental in the recovery of the shirt describes how Delta employees went above and beyond to get Cole’s dad’s shirt back, even digging through the garbage to find it. A copy of the letter was obtained by ABC News.
Kelly Cruchet’s letter details the phone call to the Delta 800 number and how that employee called all over the San Diego airport looking for the shirt. The plane the Holzers had been on had just left San Diego for Minneapolis. Eventually, Cruchet got in touch with Delta’s Lost & Found at the San Diego airport. Vicki Katseanes, another Delta employee, said she would check with the cleaning crew.
In the meantime, Cruchet sent out emails and posted on Facebook, hoping to find someone who would meet the plane in Minneapolis and see if the shirt was still onboard. Her request was seen by a Delta pilot, Mike McLean, who called her and said he would try to contact ground control and see if they could get in touch with the gate.
“I then got the heartbreaking call from Vicki that the cleaning crew never found it, I thanked her and we ended the call,” Cruchet’s letter said. “A short time later she called back and said she had been in contact with Alfredo, a Delta ramp supervisor. They wanted to confirm their names to confirm their flight and rows and said they were going to start looking through garbage!”
Thirty minutes later, the call came: They found the daddy shirt.
Cole and his mom went back to the airport to meet Vicki and get the shirt. “They cried all the way back to the airport,” the letter said. It was then they were able to start their family vacation.
So what does Delta have to say? Spokesperson Michael Thomas told ABC News, “Efforts made to reunite this very special shirt with this customer and his family is another fantastic example of Delta people going above and beyond for our customers and truly speaks to the culture of our dedicated employees.”
“We all miss Bryan so much,” Cruchet wrote, “and I so wish Cole had his daddy here to watch him play flag football and baseball and basketball and wrestling – but we all know he is watching them from up above (and as Cole tells my son and all his buddies, ‘my dad plays basketball on team heaven!’). I want to thank all involved today for what they did for this little boy they had never met – as a friend stated, ‘Delta allowed a daddy to still be there for his little boy’…even if he can’t be with him on earth. You all went so far above and beyond and the statement I made to Vicki goes to all of you: YOU ARE MY FAVORITE PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET!”

Cole Holzer

Cole Holzer – curiosity of Good Morning America

Timeline of the hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

BOSTON (AP) — Key moments related to the search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, based on reports from the Middlesex County district attorney, Massachusetts State Police and Boston police.
— At 5:10 p.m. Thursday, investigators of the bombings release photographs and video of two suspects. They ask for the public’s help in identifying the men.
— Around 10:20 p.m., shots are fired on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, just outside Boston.
— At 10:30 p.m., an MIT campus police officer who was responding to a disturbance is found shot multiple times in his vehicle, apparently in a confrontation with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. He is later pronounced dead.
— Shortly afterward, two armed men reportedly carjack a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge. A man who was in the vehicle is held for about a half hour and then released unharmed at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge.
— Police soon pursue the carjacked vehicle in Watertown, just west of Cambridge.
— Some kind of explosive devices are thrown from the vehicle in an apparent attempt to stop police. The carjackers and police exchange gunfire. A transit police officer is seriously injured. One suspect, later identified as Suspect No. 1 in the marathon bombings, is critically injured and later pronounced dead.— Authorities launch a manhunt for the other suspect.
— Around 1 a.m. Friday, gunshots and explosions are heard in Watertown. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents converge on a Watertown neighborhood. A helicopter circles overhead.

Explosion reported near finish line of Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon headquarters has been locked down after an explosion was reported near the finish line, a spokesman told Reuters.

Flo’s missing!!!!!

A missing family member is such a sad thing to bear. Please call the number provided if you have any information. Thanks and God Bless You!

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Binge drinking – an unrecognized problem of young women

Submitted by Nancy Morris

 

It’s the weekend and a college-educated woman heads home from a long week of work. Rather than a single glass of wine or beer, a startling number of young women binge drink to blow off steam.

Approximately 14 million women in the U.S. binge drink regularly. Binge drinking is defined as consuming four or more drinks in one occasion for females.

According to a 2011 survey by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 12.5 percent of females between 18-24 binge drink about three times a month, more than any other age bracket of women. Binge drinking is related to half of the 23,000 annual alcohol-related deaths of American women.

“It is a Guildford Women Drinkerscommon misconception that men are the drinkers to watch out for,” Karen Pershing, MDC executive director, said. “It is important that people learn the true facts about the drinking habits of young females.”

One possible cause of this trend may be found in advertising practices. Thanks to advanced marketing techniques, alcohol companies appeal to young women with fruity, soda-like drinks, such as wine coolers that serve as alternatives to beer.

New is not always the best

By Nancy Morris

Sometimes the old way of doing things is the best way. Just ask Randall Scott Johnson, 38, of LaFollette.

Johnson was trying out a new method for manufacturing meth when his concoction exploded, set his mother’s house on fire, and burned him.

Johnson told authorities that he was making the meth in an out building near his mother’s mobile home. The experiment blew up and he suffered burns on his face, neck, arms, and hands. The building was destroyed as well as the siding on his mother’s home.

After officers found ingredients for making meth and receipts for the products, Johnson said he was making the drug for his own personal use.

He’s charged with arson and making meth.

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