Seven days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the city planned to mark the traumatic week with mournful silence and a return to its bustling commute.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick asked residents to observe a moment of silence at 2:50pm, the time the first of the two bombs exploded near the finish line. Bells were scheduled to ring across the city and state after the minute-long tribute to the victims.
Many Boston residents returned to the workplaces and schools for the first time since a dramatic week came to an even more dramatic end.
Photo: EPA
Authorities on Friday had made the unprecedented request that residents stay at home during the manhunt for suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He was discovered that evening hiding in a boat covered by a tarp in suburban Watertown. His older brother Tamerlan was earlier killed during a getaway attempt.
“It’s surreal,” Barbara Alton said as she walked her dog along Newbury Street. “But I feel like things are starting to get back to normal.”
In another sign of progress, city officials on Sunday said they were beginning the process of reopening to the public the six-block site around the bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 180.
Tsarnaev remains hospitalized and unable to speak, with a gunshot wound to the throat. He was expected to be charged by federal authorities.
The 19-year-old also is likely to face state charges in connection with the fatal shooting of MIT police officer Sean Collier in Cambridge, said Stephanie Guyotte, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex District Attorney’s office.
A private funeral was scheduled for today for Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant worker killed in the blasts.
A memorial service was scheduled for tonight at Boston University for 23-year-old Lu Lingzi (呂令子), a graduate student from China.
City churches on Sunday paused to mourn the dead as the city’s police commissioner said the two suspects had such a large cache of weapons that they were probably planning other attacks.
After the two brothers engaged in a gun battle with police early on Friday, authorities found many unexploded homemade bombs at the scene, along with more than 250 rounds of ammunition.
Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the stockpile was “as dangerous as it gets in urban policing.”
“We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene — the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had — that they were going to attack other individuals. That’s my belief at this point,” Davis told CBS’s Face the Nation.
On Fox News Sunday, he said authorities could not be positive there are not more explosives somewhere that have not been found, but the people of Boston are safe. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia. The motive for the bombings remained unclear.
Senator Dan Coats, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the surviving brother’s throat wound raised questions about when he will be able to talk again, if ever.
The wound “doesn’t mean he can’t communicate, but right now I think he’s in a condition where we can’t get any information from him at all,” Coats told ABC’s This Week.
It was not clear whether Tsarnaev was shot by police or inflicted the wound himself.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese