It’s a week since the three people died and more than 180 were injured when two young men from Boston planted pressure-cooker bombs planted with nails and ball bearings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. We will be covering the day live. Here's a summary of where things stand.
• A memorial silence will be held in Boston today at 2.50pm, at the time the bombs went off last Monday. Bells will toll across the city and Massachusetts after the minute-long tribute. Boston residents are back at work and school for the first time since the manhunt ended with a virtual lockdown on the city and surrounding areas on Friday.
• The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, remains under armed guard at Beth Israel medical center in Boston. Tsarnaev is thought to have suffered a gunshot wound to the neck, which has prevented him speaking. It was not clear whether Tsarnaev was shot himself or was shot by police. There are reports this morning that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been communicating in a limited fashion, either in writing or by using hand signals.
• Charges are expected to be laid against Tsarnaev in the coming days. He is likely to face federal charges in connection with the bombings and state charges related to the fatal shooting of a police officer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology force. The most serious federal charge available to prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. The state of Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.
• The question of how and where Tamerlan Tsarnaev developed his alleged radical views on Islam remains open. His parents said on Sunday that he came to Dagestan and Chechnya last year to visit relatives and had nothing to do with the militants operating in the area. But other acquaintances have described his interest in religion while he was there.
• A lawyer for Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife has said that the FBI have asked to speak to her. Amato DeLuca said Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, who lives in Rhode Island, said she was not a suspect. She had not yet spoken with the FBI, he said on Sunday, and was discussing with him how to proceed.
• Another line of inquiry is how the brothers’ obtained the firearms they were alleged to have used in the shootouts with police on Thursday night. That part of the inquiry will be led by te federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. According to AP, neither of the brothers had permission to carry a gun. Cambridge police commissioner Robert Haas said it was unclear whether either of them ever applied for a gun permit. But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is 19, would have been denied a permit based on his age – the minimum age for gun licenses in Massachusetts is 21.
• The Boston transit officer who was wounded in a shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers on Thursday, Richard Donohue, was still seriously ill in a Cambridge hospital. Doctors there said he had lost nearly all his blood, and his heart had stopped from a single gunshot wound that severed three major blood vessels in his right thigh. He is in a critical but stable condition, but according to the AP has opened his eyes, moved his hands and feet and squeezed his wife's hand Sunday.
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