The starkly new face of the Netherlands' monarchy

AMSTERDAM — Even by the unconventional standards of the Dutch, their new king is going to be a bit of a novelty.

He has a license to fly commercial airliners. He's married to a South American, a lively Argentine who's more popular than he is. He says he won't mind it if people fail to address him as "Your Majesty" because he's no "protocol fetishist" — an amusing description here in a city that caters to nearly every fetish imaginable.

But his biggest break with Dutch history of the last 120 years is the simple fact that he's a he. Queens have reigned over the Netherlands since 1890, a matriarchy that will come to an end Tuesday when Crown Prince Willem-Alexander is sworn in as monarch.

His soon-to-be subjects are taking the shift in stride, though no one alive today can recall a time when people spoke of their koning (king) rather than their koningin (queen).

"It's strange," 68-year-old Ineke Flier says, rolling the word around in her mouth. "But he's nice.… He can do a lot of good things for Holland."

Chief among his duties will be to represent the Netherlands as its head of state, its standard-bearer around the world. Here at home, he's supposed to be the uniter-in-chief, a symbol of Dutch identity, cohesion and continuity.

But some are wondering whether things will feel different when the nation's public face is one that has whiskers. The last king was Willem-Alexander's great-great-grandfather, Willem III; first-born daughters of the House of Orange-Nassau have succeeded him since. (In the Netherlands, the monarch's eldest child is heir to the throne regardless of gender, unlike in Britain, where a son takes precedence over older sisters. The British Parliament is currently amending that rule.)

"Having a female head of state has been so much the style that [there's] a kind of feeling it's going to be harder for a male to fit the mold," says James Kennedy, a historian at the University of Amsterdam. "Some people say that the Dutch monarchy has taken on … a caring, nurturing style — the maternal thing. How is Willem-Alexander going to be able to do that?"

The prince, who turned 46 on Saturday, will also be the youngest sovereign in Europe, where most of the remaining crowned heads are gray (or balding).

But that doesn't faze his compatriots, who are confident that his feckless days as "Prince Pils," the nickname he earned as a beer-swilling college student, are well behind him.

"He's serious enough to be king," says Flier, a retired designer. "The world is changing. In America it's a young president."

Contrast that with Britain's Prince Charles, who at 64 is seemingly no closer to ascending to the throne than when he was Willem-Alexander's age nearly two decades ago. Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is in excellent health at 87.

In fact, Willem-Alexander's succession is possible only because of a tradition that would horrify the British royals. Beatrix, the prince's 75-year-old mother, is voluntarily stepping down as queen, as did her mother before her, in 1980, and her grandmother, in 1948.

Those abdications, almost in the manner of CEOs opting for a comfortable retirement, illustrate just how different the Dutch royal family is from the House of Windsor.

As institutions of hereditary privilege go, the Dutch monarchy is a relative newcomer, created after the Netherlands won its independence from Napoleon about 200 years ago. It's therefore not so freighted — or burdened — with the same weight of history and expectations that surround its much older British counterpart.

Tuesday's investiture of Willem-Alexander, the oldest of three brothers, isn't even a "coronation." Dutch kings and queens are sworn in, not crowned, during a special joint session of the two chambers of parliament, which form the Netherlands' democratically elected government. The prime minister remains the country's political leader.

"It's often been said that this is a republic ruled over by a monarch," Kennedy says. "There is this kind of notion that the queen or the king really does need to know this was once a republic and that monarchs are kind of guests in the Netherlands. They serve at the pleasure of the people."

Particularly in the 20th century, the Dutch royals have cultivated a far greater sense of informality and closeness to the people than has the British monarchy, which strives to maintain an otherworldly aura through its matchless pomp and circumstance.

Juliana, the present queen's mother, was often seen riding her bicycle in public, sometimes to the supermarket. Today's princes and princesses are expected to hold down "real" jobs, making them more like royal professionals than professional royals. Willem-Alexander's career focus has been water management. (The commercial pilot's license is just a hobby.)

As queen, Beatrix is credited with dispatching her duties with businesslike efficiency and dedication but also with a certain aloofness, in contrast to Juliana's affectionate style.

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With new arrest, ricin case takes a strange turn

TUPELO, Miss. — Federal agents of all sorts invaded northeast Mississippi several days ago, on a mission: Find the man who sent a poison-laced letter to the president. But the United States government quickly found itself entangled, once again, in a misunderstood land dominated by squabbling tribes and petty vengeances.

Agents first arrested an Elvis impersonator, released him, then on Saturday arrested his nemesis, a karate instructor. Gradually investigators concluded that what they had descended upon was probably less about the president — or the U.S. senator and retired state judge who also received letters — than a serious case of indigenous bickering.

That shocks no one here. "Tupelo is a kaleidoscope," said sociologist Mark Franks, who grew up in nearby Booneville. There are true geniuses walking the streets of Tupelo, he said, and incredibly wealthy, generous people. But also, "every wall-eyed uncle and 'yard cousin' — just referencing the local pejorative — makes it into Tupelo, Miss. It creates a peculiar culture."

Tupelo is best known as the hometown of Elvis Presley, after whom it has named streets, waterways and dry cleaners.

Unlike many other Southern towns its size, it boasts several excellent museums, street art and a large public arena. An arena large enough, in fact, to attract the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus this month. That's when someone shot Carol, a circus elephant, in what seems to be the first elephantine drive-by ever. Carol is recovering, but Tupelo Police Capt. Rusty Haynes said his investigation has stalled. "Because, to be honest, there are a lot of possible perpetrators."

So people in the area were bemused more than surprised when the FBI, Secret Service and other agencies showed up looking for the soul who had sent letters laced with ricin to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and retired Mississippi judge Sadie Holland.

The agents quickly nabbed an odd character in nearby Corinth named Paul Kevin Curtis. He worked as an Elvis impersonator, spun wild conspiracies about the local hospital selling body parts and apparently signed the poisoned letters with his own initials.

But the FBI found no evidence of ricin in Curtis' home. No incriminating research on his computer. They decided he hadn't sent the letters after all and released him Tuesday. Within hours agents had raided the home of his archenemy: J. Everett Dutschke, karate instructor.

Curtis claimed Dutschke wanted to frame him. It wouldn't be the first skirmish between Tupelo's most famous son and a karate man. In 1973, several men climbed on stage during a concert by the actual Elvis. Elvis felt threatened and fought the men, alongside his bodyguards. He felt sure the men had been sent by estranged wife Priscilla's new boyfriend, his own personal nemesis: Mike Stone, karate instructor.

Curtis, 45, and Dutschke, 41, seem locked in an elaborate piece of tribute performance art. Their lives have entwined for years, feuding over small-town grievances as labyrinthine and intricate as any global conspiracy. They met in 2005, and were friendly for a time. When he wasn't teaching karate, Dutschke worked for Curtis' brother Jack at an insurance office. Both men knew Sen. Wicker, and both had connections to the 80-year-old Judge Holland.

It's unclear at what moment the hostilities began, but a few years ago Curtis, who worked at the local hospital, developed a theory that doctors were harvesting organs to sell on the black market. He wrote a book about it called "Missing Pieces." Dutschke published a local newsletter at the time, and after some negotiations apparently rejected Curtis' writings.

There was the question, too, of who had the bigger intellect. Dutschke was a member of Mensa, the club for people with high IQs. A few years ago, Curtis posted a fake Mensa certificate on his Facebook page, which sent Dutschke into a rage. "I threatened to sue him for fraud for posting a Mensa certificate that is a lie," Dutschke told Tupelo's newspaper, the Daily Journal. "That certificate is a lie."

"Aw, yeah. I don't know why Kevin did that," Curtis' father, Jack, said recently in Cleveland, Miss. "These boys were just after each other."

Both men have made multiple trips to jail. Curtis was arrested for, among other things, assaulting a Tupelo lawyer — for which he received a six-month sentence from Judge Holland. In January, Tupelo authorities charged Dutschke with molesting children. He pleaded not guilty, but he shut down his karate school, called Tupelo Taekwondo Plus, while awaiting trial.

After the FBI released Curtis, the two enemies' paths diverged. Curtis headed for New York. "Can you believe that?" Jack Curtis said. "Now he's got publishers all trying to jump the gun on each other to publish his book first. Isn't that something?"

Dutschke, meanwhile, watched federal agents in protective masks search his home, his karate studio and his van.

On Wednesday, Dutschke slipped from sight, traveling with his friend Kirk Kitchens to a remote house in neighboring Itawamba County.

They entered the house and turned on the television, then slipped out the back door and down a wooded path, where they met a waiting car, Kitchens later told a Memphis television station.

Itawamba County Sheriff Chris Dickinson said Dutschke had escaped surveillance.

But the next evening, Dutschke pulled into the driveway at his house and stepped from his minivan like a man returning from routine errands.

On Saturday the U.S. attorney charged him with "knowingly developing, producing" and stockpiling ricin. If convicted he faces maximum penalties of life imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

Hours before his arrest, Dutschke answered his door by opening it just enough to look out with one dark eye. He held a kitten, which also looked outside. "I'm sorry, I just...," he started. His voice was soft. "I can't talk. I'm so, so sorry."

Could he say, at least, what started this mess?

"Just look around you," he said. "This place is crazy."

matthew.teague@latimes.com

Twitter: @matthewteague

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Problems keep proliferating at discredited private foster care agency

A decade ago, a team of Los Angeles County auditors delivered a damning assessment of Teens Happy Homes, a private foster care agency responsible for hundreds of children.

Agency workers bought beer and cigarettes with public funds intended for mistreated children, auditors found. It billed the state and county more than $100,000 for care it never provided. Employees wrote checks to themselves worth thousands of dollars and kept no receipts.

The auditors' conclusion: The county needed to give Teens closer supervision or cancel its contract.

Not only did the county Board of Supervisors continue the Teens contract but it tripled its value, from $1 million a year to as much as $3.6 million, according to the agency's tax returns. Between 2008 and 2011, 1,154 children lived in its homes.

Interviews and an examination of public records by The Times found that questionable financial practices proliferated in recent years. At the same time, children suffered abuse and neglect repeatedly.

Robert Fellmeth, director of the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law, said the long delay in reviewing the agency is indicative of the state and county's inattention to private foster care agencies that were created over 25 years ago.

"There are some clear failures indicating the need for financial auditing and performance oversight," Fellmeth said. "There is a need for systemic reform in this regulatory scheme."

County Supervisor Gloria Molina said Teens should finally lose its contract, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said that if the allegations against Teens prove true, they "would constitute a serious misuse of public funds and represent a grave threat to the health and safety of the foster children."

Philip Browning, director of the Department of Children and Family Services, said in an interview Thursday that he was startled to learn of the depth of problems at Teens, and that he was enlisting the help of retired homicide detectives to examine allegations of child abuse and financial malfeasance at foster care contractors.

"My marching orders are to figure out what's going on and fix it," Browning said. "I think we have a long way to go in terms of improving the monitoring of these agencies."

::

Teens' chief executive, Beautina Robinson, grew up in foster care and knew the life from the inside out. She established the South Los Angeles agency's group home in 1990 and expanded with foster homes throughout Southern California.

As a private group, Teens was only loosely monitored by the state and county, which typically audits the finances at private agencies once a decade.

The routine audit of Teens in 2003 faced problems from the beginning. Shortly before auditors arrived, a sewage backup destroyed many financial records. The remaining documents painted a picture of financial chaos.

There were canceled checks showing the agency repeatedly bought cigarettes and beer with foster care money — in one instance, 30 cases' worth. There was $46,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes. The agency's bookkeeper wrote $13,000 in checks to herself. "The agency was unable to explain the nature of these expenditures," auditors wrote.

The bookkeeper, fearing criminal prosecution, wrote to county auditors, saying Robinson had ordered two workers to "come up with receipts" to help keep staff "out of jail."

The plan fell apart when one manager refused. "He was not going to get caught up in falsifying any documents," the bookkeeper wrote in her letter, which was obtained by The Times.

An attorney for Teens declined to comment for this story.

In the end, auditors told county officials they "should consider whether to continue contracting with this agency due to the nature of these financial issues."

But the agency retained its contract, and the auditor-controller never completed another financial audit to see if problems had been fixed.

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Boston bombing suspect transferred to federal site

Surveillance video provided by the Boston Regional Intelligence Center shows bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at a Bank of America ATM in Watertown, Mass. at 11:18 p.m. on April 18, 2013. The next day, police intercepted Dzhokhar and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, in a gun battle that left the elder brother dead. (Uncredited, AP / April 18, 2013)

From the Associated Press

April 26, 2013, 3:48 a.m.

BOSTON -- The surviving Boston Marathon bombings suspect has been released from a civilian hospital and transferred to a federal medical detention center in central Massachusetts.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens about 40 miles west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens U.S. Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialized long-term medical or mental health care.

The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

The Massachusetts college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 at the marathon finish line April 15.

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Consumers' shift to older iPhones raises concerns on Wall Street

How strange to think that Vicki Macchiavello's decision to buy an iPhone after years of using a BlackBerry could be bad news for Apple.

And yet, because the Oakland resident opted to buy a cheaper, older iPhone 4 rather than the latest, pricier iPhone 5, she represents a trend that has become a growing concern on Wall Street.

In recent months, such an unusually large proportion of consumers are opting to buy older iPhone models that some analysts have begun to wonder whether Apple has lost its ability to create new versions that have enough dazzle to justify their high prices.

Not only has the shift toward cheaper phones nibbled away at Apple's profit margins, it's been dramatic enough for some analysts to view the iPhone 5 as a disappointment.

"I think it's no surprise then that the iPhone 5 is selling worse than expected," said Brian Colello, an analyst at Morningstar.

When Macchiavello went shopping recently for a new phone, she wasn't thinking about the bigger screen size of the iPhone 5, its faster processor, or the fact it could come with 32 gigabytes of memory. What she did think about was its price, ranging from $199 to $399.

So instead, she gravitated to the iPhone 4, which to some may border on heresy in the gadget-obsessed Bay Area. Macchiavello got the iPhone with a mere 8 gigabytes of memory for practically free from AT&T in exchange for signing a two-year service contract.

"I'm not one who feels like I need to get the coolest things right away," Macchiavello said. "After a short period of time, the coolest thing isn't that cool anymore, and then it gets a lot cheaper."

Apple would argue that it's happy to have customers like Macchiavello. The company has found that once people buy Apple products, they tend to keeping buying more Apple products over time. Customer satisfaction is so high, and loyalty so strong, that a customer that starts small today is likely to grow into a bigger one down the road.

"Apple's 'black hole' ecosystem captures subscribers who never leave," Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe wrote in a recent report that argues these factors will give Apple a long-term advantage over rivals that run on operating platforms such as Google's Android.

Many analysts are not entirely convinced.

That's because Apple has built its reputation and much of its business in recent years on the ability to consistently deliver new versions of it products, especially the iPhone, that consumers were more than happy to buy in ever greater numbers at premium prices.

That was true at first of the iPhone 5 that went on sale last September. Apple said it sold 5 million units in the first three days, compared with 4 million of the iPhone 4S in 2011 and 1.7 million of the iPhone 4 in 2010.

But sales growth has slowed. In January, Apple executives said the company could have sold more iPhones if had the ability to make more older models.

After the Apple earnings conference call Tuesday, several analysts noted that the average selling price of iPhones had fallen to $613 from $641 in the previous quarter, the result of what William Power, a Baird analyst, said in a report was "greater focus on the lower-priced iPhone 4."

Although Apple did not give specific breakdowns between versions, a recent report by Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners found that for the first three months of 2013, 53% of those surveyed bought an iPhone 5, compared with 73% for the iPhone 4S for the same period after its launch.

Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Barclays, wrote in a note to clients this week that "the reception of the iPhone 5 and execution of late has tested our patience."

Beyond just profit margins in the short term, analysts also worry that people like Macchiavello who buy older phones with less memory are also less likely to buy other things like music and apps. Indeed, Macchiavello said she had downloaded only 11 apps for her phone so far.

And going forward, Wall Street wonders whether there will really be enough new features on the rumored iPhone 5S presumably coming this fall to generate the kind of enthusiasm to cause fans to set new sales records and return the company to the faster growth investors crave.

"It begs the question: Can Apple bounce back with an iPhone 5S?" said Colello of Morningstar. "Can they add enough that's new to make enough people believe it's worth it to buy a premium phone again?"

chris.obrien@latimes.com

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U.S. economy grows at 2.5% rate in 1st quarter

WASHINGTON -- U.S. economic growth accelerated from January through March, buoyed by the strongest consumer spending in more than two years. The strength offset further declines in government spending that are expected to drag on growth throughout the year.

The Commerce Department said Friday that the overall economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter, rebounding from the anemic 0.4 percent growth rate in the October-December quarter.

Much of the gain reflected a jump in consumer spending, which rose at an annual rate of 3.2 percent. That's the best since the end of 2010.

Businesses responded to the greater demand by rebuilding their stockpiles. And home construction rose further.

But government spending fell at a 4.1 percent rate, led by another deep cut in federal defense spending. That kept growth below economists' expectations of a rate exceeding 3 percent. And broad government spending cuts that began in March are expected to weigh on the economy for the rest of the year, while higher taxes have started to make some consumers and businesses cautious.

Many economists say they think growth as measured by the gross domestic product is slowing in the April-June quarter to an annual rate of just 2 percent. Most foresee growth remaining around this subpar level for the rest of the year.

GDP is the broadest gauge of the economy's health. It measures the total output of goods and services produced in the United States, from haircuts and hamburgers to airplanes and automobiles.

The cuts in government spending have forced federal agencies to furlough workers, reduced spending on key public projects and made businesses more nervous about investing and hiring this year.

The cuts came two months after President Barack Obama and Congress allowed a Social Security tax cut to expire. That left a person earning $50,000 a year with about $1,000 less to spend this year. A household with two high-paid workers has up to $4,500 less.

Consumers' take-home pay is crucial to the economy because their spending drives roughly 70 percent of growth.

Americans appeared to shrug off the tax increase at the start of the year. They boosted spending in January and February, helped by a stronger job market. In part, that's why growth is expected to be solid in the first quarter.

But hiring slowed sharply in March. And consumers cut back their spending at retail businesses, a sign that many were starting to feel the tax increase. Economists expect spending to stay weak in the second quarter as consumers adjust to their smaller paychecks.

Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomics Advisers, said the tax increases could shave roughly 1 percentage point from growth this year. He also expects the government spending cuts to reduce growth by about 0.6 percentage point.

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Death toll in China quake hits 113

Reporting from Beijing --  A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province  Saturday morning, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 3,000 injured.

Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6.

Although nowhere near in magnitude, the tremor evoked troubling memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000.

The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan country near the city of Ya'an. The city of 1.5 milion is best-known for its panda breeding research center, which was reported not to have sustained serious damage.

 Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake Network Center, told the official New China news agency that Saturday's quake is similar to the May 12, 2008, disaster centered in Wenchuan -- about 150 miles away -- as both occurred on the same Longmen mountain fault zone.

 Officials also warned of aftershocks and secondary disasters such as landslides and road and cave collapses, especially since a light rain was falling over the mountainous  area Saturday.

 The 8 a.m. quake jolted residents out of bed, and people ran into the streets wearing their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

"We were very calm. We have gained experience from the last earthquake. It took us 30 seconds to leave everything and run," one middle-aged man told Chinese media.

A 22-year-old woman despaired that her house survived the first earthquake, but not this latest one.

"When the May 12th earthquake happened, I thought I was lucky ....  I still had a home to go back to. Now our house can't be lived in anymore. I feel really lost. Where I should go? What I should do after all this?'' she wrote on a microblog posting.

 The rescue effort will be a test for the newly installed government of Xi Jinping, who took over as president in March. His premier, Li Keqiang, toured the earthquake-stricken area  Saturday.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours after the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives, to take scientific rescue measures and save peoples' lives," Li was quoted as telling state media.

About 2,000 soldiers from Chengdu command of the People's Liberation Army were rushed to the epicenter, while two helicopters hovered overhead assessing the damage below.  

Compounding the tragedy, a military vehicle carrying 17 soldiers slid off a cliff into a river, killing one soldier and seriously injuring three.

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Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control

Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.

Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it.

Monday's bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses.

But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

"This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "We're really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we're not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent."

Even as first responders were struggling to tend to the needs of the three killed and more than 170 injured in the Boston Marathon blasts, Web forums were cranking out rumors that there had been four bombs instead of two, that an area library had been targeted and that the death count was well over a dozen.

In short order, forums like Reddit and 4chan were alive with speculation — based on little or no evidence — that the culprits were Muslim fundamentalists or perhaps right-wing extremists.

In a mad rush to be the first to identify the perpetrators, anonymous posters online began openly naming people they believed had planted the bombs. Caught up in the mania, some traditional media ran with that information. Thursday's New York Post cover showed a photo of two men at the marathon under the headline "Bag Men" and implied that the two were prime suspects. In fact, neither was a suspect and one of the men, Salah Barhoun, was a high school student from outside Boston and had nothing to do with the explosions.

Once the FBI released images of the actual suspects, things really got out of hand. Online gumshoes scoured the Web for faces that might match and illustrated their work with drawings, circles and other home-brewed CSI techniques.

Some amateur sleuths focused their suspicions on Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing since last month. Using an animation tool, they used an image of Tripathi to highlight similarities between his face and the FBI photos of one of the Boston bombing suspects.

However, Tripathi has no apparent connection to the marathon bombing. That was underscored Friday, when authorities revealed the identities of their suspects, two ethnic-Chechen immigrant brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass.

"We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil," Tripathi's family said in a statement on Friday.

Advocates of social media and crowd-sourcing have long touted its unrivaled power to gather huge amounts of information quickly in crisis situations. With tens of thousands of people on hand at the marathon, most armed with smartphones, the sheer volume of data available for analysis proved too tempting to ignore.

"People in the moment want to participate. They want to be a part of what's going on," said Nicco Mele, an expert on technology and social media at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

So as the Boston Police Department engaged in a gunfight with the two brothers in Watertown, Mass., early Friday, tens of thousands of Web denizens tuned in to live streams of police scanners, furiously tapping notes and ideas into Reddit and Twitter.

"I feel like we've reached a certain threshold here — the Internet is finally outstripping cable news completely," a poster using the handle PantsGrenades wrote on Reddit. "In fact, I wonder if we're inadvertently doing their work for them."

Their speculation was not limited to the events in Boston. The unusual confluence of tragic and suspicious events in the past week led many online to suggest that the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, might have been a terrorist attack as well and that the ricin-laced letters mailed to politicians could have come from those behind the marathon bombing.

According to Murray Jennex, a crisis management expert at San Diego State University, the huge influx of online voices enabled by social media can be extremely helpful because eye witnesses are holding cameras in almost every location.

But beyond the photos they upload, their speculation and theorizing don't necessarily lead to a more efficient resolution.

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Feuer leads Trutanich by 11 points in poll

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has a steep hill to climb to keep his job in next month's election, a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll has found.

Challenger Mike Feuer, a former city and state lawmaker, held a lead of more than 11 percentage points over Trutanich, drawing support from 36.8% of voters, compared with 25.5% favoring the incumbent. With about a month to go before election day, nearly 38% of the voters surveyed had not made up their minds.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Election Poll surveyed 500 likely voters by telephone over a three-day period beginning Monday. The poll was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Trutanich finished second with 30% of the vote in a four-way primary election last month. Feuer was first with 44%.

The city attorney could still make headway with the substantial number of undecided voters. "The race certainly hasn't been decided," said USC's Dan Schnur, director of the poll.

But he is in a tough — and somewhat unusual — position for an incumbent seeking reelection from voters who do not appear to be particularly unhappy, pollsters said.

"It's an uphill road for Trutanich," Schnur said. "This is not an angry, throw-the-bums out electorate, so you would assume [there would be] a better landscape for an incumbent."

Chris St. Hilaire of M4 noted that Trutanich was losing among Democrats, independents and Anglo voters "and that's a huge problem for him." A large number of voters who said they were undecided before the March primary election ended up voting for the city attorney, St. Hilaire said. In the May runoff, the new poll shows Trutanich would need to win undecided voters by almost 2 to 1 to overcome Feuer, he said.

Compounding Trutanich's problem, said Benenson's Amy Levin, is the "drop-off" factor, a tendency of some voters to mark their choices in the top races and skip voting in lower-profile contests.

The city attorney is one of three officials elected citywide, but races for that office, as well as city controller, have generally attracted less attention than mayoral contests. That is especially true this year when two well-funded candidates — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — are spending millions in their battle to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Feuer, a Democrat, began his city attorney campaign in 2011 and has raised considerably more money than Trutanich. He's also collected support across the political spectrum.

Last year, Trutanich, a former Republican who is now registered without a party affiliation, ran for Los Angeles County district attorney, breaking a highly publicized promise to serve two terms at City Hall before seeking another office. He decided to go for a second term as city attorney after failing to make it past the county's June primary election. Many observers attribute his current campaign struggles to the ill-fated decision to run for district attorney before finishing his first city attorney term.

Trutanich has said his campaign for district attorney was "a mistake," but he argues that he has served the city well and deserves another term.

Interviews with some of those surveyed in the USC Price/L.A. Times poll found a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, even among those who said they had made up their minds.

"I hate full-time politicians," said Joshua Mayo, 48, a laborer who lives in Hollywood. But he said he would vote for Feuer because "he seems to have done some good things." Suzanne Brewer, 50, of North Hills, a paralegal, prefers Trutanich as "the least of the worst" and because of his experience as a prosecutor.

John Short, a 35-year-old bookkeeper who lives in Hollywood, likes Trutanich because "he is somebody in office who seems to be doing all right … so we might as well keep him in." Fred Dee, 67, of Koreatown, said he prefers Feuer because he voted for Trutanich four years ago "and I've been disappointed."

"It's time for new blood to come in; that's the main thing," Dee said.

jean.merl@latimes.com

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Death toll in China quake hits 113

Reporting from Beijing --  A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province  Saturday morning, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 3,000 injured.

Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6.

Although nowhere near in magnitude, the tremor evoked troubling memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000.

The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan country near the city of Ya'an. The city of 1.5 milion is best-known for its panda breeding research center, which was reported not to have sustained serious damage.

 Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake Network Center, told the official New China news agency that Saturday's quake is similar to the May 12, 2008, disaster centered in Wenchuan -- about 150 miles away -- as both occurred on the same Longmen mountain fault zone.

 Officials also warned of aftershocks and secondary disasters such as landslides and road and cave collapses, especially since a light rain was falling over the mountainous  area Saturday.

 The 8 a.m. quake jolted residents out of bed, and people ran into the streets wearing their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

"We were very calm. We have gained experience from the last earthquake. It took us 30 seconds to leave everything and run," one middle-aged man told Chinese media.

A 22-year-old woman despaired that her house survived the first earthquake, but not this latest one.

"When the May 12th earthquake happened, I thought I was lucky ....  I still had a home to go back to. Now our house can't be lived in anymore. I feel really lost. Where I should go? What I should do after all this?'' she wrote on a microblog posting.

 The rescue effort will be a test for the newly installed government of Xi Jinping, who took over as president in March. His premier, Li Keqiang, toured the earthquake-stricken area  Saturday.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours after the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives, to take scientific rescue measures and save peoples' lives," Li was quoted as telling state media.

About 2,000 soldiers from Chengdu command of the People's Liberation Army were rushed to the epicenter, while two helicopters hovered overhead assessing the damage below.  

Compounding the tragedy, a military vehicle carrying 17 soldiers slid off a cliff into a river, killing one soldier and seriously injuring three.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control

Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.

Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it.

Monday's bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses.

But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

"This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "We're really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we're not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent."

Even as first responders were struggling to tend to the needs of the three killed and more than 170 injured in the Boston Marathon blasts, Web forums were cranking out rumors that there had been four bombs instead of two, that an area library had been targeted and that the death count was well over a dozen.

In short order, forums like Reddit and 4chan were alive with speculation — based on little or no evidence — that the culprits were Muslim fundamentalists or perhaps right-wing extremists.

In a mad rush to be the first to identify the perpetrators, anonymous posters online began openly naming people they believed had planted the bombs. Caught up in the mania, some traditional media ran with that information. Thursday's New York Post cover showed a photo of two men at the marathon under the headline "Bag Men" and implied that the two were prime suspects. In fact, neither was a suspect and one of the men, Salah Barhoun, was a high school student from outside Boston and had nothing to do with the explosions.

Once the FBI released images of the actual suspects, things really got out of hand. Online gumshoes scoured the Web for faces that might match and illustrated their work with drawings, circles and other home-brewed CSI techniques.

Some amateur sleuths focused their suspicions on Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing since last month. Using an animation tool, they used an image of Tripathi to highlight similarities between his face and the FBI photos of one of the Boston bombing suspects.

However, Tripathi has no apparent connection to the marathon bombing. That was underscored Friday, when authorities revealed the identities of their suspects, two ethnic-Chechen immigrant brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass.

"We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil," Tripathi's family said in a statement on Friday.

Advocates of social media and crowd-sourcing have long touted its unrivaled power to gather huge amounts of information quickly in crisis situations. With tens of thousands of people on hand at the marathon, most armed with smartphones, the sheer volume of data available for analysis proved too tempting to ignore.

"People in the moment want to participate. They want to be a part of what's going on," said Nicco Mele, an expert on technology and social media at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

So as the Boston Police Department engaged in a gunfight with the two brothers in Watertown, Mass., early Friday, tens of thousands of Web denizens tuned in to live streams of police scanners, furiously tapping notes and ideas into Reddit and Twitter.

"I feel like we've reached a certain threshold here — the Internet is finally outstripping cable news completely," a poster using the handle PantsGrenades wrote on Reddit. "In fact, I wonder if we're inadvertently doing their work for them."

Their speculation was not limited to the events in Boston. The unusual confluence of tragic and suspicious events in the past week led many online to suggest that the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, might have been a terrorist attack as well and that the ricin-laced letters mailed to politicians could have come from those behind the marathon bombing.

According to Murray Jennex, a crisis management expert at San Diego State University, the huge influx of online voices enabled by social media can be extremely helpful because eye witnesses are holding cameras in almost every location.

But beyond the photos they upload, their speculation and theorizing don't necessarily lead to a more efficient resolution.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Feuer leads Trutanich by 11 points in poll

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has a steep hill to climb to keep his job in next month's election, a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll has found.

Challenger Mike Feuer, a former city and state lawmaker, held a lead of more than 11 percentage points over Trutanich, drawing support from 36.8% of voters, compared with 25.5% favoring the incumbent. With about a month to go before election day, nearly 38% of the voters surveyed had not made up their minds.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Election Poll surveyed 500 likely voters by telephone over a three-day period beginning Monday. The poll was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Trutanich finished second with 30% of the vote in a four-way primary election last month. Feuer was first with 44%.

The city attorney could still make headway with the substantial number of undecided voters. "The race certainly hasn't been decided," said USC's Dan Schnur, director of the poll.

But he is in a tough — and somewhat unusual — position for an incumbent seeking reelection from voters who do not appear to be particularly unhappy, pollsters said.

"It's an uphill road for Trutanich," Schnur said. "This is not an angry, throw-the-bums out electorate, so you would assume [there would be] a better landscape for an incumbent."

Chris St. Hilaire of M4 noted that Trutanich was losing among Democrats, independents and Anglo voters "and that's a huge problem for him." A large number of voters who said they were undecided before the March primary election ended up voting for the city attorney, St. Hilaire said. In the May runoff, the new poll shows Trutanich would need to win undecided voters by almost 2 to 1 to overcome Feuer, he said.

Compounding Trutanich's problem, said Benenson's Amy Levin, is the "drop-off" factor, a tendency of some voters to mark their choices in the top races and skip voting in lower-profile contests.

The city attorney is one of three officials elected citywide, but races for that office, as well as city controller, have generally attracted less attention than mayoral contests. That is especially true this year when two well-funded candidates — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — are spending millions in their battle to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Feuer, a Democrat, began his city attorney campaign in 2011 and has raised considerably more money than Trutanich. He's also collected support across the political spectrum.

Last year, Trutanich, a former Republican who is now registered without a party affiliation, ran for Los Angeles County district attorney, breaking a highly publicized promise to serve two terms at City Hall before seeking another office. He decided to go for a second term as city attorney after failing to make it past the county's June primary election. Many observers attribute his current campaign struggles to the ill-fated decision to run for district attorney before finishing his first city attorney term.

Trutanich has said his campaign for district attorney was "a mistake," but he argues that he has served the city well and deserves another term.

Interviews with some of those surveyed in the USC Price/L.A. Times poll found a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, even among those who said they had made up their minds.

"I hate full-time politicians," said Joshua Mayo, 48, a laborer who lives in Hollywood. But he said he would vote for Feuer because "he seems to have done some good things." Suzanne Brewer, 50, of North Hills, a paralegal, prefers Trutanich as "the least of the worst" and because of his experience as a prosecutor.

John Short, a 35-year-old bookkeeper who lives in Hollywood, likes Trutanich because "he is somebody in office who seems to be doing all right … so we might as well keep him in." Fred Dee, 67, of Koreatown, said he prefers Feuer because he voted for Trutanich four years ago "and I've been disappointed."

"It's time for new blood to come in; that's the main thing," Dee said.

jean.merl@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Death toll in China quake hits 113

Reporting from Beijing --  A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province  Saturday morning, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 3,000 injured.

Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6.

Although nowhere near in magnitude, the tremor evoked troubling memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000.

The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan country near the city of Ya'an. The city of 1.5 milion is best-known for its panda breeding research center, which was reported not to have sustained serious damage.

 Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake Network Center, told the official New China news agency that Saturday's quake is similar to the May 12, 2008, disaster centered in Wenchuan -- about 150 miles away -- as both occurred on the same Longmen mountain fault zone.

 Officials also warned of aftershocks and secondary disasters such as landslides and road and cave collapses, especially since a light rain was falling over the mountainous  area Saturday.

 The 8 a.m. quake jolted residents out of bed, and people ran into the streets wearing their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

"We were very calm. We have gained experience from the last earthquake. It took us 30 seconds to leave everything and run," one middle-aged man told Chinese media.

A 22-year-old woman despaired that her house survived the first earthquake, but not this latest one.

"When the May 12th earthquake happened, I thought I was lucky ....  I still had a home to go back to. Now our house can't be lived in anymore. I feel really lost. Where I should go? What I should do after all this?'' she wrote on a microblog posting.

 The rescue effort will be a test for the newly installed government of Xi Jinping, who took over as president in March. His premier, Li Keqiang, toured the earthquake-stricken area  Saturday.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours after the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives, to take scientific rescue measures and save peoples' lives," Li was quoted as telling state media.

About 2,000 soldiers from Chengdu command of the People's Liberation Army were rushed to the epicenter, while two helicopters hovered overhead assessing the damage below.  

Compounding the tragedy, a military vehicle carrying 17 soldiers slid off a cliff into a river, killing one soldier and seriously injuring three.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control

Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.

Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it.

Monday's bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses.

But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

"This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "We're really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we're not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent."

Even as first responders were struggling to tend to the needs of the three killed and more than 170 injured in the Boston Marathon blasts, Web forums were cranking out rumors that there had been four bombs instead of two, that an area library had been targeted and that the death count was well over a dozen.

In short order, forums like Reddit and 4chan were alive with speculation — based on little or no evidence — that the culprits were Muslim fundamentalists or perhaps right-wing extremists.

In a mad rush to be the first to identify the perpetrators, anonymous posters online began openly naming people they believed had planted the bombs. Caught up in the mania, some traditional media ran with that information. Thursday's New York Post cover showed a photo of two men at the marathon under the headline "Bag Men" and implied that the two were prime suspects. In fact, neither was a suspect and one of the men, Salah Barhoun, was a high school student from outside Boston and had nothing to do with the explosions.

Once the FBI released images of the actual suspects, things really got out of hand. Online gumshoes scoured the Web for faces that might match and illustrated their work with drawings, circles and other home-brewed CSI techniques.

Some amateur sleuths focused their suspicions on Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing since last month. Using an animation tool, they used an image of Tripathi to highlight similarities between his face and the FBI photos of one of the Boston bombing suspects.

However, Tripathi has no apparent connection to the marathon bombing. That was underscored Friday, when authorities revealed the identities of their suspects, two ethnic-Chechen immigrant brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass.

"We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil," Tripathi's family said in a statement on Friday.

Advocates of social media and crowd-sourcing have long touted its unrivaled power to gather huge amounts of information quickly in crisis situations. With tens of thousands of people on hand at the marathon, most armed with smartphones, the sheer volume of data available for analysis proved too tempting to ignore.

"People in the moment want to participate. They want to be a part of what's going on," said Nicco Mele, an expert on technology and social media at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

So as the Boston Police Department engaged in a gunfight with the two brothers in Watertown, Mass., early Friday, tens of thousands of Web denizens tuned in to live streams of police scanners, furiously tapping notes and ideas into Reddit and Twitter.

"I feel like we've reached a certain threshold here — the Internet is finally outstripping cable news completely," a poster using the handle PantsGrenades wrote on Reddit. "In fact, I wonder if we're inadvertently doing their work for them."

Their speculation was not limited to the events in Boston. The unusual confluence of tragic and suspicious events in the past week led many online to suggest that the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, might have been a terrorist attack as well and that the ricin-laced letters mailed to politicians could have come from those behind the marathon bombing.

According to Murray Jennex, a crisis management expert at San Diego State University, the huge influx of online voices enabled by social media can be extremely helpful because eye witnesses are holding cameras in almost every location.

But beyond the photos they upload, their speculation and theorizing don't necessarily lead to a more efficient resolution.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Feuer leads Trutanich by 11 points in poll

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has a steep hill to climb to keep his job in next month's election, a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll has found.

Challenger Mike Feuer, a former city and state lawmaker, held a lead of more than 11 percentage points over Trutanich, drawing support from 36.8% of voters, compared with 25.5% favoring the incumbent. With about a month to go before election day, nearly 38% of the voters surveyed had not made up their minds.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Election Poll surveyed 500 likely voters by telephone over a three-day period beginning Monday. The poll was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Trutanich finished second with 30% of the vote in a four-way primary election last month. Feuer was first with 44%.

The city attorney could still make headway with the substantial number of undecided voters. "The race certainly hasn't been decided," said USC's Dan Schnur, director of the poll.

But he is in a tough — and somewhat unusual — position for an incumbent seeking reelection from voters who do not appear to be particularly unhappy, pollsters said.

"It's an uphill road for Trutanich," Schnur said. "This is not an angry, throw-the-bums out electorate, so you would assume [there would be] a better landscape for an incumbent."

Chris St. Hilaire of M4 noted that Trutanich was losing among Democrats, independents and Anglo voters "and that's a huge problem for him." A large number of voters who said they were undecided before the March primary election ended up voting for the city attorney, St. Hilaire said. In the May runoff, the new poll shows Trutanich would need to win undecided voters by almost 2 to 1 to overcome Feuer, he said.

Compounding Trutanich's problem, said Benenson's Amy Levin, is the "drop-off" factor, a tendency of some voters to mark their choices in the top races and skip voting in lower-profile contests.

The city attorney is one of three officials elected citywide, but races for that office, as well as city controller, have generally attracted less attention than mayoral contests. That is especially true this year when two well-funded candidates — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — are spending millions in their battle to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Feuer, a Democrat, began his city attorney campaign in 2011 and has raised considerably more money than Trutanich. He's also collected support across the political spectrum.

Last year, Trutanich, a former Republican who is now registered without a party affiliation, ran for Los Angeles County district attorney, breaking a highly publicized promise to serve two terms at City Hall before seeking another office. He decided to go for a second term as city attorney after failing to make it past the county's June primary election. Many observers attribute his current campaign struggles to the ill-fated decision to run for district attorney before finishing his first city attorney term.

Trutanich has said his campaign for district attorney was "a mistake," but he argues that he has served the city well and deserves another term.

Interviews with some of those surveyed in the USC Price/L.A. Times poll found a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, even among those who said they had made up their minds.

"I hate full-time politicians," said Joshua Mayo, 48, a laborer who lives in Hollywood. But he said he would vote for Feuer because "he seems to have done some good things." Suzanne Brewer, 50, of North Hills, a paralegal, prefers Trutanich as "the least of the worst" and because of his experience as a prosecutor.

John Short, a 35-year-old bookkeeper who lives in Hollywood, likes Trutanich because "he is somebody in office who seems to be doing all right … so we might as well keep him in." Fred Dee, 67, of Koreatown, said he prefers Feuer because he voted for Trutanich four years ago "and I've been disappointed."

"It's time for new blood to come in; that's the main thing," Dee said.

jean.merl@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Death toll in China quake hits 113

Reporting from Beijing --  A strong earthquake struck China's mountainous Sichuan province  Saturday morning, leaving at least 113 people dead and more than 3,000 injured.

Chinese authorities assessed the magnitude of the quake at 7.0, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported 6.6.

Although nowhere near in magnitude, the tremor evoked troubling memories of the great earthquake almost exactly five years ago along the same fault line that killed almost 90,000.

The earthquake's epicenter was about 80 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu, in Lushan country near the city of Ya'an. The city of 1.5 milion is best-known for its panda breeding research center, which was reported not to have sustained serious damage.

 Jiang Haikun, an official with the China Earthquake Network Center, told the official New China news agency that Saturday's quake is similar to the May 12, 2008, disaster centered in Wenchuan -- about 150 miles away -- as both occurred on the same Longmen mountain fault zone.

 Officials also warned of aftershocks and secondary disasters such as landslides and road and cave collapses, especially since a light rain was falling over the mountainous  area Saturday.

 The 8 a.m. quake jolted residents out of bed, and people ran into the streets wearing their pajamas, according to reports from the scene.

"We were very calm. We have gained experience from the last earthquake. It took us 30 seconds to leave everything and run," one middle-aged man told Chinese media.

A 22-year-old woman despaired that her house survived the first earthquake, but not this latest one.

"When the May 12th earthquake happened, I thought I was lucky ....  I still had a home to go back to. Now our house can't be lived in anymore. I feel really lost. Where I should go? What I should do after all this?'' she wrote on a microblog posting.

 The rescue effort will be a test for the newly installed government of Xi Jinping, who took over as president in March. His premier, Li Keqiang, toured the earthquake-stricken area  Saturday.

"The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours after the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives, to take scientific rescue measures and save peoples' lives," Li was quoted as telling state media.

About 2,000 soldiers from Chengdu command of the People's Liberation Army were rushed to the epicenter, while two helicopters hovered overhead assessing the damage below.  

Compounding the tragedy, a military vehicle carrying 17 soldiers slid off a cliff into a river, killing one soldier and seriously injuring three.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control

Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.

Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it.

Monday's bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses.

But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.

"This is one of the most alarming social media events of our time," said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "We're really good at uploading images and unleashing amateurs, but we're not good with the social norms that would protect the innocent."

Even as first responders were struggling to tend to the needs of the three killed and more than 170 injured in the Boston Marathon blasts, Web forums were cranking out rumors that there had been four bombs instead of two, that an area library had been targeted and that the death count was well over a dozen.

In short order, forums like Reddit and 4chan were alive with speculation — based on little or no evidence — that the culprits were Muslim fundamentalists or perhaps right-wing extremists.

In a mad rush to be the first to identify the perpetrators, anonymous posters online began openly naming people they believed had planted the bombs. Caught up in the mania, some traditional media ran with that information. Thursday's New York Post cover showed a photo of two men at the marathon under the headline "Bag Men" and implied that the two were prime suspects. In fact, neither was a suspect and one of the men, Salah Barhoun, was a high school student from outside Boston and had nothing to do with the explosions.

Once the FBI released images of the actual suspects, things really got out of hand. Online gumshoes scoured the Web for faces that might match and illustrated their work with drawings, circles and other home-brewed CSI techniques.

Some amateur sleuths focused their suspicions on Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who has been missing since last month. Using an animation tool, they used an image of Tripathi to highlight similarities between his face and the FBI photos of one of the Boston bombing suspects.

However, Tripathi has no apparent connection to the marathon bombing. That was underscored Friday, when authorities revealed the identities of their suspects, two ethnic-Chechen immigrant brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass.

"We have known unequivocally all along that neither individual suspected as responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings was Sunil," Tripathi's family said in a statement on Friday.

Advocates of social media and crowd-sourcing have long touted its unrivaled power to gather huge amounts of information quickly in crisis situations. With tens of thousands of people on hand at the marathon, most armed with smartphones, the sheer volume of data available for analysis proved too tempting to ignore.

"People in the moment want to participate. They want to be a part of what's going on," said Nicco Mele, an expert on technology and social media at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

So as the Boston Police Department engaged in a gunfight with the two brothers in Watertown, Mass., early Friday, tens of thousands of Web denizens tuned in to live streams of police scanners, furiously tapping notes and ideas into Reddit and Twitter.

"I feel like we've reached a certain threshold here — the Internet is finally outstripping cable news completely," a poster using the handle PantsGrenades wrote on Reddit. "In fact, I wonder if we're inadvertently doing their work for them."

Their speculation was not limited to the events in Boston. The unusual confluence of tragic and suspicious events in the past week led many online to suggest that the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, might have been a terrorist attack as well and that the ricin-laced letters mailed to politicians could have come from those behind the marathon bombing.

According to Murray Jennex, a crisis management expert at San Diego State University, the huge influx of online voices enabled by social media can be extremely helpful because eye witnesses are holding cameras in almost every location.

But beyond the photos they upload, their speculation and theorizing don't necessarily lead to a more efficient resolution.

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Feuer leads Trutanich by 11 points in poll

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has a steep hill to climb to keep his job in next month's election, a new USC Price/L.A. Times poll has found.

Challenger Mike Feuer, a former city and state lawmaker, held a lead of more than 11 percentage points over Trutanich, drawing support from 36.8% of voters, compared with 25.5% favoring the incumbent. With about a month to go before election day, nearly 38% of the voters surveyed had not made up their minds.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Election Poll surveyed 500 likely voters by telephone over a three-day period beginning Monday. The poll was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, a Democratic firm, and M4 Strategies, a Republican company. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Trutanich finished second with 30% of the vote in a four-way primary election last month. Feuer was first with 44%.

The city attorney could still make headway with the substantial number of undecided voters. "The race certainly hasn't been decided," said USC's Dan Schnur, director of the poll.

But he is in a tough — and somewhat unusual — position for an incumbent seeking reelection from voters who do not appear to be particularly unhappy, pollsters said.

"It's an uphill road for Trutanich," Schnur said. "This is not an angry, throw-the-bums out electorate, so you would assume [there would be] a better landscape for an incumbent."

Chris St. Hilaire of M4 noted that Trutanich was losing among Democrats, independents and Anglo voters "and that's a huge problem for him." A large number of voters who said they were undecided before the March primary election ended up voting for the city attorney, St. Hilaire said. In the May runoff, the new poll shows Trutanich would need to win undecided voters by almost 2 to 1 to overcome Feuer, he said.

Compounding Trutanich's problem, said Benenson's Amy Levin, is the "drop-off" factor, a tendency of some voters to mark their choices in the top races and skip voting in lower-profile contests.

The city attorney is one of three officials elected citywide, but races for that office, as well as city controller, have generally attracted less attention than mayoral contests. That is especially true this year when two well-funded candidates — Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel — are spending millions in their battle to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Feuer, a Democrat, began his city attorney campaign in 2011 and has raised considerably more money than Trutanich. He's also collected support across the political spectrum.

Last year, Trutanich, a former Republican who is now registered without a party affiliation, ran for Los Angeles County district attorney, breaking a highly publicized promise to serve two terms at City Hall before seeking another office. He decided to go for a second term as city attorney after failing to make it past the county's June primary election. Many observers attribute his current campaign struggles to the ill-fated decision to run for district attorney before finishing his first city attorney term.

Trutanich has said his campaign for district attorney was "a mistake," but he argues that he has served the city well and deserves another term.

Interviews with some of those surveyed in the USC Price/L.A. Times poll found a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, even among those who said they had made up their minds.

"I hate full-time politicians," said Joshua Mayo, 48, a laborer who lives in Hollywood. But he said he would vote for Feuer because "he seems to have done some good things." Suzanne Brewer, 50, of North Hills, a paralegal, prefers Trutanich as "the least of the worst" and because of his experience as a prosecutor.

John Short, a 35-year-old bookkeeper who lives in Hollywood, likes Trutanich because "he is somebody in office who seems to be doing all right … so we might as well keep him in." Fred Dee, 67, of Koreatown, said he prefers Feuer because he voted for Trutanich four years ago "and I've been disappointed."

"It's time for new blood to come in; that's the main thing," Dee said.

jean.merl@latimes.com

12.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Terror manhunt shuts down parts of Boston after shootings, chase

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- The manhunt for the remaining Boston Marathon bombings suspect left much of the city shut down on Friday, hours after the other suspect was killed in a shootout with police.

President Obama was briefed on the situation, officials said.

Police directly linked the two suspects to Monday's marathon bombings, which left three dead and more than 170 wounded. 

As police went door to door in Watertown, where the suspects were tracked after a Thursday night carjacking near MIT, residents were told to stay inside and not to open the door except for a police officer.

FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack

Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the city's mass transit suspended. 

Vehicle traffic also was barred in and out of Watertown, police said at an early morning news briefing. Those who work in the area were told to stay home, as were residents of several nearby communities.

Harvard, MIT, Boston College and other universities and public schools said they would be closed Friday for safety reasons.  

Authorities said the manhunt began when an MIT police officer was shot to death on campus after responding to a disturbance. Officials said he had multiple gunshot wounds.

Soon after, two suspects carjacked an SUV nearby, officials said. As officers pursued the suspected carjackers to Watertown, the suspects tossed explosives out of the car and fired at officers, officials said.

Suspect No. 1 from the marathon bombings -- who was seen in surveillance video wearing a black hat -- was declared dead at Beth Israel Hospital early Friday morning with gunshot and blast wounds after the early-morning battle, doctors said.

PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon

A transit police officer was also shot and seriously injured, authorities said.

Suspect No. 2, who was seen wearing a white cap, was still at large. Police described him as a terrorist who was armed and dangerous. 

The MIT shooting happened about five hours after the FBI released photos of the two suspects in the case and asked for the public's help in identifying them. 

About 2:30 a.m. EDT, the FBI also released new photos of both suspects (shown below).

The suspects still have not been identified.

The Boston Police Department released the following photo of the man thought to be Suspect No. 2:

Early Thursday morning, the FBI also released more detailed photos of the two suspects at the Boston Marathon:

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Officials: Boston Marathon bombing suspect died at hospital

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- The first suspect in the Boston marathon bombings, who was shot in a confrontation with police early Friday, was in cardiac arrest by the time he reached Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, officials said.

Doctors labored to save him without success, the hospital said in a news briefing. He had multiple gunshot wounds and what appeared to be blast injuries, said Dr. Richard Wolfe, chief of emergency medicine.

The second suspect in Monday's marathon bombings, which left three dead and more than 170 injured, remained at large.

FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack

Wolfe said two staff members heard the gunshots and warned the hospital, which braced for another "mass casualty event," he said.

At 1:10 a.m. EDT, he said, Boston police notified the the hospital that they had a "patient with multiple traumatic injuries" en route. 

Ten minutes later, the patient arrived in cardiac arrest, Wolfe said. Doctors tried "a number of procedures" for 15 minutes before he was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m.

He would not say whether the man said anything before he died or whether he was the same man discussed by police at an earlier briefing Friday.

Dr. Kevin Tabb, president and chief executive of the hospital, said the patient "was brought in under police guard" to the facility, which is still treating a dozen victims of the marathon explosions, one of them in the ICU.

Authorities said the incident began about 10:30 p.m. Thursday when an MIT police officer was shot to death on campus after responding to a disturbance. As authorities searched for the shooter, an SUV was carjacked nearby. Police chased it to Watertown, a Boston suburb. 

Officials said that the suspects opened fire and tossed explosives at pursuing officers. 

PHOTOS: Boston bombing suspects

Dr. David Schoenfeld said he was watching news of the MIT shootings at home in Watertown about 12:45 a.m. Friday "when I started hearing the gunshots and explosions. I realized something was really wrong."

 He called Beth Israel, drove in and "arrived before the patient."

"Given what had happened at MIT and all the sirens, I felt strongly that this was related to what happened earlier in the week," he said, referring to the marathon explosions.

He declined to say whether he treated the patient, saying only that it was clear who the patient was because "there was a large police presence when the patient arrived."

"You give the best care you can to every patient that comes to you,  regardless what may or may not be," Schoenfeld said. "You don't know what happened out there and you don't know who they are. You don't know what the circumstances are, whether they are a suspect, a police officer or an innocent."

PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon

The second suspect is still on the loose, officials say, and is considered armed and dangerous. In FBI photographs, the suspect is shown wearing a backward white baseball cap and a gray hooded sweatshirt. 

Officials have essentially shut down Boston while they search. Gov. Deval Patrick suspended all mass transit service, including trains, ferries, buses and commuter rail.

Beth Israel also said it accepted 24 victims from Monday's bombing. Half have been released. One remains in critical condition.

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Update: Videos point to 2 suspects in Boston Marathon bombing

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Boston bombing suspect: City shut down amid manhunt

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- With the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing still at large early Friday morning, Gov. Deval Patrick ordered everyone in the city to stay home.

"There is a massive manhunt underway," he said at a morning press conference, calling it a "rapidly developing situation." 

Police Col. Timothy P. Alben added, "It may take hours."

Earlier, the governor ordered a shutdown of the city's public transportation system and officials urged people in some suburbs to stay home from work and school.

"We are asking businesses not to open," Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency Director Kurt Schwartz told reporters at an impromptu news conference just after dawn. "We are asking people not to congregate outside."

PHOTOS: Boston bombing suspects

Officials urged residents of Watertown, where a dramatic scene unfolded overnight, to take particular caution.

"Search for armed suspect continues in Watertown," the Boston Police Department said in a tweet early Friday. "Residents reminded to remain indoors. All vehicle traffic suspended."

Bostonians woke up to news of a slew of other closures too.

Amtrak stopped running trains between Boston and Providence, R.I. Boston Public Schools canceled all Friday activities. And Harvard, MIT, Emerson College, Boston College and Boston University canceled classes until further notice.

Pam Curtis of Belmont, which is near Watertown, told The Times that even inside her home she feels a bit uneasy.

FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack

"It's very strange; it really is," she said. "When you know there's a suspect anywhere around."

Drew Loucks, 30, who processed the news of the manhunt as he walked to work early Friday morning, likened it to a scene from a movie or a war zone.

"You don't really feel like you're in Boston," he said. "It's really scary."

Andrew Tangel in Boston and Maeve Reston in Los Angeles contributed to this report. 

alana.semuels@latimes.com

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

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Jobless to feel pinch of federal cuts

SACRAMENTO — An estimated 400,000 Californians who have been unemployed for more than six months soon will be feeling the bite of federal spending reductions.

As of April 28, they'll be getting a 17.7% cut in their weekly unemployment benefits that are paid out by the U.S. Treasury.

The state Employment Development Department announced the cuts Wednesday. They are part of the automatic federal government budget cuts known as the sequester, which took effect March 1 after Congress and President Obama failed to agree on an alternative austerity plan.

"This is a serious hardship for every unemployed family that by definition is stretched to the limit because they are long-term unemployed," said Maurice Emsellem, the Oakland-based policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-income wage earners. California in February posted an unemployment rate of 9.6%, tied with Nevada and Mississippi as the highest in the nation.

Slashing unemployment benefits, which average $297 a week in California, will not affect those laid-off workers currently getting an initial 26 weeks of assistance from the state-run and state-financed program. After 26 weeks, those workers are eligible for up to 47 more weeks of benefits paid by the U.S. Treasury. Only the federal benefits are being reduced.

The state estimates that the average long-term unemployed Californian will lose $52 a week.

The state's maximum benefit is $450 per week. Those recipients would see a weekly trim of $79.

"I'm not too happy with that," said Dave Gayton, 54, a laid-off warehouse worker from Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco. "It seems like every time we have a problem, and they can't come up with a budget, they want to attack someone. It's always the working class that gets hit the hardest."

Gayton said he received a notice from the state Wednesday about the upcoming benefits cut.

The cutbacks will be phased in over several months depending on when people enrolled for benefits, according to the state Employment Development Department.

Notices detailing how the cuts will be enacted are being mailed to recipients this week, the agency said. Recipients also can check their estimated reduction using a "Sequestration Reduction Calculator" at http://www.edd.ca.gov.

Living with the cuts will not be easy for the jobless, said Pam Harris, director of the Employment Development Department.

"We understand that unemployment insurance benefits are often their only shield against economic disaster and that cuts in those benefits can be very challenging," she said. "But we want to get word out so that those relying on these federal benefits can at least prepare for the reductions."

California's long-term unemployed affected by these cuts represent about one-tenth of an estimated 4 million workers nationwide. But both the state and the national numbers are expected to grow as the year goes on and more people move from state-financed programs to the sequester-slashed federal one.

In the meantime, the sequester cuts are weakening the state's efforts to help the unemployed in other ways. The Employment Development Department is losing $3.3 million in federal money for administering the unemployment insurance program. Additionally, funding for the state's Workforce Investment Boards, which operate job centers, is being cut by at least $15 million.

Last year, the Employment Development Department paid out $13.7 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits, averaging about $264 million per week.

marc.lifsher@latiimes.com

Times staff writers Shan Li and Ricardo Lopez contributed to this story.

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Rain hampers search for survivors of Texas explosion [Update]

Even as as President Obama pledged federal assistance to the devastated community, morning rainfall was hampering search and rescue efforts Thursday at the site of the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion, which killed as many as 15 people and injured 160.

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said more than 200 law enforcement officers from throughout Texas are trying to recover bodies from the debris and rescue possible survivors.

The explosion destroyed and damaged homes and leveled apartment buildings within a half-mile radius of the close-knit town, located about 20 miles north of Waco.

McNamara, who has been sheriff for just four months, said he wouldn't have a full count of the dead and missing until later in the day.

"This is heartbreaking. There's no other way to describe it," he said. "The devastation was unbelievable."

Obama, in Boston to attend a memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, called Texas Gov. Rick Perry from Air Force One to tell him that his prayers are with the people of West, aides said.

He offered any federal resources that may be needed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other offices, a White House statement said.

The president also placed a call to the mayor of West, but has not yet reached the official, the aides said.

Waco police Sgt. William Swanton told "CBS This Morning" that "there is nothing at this point to indicate this is a criminal issue," but he stressed that "we don't know" what happened.

Residents of the community rushed to care for hundreds displaced by the blast. Evacuation centers that were established for residents were mostly empty Thursday, as people who had fled their homes were being sheltered by their neighbors, an evacuation site coordinator said.

Texas fertilizer plant explosion: Searching for victims in closets, under beds | 7:44 a.m. PDT

Rescuers were going door-to-door Thursday morning in neighborhoods decimated by the explosion at the West, Texas, fertilizer plant, searching in closets and under beds for residents after a massive blast that killed as many as 15 people and injured more than 160, officials said.

Three or four firefighters who are among the missing "were our first responders," Waco police Sgt. William Swanton told reporters at a news conference early Thursday. "They were the ones who went to the scene ... and were actually fighting the fire as the explosion occurred."

One volunteer firefighter who was previously listed as missing was found at an area hospital, but his condition as unknown, Swanton said.

Authorities from nearby Waco were assisting West officials in rescue and investigation efforts.

Gov. Rick Perry is scheduled to speak about the disaster later Thursday morning in Austin, as investigators from all levels of government descend on West, a town of 2,800, to try to determine the cause of the explosion that leveled four blocks.

President Obama, in Boston for an interfaith service for victims of the bombing at the city's marathon, said in a statement that the administration "is in close contact with our state and local partners on the ground to make sure there are no unmet needs."

"West is a town that many Texans hold near and dear to their hearts, and as residents continue to respond to this tragedy, they will have the support of the American people," the president said.

As search and rescue operations were underway, officials were watching a storm system that is moving into the area. Any resulting rain would make the searches more difficult but could slow the spread of a chemical plume from the fire, Swanton said.

He added thatthe tight-knit, family-oriented community had pulled together for those who have lost their homes.

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FBI seeks public's help identifying Boston suspects

BOSTON — The FBI appealed for the public's help Thursday in identifying two men wearing baseball caps and backpacks, one of whom was seen placing a backpack at the site of the second Boston Marathon bombing.

As President Obama traveled to the shaken city with a promise that it would "learn to run again," the FBI released photos and a video of two men seen walking through a crowd outside a restaurant near one of the two deadly explosions.

"They appear to be associated," Boston FBI chief Richard DesLauriers said as he detailed the most significant break yet in the investigation into who was responsible for the bombs that exploded Monday near the marathon's finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 170.

PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon

FBI officials believe they may have captured the planting of one of the crude pressure-cooker bombs outside a crowded restaurant near the finish line. They said an image showed the man — wearing a white baseball cap — depositing his backpack at the scene "within minutes" of the time the second bomb went off, DesLauriers said. The man walked back the way he came, away from the finish line, he said.

The same man is seen in surveillance footage walking a few steps behind a second man, this one dressed in khakis, a black jacket and a black baseball cap. That footage was captured at 2:37 p.m., about 13 minutes before the explosions, a few blocks away.

"We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous. No one should approach them," DesLauriers said, urging members of the public with information to instead call the FBI's tip line.

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects," DesLauriers said of the agency's decision to tip its hand and release the photos.

"Though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those individuals to come forward and provide [information] to us," he said. "No detail is too small. Each piece moves us forward towards justice."

The decision to release the photos was likely a gamble, a former FBI agent said.

"It's a cost-benefit analysis," said Richard Hahn, the former FBI senior supervisory agent in Long Beach. "Your perpetrator is going to see the photo if it's out there, and they could flee or go underground."

But, he said, the FBI may not be able to identify the individuals on its own and could decide that learning their identities through public help is worth the chance that they could try to evade law enforcement.

"If we don't know who that person is, we're not even at first base," Hahn said.

Sources close to the investigation also revealed that they have found what they believe to be the detonation system for the bombs — a circuit board and parts from a toy remote control vehicle.

Investigators have sorted through more than 3,000 images along with a massive amount of surveillance video; a department store camera near the scene of the second explosion produced some of the key images, officials have said.

"It's a long, tedious process — they're doing it as fast as they can," said Jason Pack, supervisory special agent at the FBI's national press office.

The revelations came as Obama traveled to Boston for the latest stop on a two-year-long road trip in which he has been called upon to comfort cities shocked by the effects of mass violence and disastrous weather.

"If they sought to intimidate us, terrorize us, to shake us from … the values that make us who we are as Americans, well, it should be pretty clear by now that they picked the wrong city to do it," Obama said to a standing ovation from more than 2,000 people at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. "Not here in Boston."

Under the soaring expanse of the Gothic Revival cathedral, the president was called on to try to find new words of comfort equally eloquent to those he delivered after tragedies in Newtown, Tucson and Joplin.

Boston was different, he said. The city's long history of nurturing immigrants and the millions from around the world who have studied at its universities — including the president and his wife, both graduates of Harvard Law School — gave everyone a stake in the city, he said.

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Injuries reported in Texas fertilizer plant explosion

Blast near Waco, Texas

From the Associated Press

April 17, 2013, 7:57 p.m.

WACO, Texas — An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco caused numerous injuries and sent flames shooting high into the night sky on Wednesday.

Department of Public Safety troopers were using their squad cars to take those injured by the blast and fire at the plant in West, a community north of Waco, Gayle Scarbrough, a spokeswoman for the department's Waco office, told television station KWTX. She said six helicopters were also en route to help.

The explosion at West Fertilizer was reported shortly before 8 p.m. in a frantic call from the scene, KWTX reported.

A West Fire Department dispatcher told The Associated Press that any casualties would be taken to hospitals in Waco, which is about 90 miles north of Austin.

The explosion knocked out power to many area customers and could be heard and felt for miles around.

Brad Smith, who lives 45 miles north of West in Waxahachie, told the station that he and his wife heard what sounded like a thunderclap.

Lydia Zimmerman, told KWTX that she, her husband and daughter were in their garden in Bynum, 13 miles from West, when they heard multiple blasts.

"It sounded like three bombs going off very close to us," she said.

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Video images yield two possible Boston bombing suspects

BOSTON — Authorities have obtained clear images of the faces of two men with backpacks who they believe were acting suspiciously around the time of the Boston Marathon bombings, a potential breakthrough in the search to find who planted the deadly devices, sources familiar with the investigation said Wednesday.

A department store surveillance camera caught an image of at least one of the men leaving a backpack near the finish line, a federal law enforcement official said.

Another official briefed on the investigation said the image that shows two men is the first indication that more than one bomber may have been responsible for the attacks that killed three people and injured more than 170 at Monday's race.

PHOTOS: Explosions at Boston Marathon

The men were singled out because of their demeanor and the way in which they reacted to the bomb blasts, said these officials, who could not be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. Neither would say how close authorities were to identifying the two.

The photographic evidence adds to physical evidence already gathered at the scene, including parts of a pressure cooker probably used in the two bombs that went off as hundreds of runners were still streaming in five hours into the race.

Authorities are relying not only on extensive surveillance video but a flood of photos and videos sent in by spectators, office workers and others who were at the disaster scene near Copley Square.

"I think that this will go down in U.S. history as the most videotaped bombing in history," said Tom Thurman, who formerly headed the FBI's Bomb Data Center and helped investigate the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

On Thursday, President Obama was scheduled to speak at an interfaith service here for the victims, 59 of whom are still hospitalized, with 10 in critical condition. The third victim killed has been identified as Lu Lingzi, 23, a Chinese national who was a Boston University graduate student in statistics.

Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced that attorney Kenneth Feinberg would administer One Fund Boston, a fund set up to aid those affected by the attacks. Feinberg oversaw similar funds for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and the 2010 BP oil spill.

The disclosures about the photos emerged on a dizzying day of conflicting reports in which a number of news agencies initially reported that a suspect had been identified and arrested, and was supposedly scheduled for a court appearance.

Hundreds of reporters and spectators gathered outside the Joseph Moakley federal courthouse, near Boston's Seaport district, which was briefly evacuated for a bomb threat even as the FBI and the Boston Police Department denied anyone had been taken into custody.

Federal officials cautioned that the full work of building a case could take time. Law enforcement officers now have access to sophisticated software tools that can use algorithms to search video for specific patterns — colors of clothing, movement or objects, analysts say. The federal Department of Homeland Security has invested heavily in facial recognition software. But it can be tedious work.

"The question that is most often asked is, is there a button we can push to make this happen as quickly as the general public thinks we can, from watching television and movies," said Larry Compton, operations manager at Forensic Video Solutions Inc., a firm that serves as a consultant to law enforcement.

"The answer is no. These tools and techniques are really designed to focus the analysts," he said.

The department store video can be compared with images gleaned from more than 10 trillion bytes of data gathered from other sources, including gas stations and ATM and traffic cameras, to see where a person of interest might have been before and after the attack, said one retired federal agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he may become involved in the case. "If you're lucky, you see the person getting into a car, and maybe you can pull a license plate," he said.

But security videos are typically low-resolution and don't offer a lot of visual detail, experts say, which helps explain why authorities have appealed to the public for photos and cellphone videos — images with much higher resolution.

"Then you can really blow it up and zoom on in," said Lance McVickar, president of Lawdio Inc. of Fairmount, N.Y., who has also served as a video consultant in federal investigations. "And a lot of them do time-stamping.… You find a picture with a bag not there and then a picture with a bag there — and then a photo of a person dropping the bag."

Already, there has been widespread public attention to a photo provided by a viewer to Boston TV station WHDH showing two bundles inside the security barrier next to a trash can — with a subsequent photo showing the immediate aftermath of an explosion at the same location.

Forensic investigators in white protective suits and agents leading sniffer dogs continued Wednesday to collect evidence from the blast sites inside a well-guarded police cordon near Boston's Copley Square. Agents from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies moved back and forth from the crime scene along Exeter Street, a narrow artery leading from the marathon route down Boylston Street, which was lined with mobile labs and bomb-disposal trucks.

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