This week. Where to even start?
Boston was rocked by explosions at its world famous marathon in a terror attack that shocked, but also inspired the country to unite. After a tension-filled manhunt that lasted through the early hours of Friday morning to Friday evening, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was brought into custody and taken to a hospital, with justice yet to be served. It’s been a crazy, crazy week, which is why NEWSFLASH is back to break it down for you!
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, Arrested for Boston Marathon Bombings: A Chronology of Events
In what is by far the most followed story of the week, 19-year-old University of Massachussetts Darthmouth student Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday in connection with Monday’s terror attack on the Boston Marathon and the Thursday shooting of a police officer at MIT.
Security footage from the Marathon showed Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 29, planting pressure cooker bombs stuffed into duffel bags near the marathon’s finish line before calmly walking away from the scene. The two explosions that followed, the first of which struck at 2:50PM EST, killed three bystanders while wounding more than 180 others, with many sustaining serious injuries. Krystle Campbell, 29, and Chinese graduate student Lingzhi Lu, 23, were two of the victims who lost their lives following the explosions. The third victim was 8-year-old Martin Richard who is now shown to have been just a few feet away from Dzhokhar when he planted one of the bombs.
Following the attack, police searched the Boston suburb home of a Saudi man who reportedly made authorities uncomfortable during an interrogation. Authorities soon reported that nothing had been found at the home and the man was released.
On Thursday afternoon, police were able to pick out two suspects from security footage at the Boston Marathon. The suspects were later identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers who had lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years.
While the Boston Police Department and federal authorities scourged the city, the Tsarnaev brothers had made their way to MIT’s campus, where they shot and killed a police officer at around 10:30PM EST following a short confrontation. The police officer was later identified as Sean Collier, 26, who had been responding to reports of a disturbance before coming upon the two terror suspects.
The two suspects carjacked a Mercedes SUV shortly after to make a getaway, with police pursuing them on the road once the brothers entered the nearby Boston suburb of Watertown. Police reports indicated that the brothers launched multiple explosive devices in an attempt to stop authorities, severely injuring one transit officer in the process.
A firefight erupted in Watertown during the early hours of Friday morning. By 4:20AM EST on Friday, it was confirmed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been critically injured during the gunfight with police and died of his wounds. A giant manhunt for Dzhokhar was immediately undertaken, with Watertown being put on lockdown at 5:50AM EST, a lockdown that later spread to all of Boston at 8AM EST.
By then, more details had emerged about the two brothers, including that both were ethnic Chechens who had been raised in Dagestan, a federal subject of Russia, for a few years. Tamarlan had also been interrogated by the FBI two years before after a foreign government expressed concerns that he had “extremist ties.”
The massive manhunt proved fruitless until Friday evening, when Dzhokhar was found injured under the tarp of a boat at 67 Franklin St., Watertown after having been discovered by the boat’s owner. After a tense standoff during which authorities fired stun grenades at Dzhokhar, the 19-year-old bombing suspect was finally captured and taken in.
For now, Dzhokhar is being treated at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, which caused an uproar in itself as many of the Boston Marathon bombing victims are being treated there as well. As of Saturday afternoon, Dzhokhar remains in serious condition following what are believed to be wounds inflicted during Friday early morning’s car chase with police.
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Fertilizer Plant Explosion Rips Through West, Texas
An explosion from a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas on Wednesday claimed 14 lives and injured more than 160 residents.
Firefighters responded to a fire at the plant at 7:29PM, only to call for an evacuation of the area once they realized the severity of the situation. Approximately 20 minutes later, the plant exploded, leveling houses and scorching the nearby area.
Some evacuated residents were allowed to return to their homes as of Saturday, but many have still been ordered to stay away.
For an idea of how big the blast was, you can take a look at local resident Derrick Hurtt’s video taken at the time of the explosion.
Major Earthquakes in Iran and China Leave Destruction in Wake
Two earthquakes hit Iran and China this week, claiming victims and leveling buildings in a week that had already been marred by chaos.
The 7.9-magnitude Iranian earthquake struck along the Iran-Pakistan border, leaving an estimated 40 dead in Iran and 34 dead in Pakistan. The death toll was lower than estimated given the strength of the earthquake, a result that could have been due to the sparsely populated area at the epicenter of the quake.
In China, however, 157 people were killed and 5,700 in China’s Sichuan province. The 6.6-magnitude ripped through the province’s southwest region and left emergency crews scrambling to rescue any survivors. Sichuan had previously been hit by a destructive earthquake in 2008, when almost 70,000 people were killed, largely due to poor construction and infrastructure measures that left building foundations weak and vulnerable to collapsing.
New Zealand Legalizes Gay Marriage
In what is perhaps one of the only major happy news stories of this week, New Zealand lawmakers voted 77 to 44 to legalize gay marriage in the country.
The law makes New Zealand the 13th country in the world to legally allow gay couples to marry. New Zealand MPs burst into song the moment the bill was passed, and laughter ensued following a hilarious speech by MP Maurice Williamson’s hilarious speech supporting gay marriage.
Other countries that legally allow gay marriage are: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina and Denmark. Lawmakers just passed a bill in Uruguay on the issue, which is pending approval.