Boston Bombing News Time Line

OSTON — Two powerful bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday afternoon, killing three people, including an 8-year-old child, and injuring more than 100, as one of this city’s most cherished rites of spring was transformed from a scene of cheers and sweaty triumph to one of screams and carnage.

BOSTON — So many patients arrived at once, with variations of the same gruesome leg injuries. Shattered bones, shredded tissue, nails burrowed deep beneath the flesh. The decision had to be made, over and over, with little time to deliberate. Should this leg be amputated? What about this one?

Even for a society comfortable with blood and gore in its movies and video games, the bombings at the Boston Marathon have sparked a new debate among news organizations about when images are too gruesome to display.

BOSTON — In a direct appeal for help from the public, the F.B.I. on Thursday released pictures and video of two young men who officials believe may be responsible for the explosions that killed three people and wounded more than 170 during the Boston Marathon.

A woman in the sleek lobby of the World Center Hotel, located just outside the entrance to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center site, sat down in one of the stylish, modern chairs on Monday afternoon. She felt something strange beneath her.

WASHINGTON — With one suspect dead and the other captured and lying grievously wounded in a hospital, the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings turned on Saturday to questions about the men’s motives, and to the significance of an overseas trip one of them took last year.

WASHINGTON — The two men suspected in the Boston Marathonbombings were armed with a small arsenal of guns, ammunition and explosives when they first confronted the police early Friday, and were most likely planning more attacks, the authorities said Sunday.

BOSTON — Lying grievously wounded in a hospital bed, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings admitted on Sunday to playing a role in the attacks, said law enforcement officials, and on Monday he was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction that resulted in three deaths and more than 170 injuries.

The portrait investigators have begun to piece together of the two brothers suspected of the Boston Marathon bombings suggests that they were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs but were not acting with known terrorist groups — and that they may have learned to build bombs simply by logging onto the online English-language magazine of the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Yemen, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — Despite being told in 2011 that an F.B.I. review had found that a man who went on to become one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings had no ties to extremists, the Russian government asked the Central Intelligence Agency six months later for whatever information it had on him, American officials said Wednesday.

NEW YORK — The Boston Marathon explosions and their aftermath were captured in chilling images that ran as relentless tape loops of terror online and on TV networks Monday, a sickeningly familiar routine in an age of violence designed for maximum impact.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his country's assistance in investigating bombings in Boston that killed 3 and injured more than 140 people.

NEW YORK — A stadium full of Yankees fans stood arm in arm at the bottom of the third inning in the Bronx, singing along to "Sweet Caroline," the Boston Red Sox anthem. Irony and sarcasm were absent. Sincerity was the mood of the night.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the FBI wants to speak with individuals seen in at least one video from the Boston Marathon but says she isn't calling them suspects

MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md. — In a passionate plea, an uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects urged one of his nephews to turn himself in Friday, saying he had brought shame to the family and the entire Chechen ethnicity.

The Boston Marathon bombing suspect and alleged cop-killer, who held Greater Boston in fear and under lockdown yesterday as thousands of cops swarmed the unsuspecting suburb of Watertown, was weak and clinging to life when authorities plucked him from the boat where he’d been cowering in a backyard, police said.

The shooting death of beloved MIT campus cop Sean Collier was nothing more than a cold-blooded ambush by the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, authorities revealed yesterday — raising bedeviling questions about why the heavily hunted pair initiated their own undoing by, authorities allege, mercilessly executing a police officer.

WASHINGTON — The White House says the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing will not be tried as an enemy combatant in a military tribunal.

WASHINGTON — Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sought to embrace American lives after emigrating from Russia — joining a boxing club, winning a scholarship and even seeking U.S. citizenship. But their uncle last week angrily called them "losers" who failed to feel settled even after a decade of living in the United States.

The lawyers defending Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are dealing with federal budget cuts that will force them to take three unpaid weeks off even as they prepare to defend one of the most complicated criminal cases in the nation.

Two crude but deadly bombs ripped through crowds at the Boston Marathon on Monday, turning the finish line into a scene of chaos and carnage, killing 3, injuring at least 140 and closing down parts of central Boston.

BOSTON -- Important clues to the Boston Marathon bombings are being collected from the victims themselves: the shrapnel doctors have removed from their injured bodies.

BEIJING -- At precisely 9 a.m. Monday in Boston, Lingzi posted a photograph on her Chinese microblog page of a plate of bread and vegetables, next to a smiley face and a caption that read, “My wonderful breakfast!”

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the FBI wants to speak with individuals seen in at least one video from the Boston Marathon but says she isn't calling them suspects

Residents of Boston and its nearby suburbs woke to find themselves in a virtual lockdown Friday as mass transit came to a halt, college campuses were closed and officials urged people to shutter their businesses and stay inside.

BOSTON — The surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings remained under heavy guard in a hospital Saturday, with an injury to his neck complicating how he would be interrogated and held for trial.

WASHINGTON – The FBI did “a very thorough job” vetting Boston Marathon bombing suspectTamerlan Tsarnaev after the Russian intelligence service flagged him in early 2011 as a possible Islamic radical, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee said Sunday.

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. -- As the probe into the Boston Marathon bombings continued, investigators on Monday removed items from an apartment here where authorities had arrested two foreign nationals on immigration violations.

As SWAT officers moved in to capture Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was hiding in a boat parked in a residential backyard, they didn’t know whether he had a gun or explosives that he could use against them.

So they approached from behind a Kevlar shield, focusing intently on the suspect's hands.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- As Boston's Boylston Street edged back to normal Wednesday, the hospitals that treated the men, women and children injured during the twin bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line announced some good news: Just 39 patients remain in their care, down from 138 at the peak of the carnage.