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MONSTER MACHINES APR 19, 2013 11:07 PM 14,548 47 Share GET OUR TOP STORIES FOLLOW GIZMODO The Tech That Helped Take Down Marathon Bombing Suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev Casey Chan and Brian Barrett The second suspect in the brutal Boston Marathon bombings has been apprehended, after five days of uncertainty and fear. And while all credit for Dzhokar Tsarnaev's capture goes to the men and women of the many, many agencies that spent the last week tracking him down, technology played as prominent a role as it ever has in a time of national crisis. A Smartphone Immediately after the Boston Marathon bomb exploded, David Green pulled out his smartphone and snapped a shot of the aftermath, smoke and all-around chaos. He then put his phone away and started helping victims. Taking a picture of what you see in front of you-whether it be a disaster, a beautiful view, a plate of food-has become as instinctual as just plain seeing. What Green didn't know, and what the world was soon going to find out, was that Green's picture eventually became the clearest image of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, aka Suspect #2. In the high-resolution image, you can see Tsarnaev calmly walk away from the explosion in his unmistakable white baseball cap. On top of that, the smartphone pic captured Tsarnaev without the backpack he was spotted carrying earlier on surveillance cameras. The backpack that reportedly held the bomb.

"California's only remaining A-level credit grade from a major rating firm is in greater danger as the state's budget woes deepen yet again. Standard & Poor's on Wednesday cut its rating on California's $64 billion in general-obligation debt to A-minus from A and warned that the outlook was "negative," meaning another reduction could loom. S&P cited new concerns about the state's finances, including a possible cash shortage "if the state's revenue and spending trajectories continue." Scrambling to close a $20-billion budget gap, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a number of one-time fixes - including having the federal government contribute nearly $7 billion in new aid. Yet the state's chief budget analyst believes the odds of getting that much help from the U.S. are "almost nonexistent.""

"RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Rescue crews on Saturday intensified the search for victims at a plush Brazilian beach resort ravaged by mudslides and flooding that have killed at least 64 people in three states. World | Green Business | Brazil Firefighters waded through mountains of mud and sifted through the remains of a lodge and homes that were destroyed in the early hours of Friday when a hillside collapsed in the luxury beach resort of Angra dos Reis, removing 35 bodies, authorities said. Angra dos Reis, the nearby island of Ilha Grande and other towns on the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro state are a magnet for local and foreign tourists over the New Year's holiday. Heavy rain also left several cities without power in the state of Sao Paulo, where six tourists died in a mudslide in the town of Cunha. At least three people died because of mudslides in Juiz de Fora, a city in Minas Gerais state. In Rio de Janeiro state, where Brazil has most of its oil reserves and has long been the nation's flagship tourist destination, the death toll climbed to 55, authorities said."

"Vatican City, Jan 11 (AP) Pope Benedict XVI denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying today that world peace depends on safeguarding God's creation. He issued the admonition in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, an annual appointment during which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight to the diplomatic corps. Benedict has been dubbed the "green pope" for his increasingly vocal concern about the need to protect the environment. Under his watch, the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells on its main auditorium to convert sunlight into electricity and has joined a reforestation project aimed at offsetting its CO2 emissions. For the pontiff, it's a moral issue: Church teaching holds that man must respect creation because it's destined for the benefit of humanity's future."

"On Christmas Day, a Nigerian-born terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger airplane. Only the bravery of a fellow passenger prevented the catastrophe. President Obama called the terror attempt a "systemic failure" on the part of American national security agencies. In particular, he blamed the CIA for the foul-up. There is no doubt that the CIA should have done something more to prevent this attack. But, then again, President Obama has been keeping them busy-with global warming. Seriously. According to the New York Times on Jan. 5, just a few days after Obama excoriated the CIA publicly, "The nation's top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government's intelligence assets-including spy satellites and other classified sensors-to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change." This project, the Times reported, "has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends …" While missing a potentially catastrophic terror attack is problematic, it's good to know that we've got the inside dossier on the mating habits of polar bears. This isn't a shock coming from the "watermelon" Obama White House-green on the outside, red on the inside. The simple truth is that the Obama administration believes that the solution to global warming is the same as the solution to terrorism: Marxist-style global redistributionism."

"Still in intensive care, they were shot for refusing order to convert to Islam. TOBA TEK SINGH, Pakistan, January 14 (CDN) - Two Pakistani Christians who were shot at a wedding on Dec. 26 for refusing to convert to Islam are still receiving treatment at a hospital intensive care unit, but doctors are hopeful that they will recover. In low, barely audible voices, Imran Masih, 21, and Khushi Masih, 24, told Compass that two Muslims armed with AK-47s in Punjab Province's Chak (village) 297-JB, in Toba Tek Singh district, shot them in their chests after they refused orders to recite the Islamic creed signifying conversion. Soon after they arrived at the wedding, a group of Muslim youths armed with AK-47 assault rifles surrounded them and began shooting into the air, as is customary at village weddings. They were not alarmed, they said, assuming the young Muslim men were simply celebrating joyfully. "One of the green-turban-wearing Muslims peremptorily told us to recite the Islamic holy Kalima [profession of faith] or face direct bullets and the lethal consequences," said Khushi Masih. Both Christians said that they joyfully refused, and instead they began reciting Psalm 91. "Our decision infuriated them," Imran Masih said, "and instead of shooting into the air, they shot us, leaving us only after being convinced that we were dead. Praise the name of Lord Jesus Christ, who raised us from the dead!" "

"BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers struck near three hotels popular with Western journalists and businessmen Monday just as Iraq announced the execution of Saddam Hussein's notorious cousin known as "Chemical Ali." At least 37 people were killed and more than 104 injured, security officials said. The blasts - coming in a span of about 15 minutes in downtown Baghdad - came shortly before state television announced that Ali Hassan al-Majid had been hanged. There was no claim of responsibility for the latest major attacks in Baghdad - about six weeks after a series of blasts killed 127 and brought outcry against Iraq's government for repeated security lapses as U.S. troops withdraw. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the latest bombings "represent an extension" of the activities of insurgents linked to Saddam's regime. But he stopped short of declaring the blast as possible revenge for the execution. The first explosion struck at about 3:40 p.m. local time in the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel, toppling high concrete blast walls protecting the site and damaging a number of buildings along the Abu Nawas esplanade across the Tigris River from the Green Zone. Two other blasts followed minutes later, striking near the Babylon Hotel and Hamra Hotel, which is popular with Western journalists and foreign security contractors. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. According to initial tallies, 15 of the victims were at the Hamra, 14 at the Sheraton, and the remaining 8 died at the Babylon, including two policemen."

"It took years for liberalism's redistributive itch to create an income tax so steeply progressive that it prompts the flight from the state of wealth-creators: "Between 1990 and 2007," Voegeli writes, "some 3.4 million more Americans moved from California to one of the other 49 states than moved to California from another state." And the state's income tax - liberalism codified - intensifies the effects of business cycles on the state's revenue stream: During booms, the stream surges and stimulates government spending; during contractions, revenues dwindle but the new government spending continues. Voegeli says that if California's spending had grown no faster than population growth and inflation from 1992 to 2006, it would have been $65 billion less in 2006, and per capita government outlays then would have equaled not those of Somalia or Mississippi but of Oregon, which is hardly "a hellish paradigm of Social Darwinism." It took years for liberalism's mania for micromanaging life with entangling regulations to make California's once-creative economy resemble Gulliver immobilized by the Lilliputians' many threads. The state, which between 1990 and 2007 lost 26 percent of its factory jobs and 35 percent of its high-tech manufacturing jobs, ranks behind only New York, another of liberalism's laboratories, in the number of outward-bound moving vans. (emphasis added)"

"Living in tree houses and eating from skips, for 4 years activists have occupied Bilston Wood near Edinburgh to stop it being destroyed by a new road."