Justin Lane / EPA

A moment of silence is marked on the steps of the Massachusetts State House one week since the bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Boston observed a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m. Monday – exactly one week after an annual springtime rite in the city was shattered by a pair of explosions that killed three people and injured more than 200, including some who lost legs.

From the Watertown police department whose officers searched their town for a bombing suspect to the Massachusetts State House to the neighborhood where a little boy who died in the attack had lived, the city remembered those it lost.

A full minute of silence was observed at the request of Gov. Deval Patrick, Mayor Thomas Menino, and charitable organization One Fund Boston. The White House announced that President Obama marked the occasion, as did the New York Stock Exchange. Governors in Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut asked residents of their states to take a minute to commemorate those killed and injured as well.

Earlier Monday, a funeral for victim Krystle Campbell, 29, at St. Joseph’s Church in Medford was packed to overflowing, with a thousand more people standing outside. Gov. Patrick was joined inside by Attorney General Martha Coakley and Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley.

“The great irony was it was so peaceful, loving, and supportive, and we were all there for a senseless, angry, horrific tragedy,” Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn said after the ceremony. “Everybody knew her as someone with a great sense of humor. They say at times she was a little loud but everybody loved her for it.”

About one thousand members of Teamsters Local 25 gathered at St. Joseph’s Church earlier in the day after the Westboro Baptist Church said they planned to demonstrate, according to local president Sean O’Brien. But no members of Westboro showed up, he said.

PhotoBlog: Mourners pause for moment of silence

On Sunday, a wake was held for Campbell, and lines stretched out the door and down the street from the funeral home. The memorial, which was scheduled to last an hour, went on for five, WHDH reported.

Medford draped a 45-by-90-foot American flag across the front of city hall on Monday morning in honor of Campbell and the other victims. McGlynn said he had the flag commissioned after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Jim Bourg / Reuters

Two-year-old Wesley Brillant of Natick, Massachusetts kneels in front of a memorial to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings near the scene of the blasts on Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts, April 21, 2013.

At Boston University, where Chinese graduate student Lu Lingzi, 23, was working toward a master’s degree in statistics before being killed in the explosions near the marathon finish line, a public memorial was planned for 7 p.m. Monday night.

A memorial scholarship has been instituted in Lu’s memory.

“There isn’t an individual at BU who didn’t have some connection to people who were there,” university trustee Kenneth Feld said in a release from the school.

Over the weekend, more balloons and teddy bears were added to a makeshift memorial for 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, who died last Monday as well. His mother Denise and sister Jane, 7, were wounded in the blast; Denise required brain surgery and Jane lost a leg to the pressure-cooker bombs set off on the race sidelines.

The Richard family thanked law enforcement for “a job well done” in a statement released after the capture of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Richard was remembered at a packed mass on Sunday at the family’s St. Ann Parish in Dorchester, where neighbors have said his parents are active community members.

“Our entire community shares the grief and suffering felt by our young family,” the parish’s Father Sean Connor said in a letter on the church’s website. “We can only imagine the suffering that the Richard family carries today, as a result of the Boston Marathon tragedy, will be with them each day of their lives.”

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

Running shoes are placed at a makeshift memorial for victims near the finish line of the Boston Marathon bombings at the intersection of Newbury Street and Darthmouth Street.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology mourned the loss of a popular campus safety officer who only got to enjoy a little more than a year on the job. Officer Sean Collier was shot and killed by the suspected bombers late on Thursday night, police said. The men shot the 26-year-old Collier multiple times while he was sitting in his vehicle, according to authorities.

A memorial service for Collier has been planned for Wednesday, April 24, at noon, according to a release from MIT police. Collier’s family has requested that his wake and funeral services remain private.

The proceeds from a Brahms performance at MIT on Sunday that drew hundreds of singers from local choruses were donated to One Fund Boston. The school also created the Sean Collier Memorial fund, which will support an award for individuals “who demonstrate the values of Officer Collier,” according to a letter from University President L. Rafael Reif on Monday.

On Monday, the areas where the blasts occurred were transitioning from crime scene to street scene. Mementos left at a makeshift memorial on Boylston Street are being moved to a park at nearby Copley Square; city workers on Sunday began removing the running shoes, flowers, and notes left by friends, family, and strangers with the goal of having all pieces of the memorial moved by the end of the week.

Students and faculty at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where alleged bomber and Suspect 2 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was enrolled as a sophomore, planned to observe the minute of silence. A student vigil on campus was planned for 5 p.m.

The mayor’s office released a five-step plan on Sunday to reopen the area around the finish line on Boylston Street that included testing buildings near the blast sites and removing debris.

“Nearly a week ago our city took a deep breath and was forced to dive into a pool of uncertainty and fear,” Menino said in a press release. “Friday as our officers reported to the world ‘we got him,’ a huge sigh of relief was felt across our great city and nation so now it is time for us to start moving our city forward.”

Slideshow: Boston bombings

Dominick Reuter / Reuters

Cheers filled the streets after a Boston Marathon bombing suspect was captured alive but wounded Friday night — following a daylong manhunt that shut down the city.

Launch slideshow

Related:

• 'Adorable' boy, 8, mourned after Boston Marathon blasts
• Second Boston Marathon bombing victim identified as 29-year-old woman
• Outpouring of grief for third Boston victim, Chinese university student

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 22, 2013 10:39 AM EDT

Residents have returned to a Texas town cratered by a massive fertilizer plant explosion that ripped open an apartment complex, damaged a school, and collapsed a nursing home, killing 14 people and injuring 200 more.

It is still not clear what caused the initial fire that sparked the explosion on April 17 in West, Texas.

About 1,500 students from the tiny town near Waco, Texas will go back to school in makeshift classrooms or a neighboring district on Monday. For many, the damage at home will take longer to repair.

“Every time I close my eyes, all I can think about is the explosion,” West High School senior Edi Botello said. “People running around. People evacuating. There was one point I couldn’t even talk. I just stuttered.”

Slideshow: Fertilizer plant explosion in Texas

Rod Aydelotte / AP

The huge blast rocked a small Texas town causing an unknown number of deaths and destroying nearby homes.

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Those who lived close to the West Fertilizer Company plant say they were lucky to escape with their lives – but putting them back together will take time.

“I don’t think they can fix it, we have ceilings down,” NBCDFW.com quoted David Polansky as saying, referring to his family’s home. “My mother died in 2002, and that feeling is almost the same, you’re just crushed to see all this.”

Officials have opened what is known as Zone 2, a four-block area close to the plant, on Sunday. The area closest to the plant remains closed. Residents in the least damaged homes were allowed back Saturday night, with a curfew in place.

“What can you say?” said resident Jimmy Polansky, who claims his house was targeted by looters.

Investigators said they have found no evidence of criminal activity in the blast that tore through West just before 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

That’s a small comfort to resident Dee Dablin. The walls of her home about a half mile from the plant remain standing, but the inside of is wrecked.

Slideshow: West, Texas: 'They are all neighbors'

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In this small Texas town, people pitch in to help out following the deadly blast at a local fertilizer plant.

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“It’s unbelievable, just unbelievable,” Dablin said. “But I’m alive, that’s all. I’m alive.”

The roof of an apartment building that sat across a strip of railroad tracks from the fertilizer plant was collapsed, the structure’s windows blown out, and debris scattered for hundreds of yards.

“Several blocks we had projectiles or shrapnel that has been found of different sizes,” assistant state fire marshal Kelly Kistner said, according to NBCDFW.com. “Smaller pieces have been found blocks away.”

The displaced congregation of the First Baptist Church in West held prayer services in a field on Sunday as the town took in the full extent of the damage.

“None of this makes sense. It is frightening, it is surreal,” Pastor John Crowder said at the service, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald. “Do you feel like I do, that we’re walking through a science fiction movie?”

Related:

• West, Texas gathers to pray, remember
• Satellite photos show West, Texas, before and after explosion
• ’Chaotic’ scene at nursing home devastated by Texas fertilizer blast

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 22, 2013 7:59 AM EDT

Heavy river flooding in six Midwestern states that forced evacuations, shut down bridges, swamped homes and caused at least three deaths was at or near crest in some areas Sunday evening.

Rivers surged from the Quad Cities to St. Louis on Sunday. Hours earlier, National Guardsmen, volunteers, homeowners and jail inmates pitched in with sandbagging to hold back floodwaters that closed roads in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. 

Forecasters warned that "more rain was expected in the affected areas Tuesday into Wednesday," according to weather.com.

Record flooding swelled in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a crest of over 22 feet expected late Sunday into Monday. The water is expected to peak sometime Monday. 

The basements of some homes in the town of Comstock Park, Mich., were already full of water even before the surge Sunday morning, and the new swell forced some residents to leave their houses by boat.

“I’m surrounded by water all the way around my house,” resident Gary Smith told Grand Rapids NBC station WOOD-TV. “When I step out, I have a porch and then I have one step that’s still visible, and then I step down into at least three feet of water, four feet of water.”

Significant flooding is possible in places like Ste. Genevieve, Mo., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Cairo, Ill., later this week, The Associated Press reported. 

The Chicago area, which was hit by widespread flooding over the weekend, was dry for much of the period. But more rain may be on the way on Tuesday and Wednesday as a developing cold front could bring as much as an inch of precipitation to the region, forecasters said.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn declared a state of emergency as record flooding occurred at a dozen river gauges across the state over the weekend.

All hands pitched in as the hard-hit town of Clarksville, Mo., worked to keep back the waters of the Mississippi River from the historic downtown area.

The river was at 34.7 feet on Sunday afternoon, over 10 feet above the 25-foot flood stage – and was expected to rise another foot before cresting Monday, according to the AP.

Jeff Roberson / AP

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, right, walks away from floodwaters after meeting with members of the Missouri National Guard as they make flood preparations Saturday in Clarksville, Mo.

“This is frustrating for people,” Trish Connelly, 57, told the Associated Press. “This isn’t as bad as 2008, but thank God it stopped raining.”

Hundreds were evacuated from towns in Indiana as the Wabash River rose by 14 feet on Saturday. Authorities in the town of Montezuma, Ind. called in volunteer firefighters to help fill sandbags as waters looked to crest at twice the normal flood stage.

“Right now we are just trying to help people,” town council President Allen Cobb told WTWO. “We’re just trying to keep people calm at this point, let them know the facts as we know them and put down some of the rumors they’re hearing.”

Indiana resident Robert Morgan, 64, of Arcadia, died Friday night after his car was caught by floodwaters and swept 100 yards downstream in Hamilton County, according to a statement from the local sheriff’s office.

The body of another driver and Arcadia resident, 42-year-old David A. Baker, was recovered on Sunday, according to the sheriff’s office. Police responded after receiving a distress call from Baker’s cell phone in the early hours of Saturday, and later recovered his vehicle and dog. Baker’s body was recovered on Sunday morning.

A third confirmed flood-related death occurred in Missouri, according to weather.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• Full coverage from weather.com

This story was originally published on Sun Apr 21, 2013 9:47 AM EDT

Rod Aydelotte / AP

Emergency workers evacuate the elderly from a damaged nursing home following an explosion at a fertilizer plant Wednesday in West, Texas.

Rescuers evacuating more than 130 elderly people from a nursing home during a fire at a nearby fertilizer plant were suddenly confronted with chaos and danger when an explosion ripped apart the building.

Many of the senior citizens at the West Rest Haven home are related to residents in the tiny Texas town of West, which has been devastated by the blast.

It's unclear how many were removed before the inferno at the West Fertilizer Company plant erupted in a earth-shuddering blast that killed between 5 and 15 people and injured at least 160 more.

Nursing home worker Lola Millhollin and another employee were wheeling two residents out through the building’s foyer at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday when disaster struck, she told the Associated Press.

Rod Aydelotte / Waco Tribune Herald via AP

Persons are seen pushing wheel chairs in front of a damaged nursing home following an explosion at a nearby fertilizer plant Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in West, Texas. An explosion at a fertilizer plant near Waco caused numerous injuries and sent flames shooting high into the night sky on Wednesday.(AP Photo/ Waco Tribune Herald, Rod Aydelotte)

“I was trying to figure out exactly where we were supposed to be,” Millhollin said. “All of a sudden it just blew, I mean, everything went flying everywhere, and once that happened I looked around and debris was just down. Everything fell down, the ceiling fell down and the windows blew out.”

Workers went back into the damaged building and searched rooms for trapped residents, she said. Many of the elderly were panicked and in shock.

“I helped loosen debris so that we could wheel the ones that were out in the main part first,” Millhollin said. “We did the best we could with what we had, and we got them out safely. We were taking them out through broken windows, putting a mattress across the windows so we could get them out without getting them all cut up and stuff.”

Denise Day, a nurse at West Rest Haven, told the Waco Tribune-Herald that she heard the blast from her house, which is 23 miles from the plant. After hearing the details over her police scanner, she raced back to town to help evacuate residents, she told the paper.

William Burch entered the damaged building with his wife, a retired Air Force nurse, and found water filling the hallways and wires dangling from the ceilings. The two found some residents trapped in wheelchairs in their rooms. The scene was “completely chaotic,” Burch told the AP.

“They had Sheetrock that was on top of them,” Burch said. “You had to remove that.”

The extent of the damage was not clear. All of the residents had been moved to other rest homes, said David Moon, 85, a former president and current board member.

“We just have to wait and probably tear down and rebuild,” said Moon, who has lived in West since 1950. He was on the nursing home’s board when it was founded in 1966, he said.

“We’re doing OK here,” Moon said. “We just have a lot of work to do.”

Related:

• 5 to 15 killed, 160 wounded in 'devastating' Texas chemical plant blast
• 'The whole street is gone': Bloodied eyewitnesses describe Texas explosion horror
• Witness: Texas plant blast lifted my truck off the ground

A mother who lost her 6-year-old son in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School made an emotional plea for national gun-control legislation in an address from the White House.

Francine Wheeler made her appeal in lieu of the president’s weekly address. Her appearance is the only time President Obama has handed the address to anyone other than Vice President Joe Biden since the two first took office. Wheeler was joined by her husband David.

“I have hear people say that the tidal wave of anguish our country felt on 12/14 has receded, but not for us,” Wheeler said. “To us it feels as if it happened just yesterday, and in the four months since we lost our loved ones, thousands of other Americans have died at the end of a gun.”

The address, taped Friday, comes as several Sandy Hook families have mounted an aggressive effort to get a gun-control bill passed by Congress. Wheeler and her husband wrote the remarks after they were approached, the White House said.

“We have to convince the Senate to come together and pass common sense gun responsibility reforms that will make our communities safer and prevent more tragedies like the one we never thought would happen to us,” Wheeler said.

Jessica Hill / AP file

Francine Wheeler, mother of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim Benjamin Wheeler, cries as she listens to Vice President Joe Biden speak during a gun violence conference in Danbury, Conn., Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013.

Family members of the Newtown victims were present on Capitol Hill Thursday when Senators voted 68-31 to move forward with the process of debating a gun bill that several Republican lawmakers had threatened to filibuster. Several Republican senators have said that the presence of Newtown families helped contribute to the unexpectedly overwhelming vote to move forward with the bill.

Among the more than a dozen relatives in the gallery was Jillian Soto, whose sister was killed at Sandy Hook.

“The tears that we had weren’t tears of joy, but tears of remembering this is happening,” Soto told NBC News shortly after the vote. “We’re here because of what happened to us.”

During her remarks, Wheeler and her husband wore green pins to commemorate the 20 schoolchildren, including their son, and six adults who died in the December shooting. The Wheelers’ older son Nate, a 4th grader at Sandy Hook, survived the shooting.

“Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook volunteer firehouse for the boy who would never come home – the same firehouse that was home to Ben’s Tiger Scout Den 6,” said Wheeler, choking back tears. “But other times I feel Ben’s presence filling me with courage for what I have to do for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

• Newtown passion moves Senate vote on guns
• Newtown Victim's mom to give Obama's weekly address
• Newtown families lobby for gun control

Jason Reed / Reuters file

President Obama is seen through the screen of a teleprompter as he meets members of the audience following remarks in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Jan. 25, 2012.

A Virginia man was sentenced to seven years in prison for swiping President Obama's teleprompter and a truckload full of other White House press gear.

Eric Brown pleaded guilty to theft of government property in January. The 49-year-old Richmond man had a history of drug use according to court papers, and was a suspect in about a dozen other truck thefts.  

“If I had to sum up Mr. Brown’s character, it would be that he’s a thief,” U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney said at the Thursday sentencing, according to The Associated Press.

Brown picked up the White House communications staff van from a hotel parking lot in October 2011.

The man did not immediately realize whose van he had stolen until he began unloading the vehicle, prosecutor Laura Taylor said. Brown somehow missed the presidential seals on the exterior of the truck, but realized the mess his sticky fingers had gotten him into when he discovered the teleprompter, sound system, and other press office equipment, she said.

“The theft of government property is a serious offense,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Roderick Young said. “It’s all the more serious when the property belongs to the White House Communications Agency.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Saddleback Valley Community Church via Reuters

Matthew Warren, the son of popular American evangelical pastor Rick Warren

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren said that his son, who killed himself last week after a prolonged battle with mental illness, bought an unregistered gun over the Internet.

“Someone on the internet sold Matthew an unregistered gun,” Warren said Thursday on Twitter. “I pray he seeks God’s forgiveness. I forgive him.”

The youngest son of the popular pastor and author, 27-year-old Matthew Warren committed suicide last Friday. Warren’s Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., announced his death the next day.

“In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness never subsided,” Warren wrote in a letter to church members. “Today, after a fun evening together with Kay and me, in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life.”

The Orange County sheriff’s department has struggled to determine where the gun came from, The Associated Press reported. It is practically impossible to trace, sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino said.

“We can’t tell if it’s registered or not because the serial number is scratched off,” Amormino said. “At one point in time, it may have been, but it’s going to be impossible to find out.”

Background checks are required on all gun purchases in California, and defacing or altering a gun’s serial number is a federal crime.

The Orange County sheriff’s department was called to Matthew Warren’s home in Mission Viejo last Friday afternoon. They found him dead of an apparent suicide by gunshot, estimated to have been fired seven hours earlier.

The church called the pastor’s son “an incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate young man whose sweet spirit was encouragement and comfort to many” in a statement. “Unfortunately, he also suffered from mental illness resulting in deep depression and suicidal thoughts.”

Rick Warren delivered an invocation at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, and is the bestselling author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” He has tweeted regularly about his son’s death.

Suicides accounted for 19,392 of the more than 31,000 gun-related deaths in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Related:

• Pastor Rick Warren's son, Matthew, commits suicide, church says
• Rick Warren on updating 'Purpose Driven Life' for 2013
• Rick Warren: Pastor in the political spotlight

W.V. State Police via Reuters

Tennis Melvin Maynard, 37, is seen in this undated handout photo released by the West Virginia State Police.

A man alleged to have shot and killed a West Virginia sheriff on April 3 should have been barred from owning a gun, but got his hands on a weapon after his background check was delayed by "kinks in the chain" a county prosecutor said.

Mingo County Sheriff Eugene Crum was sitting in his parked police SUV eating lunch when Tennis Melvin Maynard, 37, allegedly shot him twice using a .40 caliber Glock handgun, police have said.

"It was a federal and state violation for him to possess a firearm, and he possessed other firearms also," Mingo County Prosecuting Attorney C. Michael Sparks told NBC News. Sparks declined to say what on Maynard's record prohibited him from owning the gun with which he allegedly shot Crum.

"The dealer did what was legally required under the law," Sparks said. "The disqualifying event ... it was not in the federal database when the gun was purchased. There was a delay in the time period between the triggering event and the information being reported to the federal database."

A separate, subsequent attempt by Maynard to buy a firearm failed when the background check system flagged him, Sparks said.

Sparks said West Virginia has “one of the more sophisticated systems in America as far as reporting this type of information.”

Maynard fled from the alleged shooting, police said, but was stopped when his car crashed into a bridge. After raising his gun to a pursuing deputy, Maynard was shot. He was transported to a hospital and authorities have said he is recovering from his injuries. Maynard has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

Williamson Daily News via AP

This undated photo shows Mingo County Sheriff Eugene Crum. Crum was gunned down Wednesday, April 3, 2013.

Maynard had spent time in a mental institution and “the same problem was eating him again,” his father told The Associated Press. Federal law prohibits the sale of guns to people who have been adjudicated mentally defective or spent time in an institution.

“He would have probably shot anybody, the first one he come to, you know what I’m saying,” Maynard's dad, Melvin, said. “I know he was off, I know he should have been in a hospital.”

A funeral for Crum, 59, at Mingo Central High School on Sunday was attended by close to 400 law enforcement officers who remembered the sheriff for his efforts to combat Mingo County’s drug trade.

“We ask all the time where have all the heroes gone?” Mingo County Circuit Judge Michael Thornsbury said in a eulogy, according to the AP. “Let me tell you, sometimes we walk in their midst and we don’t know we got them. He was mine.”

Crum’s wife, Rosie, was appointed to fill her husband’s position as interim sheriff on April 4. The county’s first female sheriff, she was sworn in during a candlelight vigil honoring her husband.

The news that Maynard never should have been able to buy a gun came Wednesday as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, proposed a bipartisan deal with Sen. Patrick Toomey that would expand background checks and strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) by refusing some federal funds to stats that fail to submit full records. The NICS was established in 1993 by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

Randy Snyder / AP

Members of the honor guard carry the body of the late Mingo County Sheriff Eugene Crum on Sunday, April 7, 2013, at the Mingo Central High School in Matewan, W.Va.

Related:

• Dad: W. Va. sheriff slaying suspect mentally 'off'
• West Virginia sheriff slain while eating lunch in car
• West Virginia sheriff shot dead, suspect wounded