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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

VIDEO BELOW: FBI ISSUES PHOTOS OF 2 SUSPECTS IN BOSTON BOMBING

 

BOSTON (AP) -- The FBI released photos and video Thursday of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and asked for the public's help in identifying them, zeroing in on the two men on surveillance-camera footage less than three days after the deadly attack.

 

The photos depict one man in a dark baseball cap and the other in a white cap worn backward. The men were seen walking one behind the other in the crowd, and the one in the white hat was seen setting down a backpack at the site of the second explosion, said Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston.

 

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects. Though it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward and provide it to us," DesLauriers said.

 

The images were released hours after President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended an interfaith service at a Roman Catholic cathedral in Boston to remember the three people killed and more than 180 wounded in the twin blasts Monday at the marathon finish line.

 

The two men - dubbed Suspect 1 (in the dark hat) and Suspect 2 (in the white hat) - are considered armed and extremely dangerous, DesLauriers said, and people who see them should not approach them.

 

"Do not take any action on your own," he warned.

 

The break in the investigation came just days after the attack that tore off limbs, shattered windows and raised the specter of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. FBI photo-analysis specialists have been analyzing a mountain of surveillance footage and amateur pictures and video for clues to who carried out the attack and why.

 

Generally, law enforcement agencies release photos of suspects only as a last resort, when they need the public's help in identifying or capturing someone.

 

GORBACHEV SEES GLOBAL FAILURE TO ADDRESS ECO-RISKS

 

GENEVA (AP) -- Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday painted a dim picture of the world's environmental progress, two decades after he founded the environmental group Green Cross International.

 

Laying much of the blame on a lack of leadership and vision, he railed against governments for falling short on nuclear disarmament, waste, development and climate change.

 

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate launched the Geneva-based organization in 1993 as a kind of Red Cross that could help countries in environmental trouble.

 

Reflecting on the 20 years since then, the 82-year-old Gorbachev acknowledged deep frustrations as an environmental crusader.

 

"The current economic crisis is being aggravated by the growing pressure on the environment, by poverty, by persisting international conflicts and by the worsening state of the global environment," a bespectacled Gorbachev said in Russian to reporters in Geneva by video link.

 

"The gap between the poor and the rich is unacceptably wide. The response to climate change has been weak and disunited," he said. "The possibility of building a more secure, more just and more united world has been largely missed."

 

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that among his top hopes for 2013 is reaching a new agreement on climate change. Two-decade-old U.N. climate talks have so far failed in their goal of reducing the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that a vast majority of scientists says are warming the planet.

 

NEW APP HELPS ICELANDERS AVOID ACCIDENTAL INCEST

AN IDEA FOR SAMOANS?

 

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) -- You meet someone, there's chemistry, and then come the introductory questions: What's your name? Come here often? Are you my cousin?

 

In Iceland, a country with a population of 320,000 where most everyone is distantly related, inadvertently kissing cousins is a real risk.

 

A new smartphone app is on hand to help Icelanders avoid accidental incest. The app lets users "bump" phones, and emits a warning alarm if they are closely related. "Bump the app before you bump in bed," says the catchy slogan.

 

Some are hailing it as a welcome solution to a very Icelandic form of social embarrassment.

 

"Everyone has heard the story of going to a family event and running into a girl you hooked up with some time ago," said Einar Magnusson, a graphic designer in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik.

 

"It's not a good feeling when you realize that girl is a second cousin. People may think it's funny, but (the app) is a necessity."

 

The Islendiga-App - "App of Icelanders" - is an idea that may only be possible in Iceland, where most of the population shares descent from a group of 9th-century Viking settlers, and where an online database holds genealogical details of almost the entire population.

 

The app was created by three University of Iceland software engineering students for a contest calling for "new creative uses" of the Islendingabok, or Book of Icelanders, an online database of residents and their family trees stretching back 1,200 years.