QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It is no less than an act of war. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”
Gen. Martin Dempsey, in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, cautioning of the risks of involving U.S. forces in Syria’s civil war Article,this page
Officer punished for photos’ release
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. - A state police photographer who released photos of the bloodied Boston Marathon bombing suspect during his capture was placed on restricted duty Tuesday.
Sgt. Sean Murphy said he leaked the photos of what he called “the face of terror” to Boston magazine last week to counter a glamorized image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Three of Murphy’s 14 photos show a battered and blood streaked Tsarnaev emerging from a boat in a backyard, with the red dot of a sniper’s laser sight trained on his head.
Murphy wasn’t authorized to release the photos. He already served a one-day, unpaid suspension and has received another five-day unpaid suspension. Following a status hearing at state police headquarters Tuesday, Murphy was placed on desk duty, where he won’t have contact with the public, until an internal investigation is complete.
Weiner admits to additional lewd texts
New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner said Tuesday that he sent additional texts and lewd photos of himself to a woman over the Internet, prompting at least two rivals to call for him to drop out.
Weiner said he’s not exiting the race in light of the newly revealed explicit online correspondence.
The gossip website The Dirty posted correspondence between the unidentified woman and Weiner, 48, who resigned from Congress in 2011 after similar pictures sent to women surfaced.
“I said other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner said in a statement emailed by his campaign. “While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”
According to The Dirty, Weiner’s email correspondence with the woman began in July 2012, when she was 22, and continued for months. Weiner’s statement didn’t say when his messages and images were sent.
At least one of Weiner’s Democratic opponents, City Councilman Sal Albanese, called for him to drop out. John Catsimatidis, the billionaire grocery-store chain owner who is a Republican candidate, also said Weiner should end his campaign.
Ex-cohort claims Bulger was pedophile
BOSTON - James “Whitey” Bulger’s former partner in crime spent hours Tuesday sticking to his story that Bulger strangled two young women - and even claimed that Bulger was a pedophile.
Stephen Flemmi made the accusation as Bulger’s lawyer aggressively questioned him about his admission Monday that he had engaged in oral sex with his girlfriend’s teenage daughter, Deborah Hussey, in the 1970s.
“You want to talk about pedophilia - right over there at that table,” Flemmi said, gesturing toward Bulger, seated at the defense table. Earlier Tuesday, Flemmi had said that Bulger had a 16-year-old girlfriend he took to Mexico on vacation with him.
Bulger, who exchanged obscenities with Flemmi shortly after he began testifying last week, glanced at Flemmi but did not have any visible reaction.
Natural gas leaking after rig blowout
NEW ORLEANS - Natural gas flowed uncontrolled from a well off the Louisiana coast Tuesday after a blowout that forced the evacuation of 44 workers aboard a drilling rig, authorities said.
No injuries were reported in the midmorning blowout, and there was no fire as of Tuesday afternoon at the site, about 55 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico.
It remained unclear how or when the well would be shut down.
Still, the Coast Guard kept nautical traffic out of an area within 500 yards of the site, where the spewing gas posed a fire hazard. The Federal Aviation Administration restricted aircraft up to 2,000 feet above the area.
The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said inspectors flying over the site soon after the blowout saw a light sheen covering an area about a half-mile by 50 feet. However, it was dissipating quickly.
The bureau said the blowout happened south of Grand Isle, where the water depth was reported at 154 feet.
Earlier this month, a gas well flowed for several days before being sealed off the Louisiana coast.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/24/2013