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• "Someone knows who did this," Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston, said at a news conference where he detailed the type of clues a bomber might have left. "Importantly, the person who did this is someone's friend, neighbor, co-worker or relative."
• President Barack Obama branded the attack an act of terrorism but said officials don't know "whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual." Obama plans to attend an interfaith service Thursday in the victims' honor in Boston.
• Scores of victims of the Boston bombing remained in hospitals, many with grievous injuries. Doctors who treated the wounded corroborated reports that the bombs were packed with shrapnel intended to cause mayhem. A 9-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy were among 17 victims listed in critical condition.
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• When her cousin and 11 others were gunned down at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last July, Anita Busch lost all interest in her favorite television crime dramas. And when she heard that three people had been shot dead at an Oregon shopping mall in December, she stopped her Christmas shopping and sneaked out the back door of a department store.
• "After Aurora, even my little niece who's 11 was afraid to go into a mall, to go shopping," the Los Angeles woman says. "I look around all the time. I think everyone does."
• The United States proclaims itself the world's foremost economic and military superpower -- the mightiest nation on Earth, "land of opportunity" for those who want to work hard and prosper. But as Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon illustrate, the reality is that, from sea to shining sea, this is a nation of "soft targets," full of opportunities for those who want to do it harm.
• And so the message Tamara Ruben sought to convey to her third- through seventh-graders as they celebrated Israeli Independence Day Tuesday at Temple Beth El Mekor Chayim outside New York City was to not let fear rule them -- "that as much as possible not to let this event to dictate our daily life and make us afraid and paranoid and change drastically our style of life."
• "Enjoy the simple things -- the simple things that give us contentment and joy in life," says Ruben, director of the synagogue's school.

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