Obama was to fly to Mexico City on Thursday to meet with President Enrique Pena Nieto, eager to promote Mexico's economic success and the neighboring country's place as the second largest export market for U.S. goods and services. Mexicans will be hanging on the president's words, but Obama also has in mind an important audience back in the United States.

Though the role played by Latino voters in last year's U.S. presidential election gets much credit for the current momentum for changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, another reason for the change in attitudes is that stronger border protections and the recession have been disincentives to cross into the U.S. As a result, illegal immigration has declined.

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In addition to the 433 confirmed dead, police report that 149 people are still missing in what has become the worst disaster for Bangladesh's $20 billion-a-year garment industry.

Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hassan Suhrawardy, the commander of the area's army garrison supervising the rescue work, dismissed reports that up to 1,000 people were missing and accusations from some relatives that authorities are hiding the bodies to keep the death toll low.

"Don't listen to such rumors," he told reporters.

A mass Muslim funeral was held Wednesday for 34 victims whose bodies were too battered or decomposed to be identified. Cemetery workers have dug several long rows of graves where scores more unidentified bodies are expected to be buried in the coming days.

Suhrawardy said Thursday that 20 bodies were recovered overnight, bringing the death toll to 430. Several more bodies were recovered throughout the day. Rescue workers believe more bodies are buried on the building's ground level, and were using cranes and cutting machines to clear tons of rubble.

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The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, has been at the medical examiner's office in Massachusetts since he died after a gunfight with authorities more than a week ago.

Amato DeLuca, the Rhode Island attorney for his widow, Katherine Russell, said Tuesday that his client had just learned that the medical examiner was ready to release Tsarnaev's body and that she wants it released to his side of the family.

Police said Tsarnaev ran out of ammunition before his brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, dragged his body under a vehicle while fleeing the scene. His cause of death has been determined but will not be made public until his remains are claimed.

"Of course, family members will take possession of the body," uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Maryland told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. "We'll do it. We will do it. A family is a family."

He would not elaborate. Tsarnaev's parents are still in Russia, but he has other relatives on his side of the family in the U.S., including Tsarni.

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Tuesday's primary elections set up an eight-week sprint to the June 25 election.

In Markey, the race pits a longtime liberal politician known for environmental advocacy against Gomez, a fresh-faced social moderate with a distinguished biography and untested political skills. On paper, it looks like a competitive contest, but Republicans quietly concede that Markey is the strong favorite in a state where only around 11 percent of voters are registered Republicans.

"As we've shown before in the state, anything can happen in a special election," said Republican strategist Ron Kaufman, Massachusetts' national committeeman.

Indeed, little-known Republican state Sen. Scott Brown stunned Democrats in his 2010 special election U.S. Senate victory in a contest that became a referendum on Obama's healthcare overhaul. So far, at least, this race has drawn little national interest, even before being overshadowed by the Boston Marathon bombings.

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In a White House news conference, Obama appealed for patience, saying he needs more conclusive evidence about how and when chemical weapons detected by U.S. intelligence agencies were used and who deployed them. If those questions can be answered, Obama said he would consider potential actions the Pentagon and intelligence community have readied for him in the event Syria has crossed his chemical weapons "red line."

"There are options that are available to me that are on the shelf right now that we have not deployed," he told reporters packed into the White House briefing room. Those options include setting up a protective "no-fly zone" over Syria, creating a humanitarian corridor at the Turkish border or providing weapons directly to the rebels.

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A two-judge panel of the High Court also asked the central bank to freeze the assets of the owners of the five garment factories in the building, and use the money to pay the salaries and other benefits of their workers.

The order came after police produced the building owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, and the factory owners in court. The order did not elaborate but it was implied that the salaries of the dead victims would be paid to their relatives.

At least 386 people were killed when the illegally constructed 8-story Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24. A total of 3,122 people were employed in the garment factories. It is not clear how many were working at the time, but some 2,500 people were pulled out of the rubble alive.

The collapse has become the deadliest disaster to hit Bangladesh's garment industry, which is worth $20 billion annually and supplies global retailers.

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Although no one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime have increasingly targeted Damascus, the seat of his power. Tuesday's bombing was the second in as many days in the capital, increasingly wracked by violence as Syria's conflict enters its third year.

Damascus residents said they heard a powerful explosion and saw thick, black smoke billowing from behind a group of buildings.

Syrian TV said the explosion was caused by a "terrorist bombing" in the district of Marjeh, a commercial area in central Damascus. Assad's regime refers to opposition fighters as "terrorists."

The target of the attack was not immediately clear, although the explosion took place near the Damascus Tower, a 28-floor office building. The former Interior Ministry building is nearby and was damaged in the blast.

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Jurors will listen to remarks from attorneys who hope to frame the issues before testimony begins in the months-long trial.

Lawyers for concert giant AEG Live contend the company did nothing wrong and could not have foreseen the circumstances that led to Jackson's death in June 2009 at age 50.

The case will focus on the last few months of Jackson's life and his overall health and financial history. Jurors will also hear evidence throughout the case about Conrad Murray, the former cardiologist convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter after giving him doses of the powerful anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid.

Millions, and possibly billions, of dollars are at stake. Any award in the case will be determined by a jury of six men and six women who have agreed to hear the case, which may last 90 trial days.

Lawyers for Katherine Jackson and the singer's three children have said AEG failed to spot red flags about Murray's finances and created a conflict of interest for him between a major payday and maintaining the superstar's health.

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The arrest of 41-year-old James Everett Dutschke early Saturday capped a week in which investigators initially zeroed in on a rival of Dutschke's, then decided they had the wrong man. The hunt for a suspect revealed tie after small-town tie between the two men and the 80-year-old county judge who, along with Obama and U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, was among the targets of the letters.

Dutschke's house, business and vehicles in Tupelo were searched earlier in the week often by crews in hazardous materials suits and he had been under surveillance.

Dutschke (pronounced DUHS'-kee) was charged with "knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent, toxin and delivery system, for use as a weapon, to wit: ricin." U.S. attorney Felicia Adams and Daniel McMullen, the FBI agent in charge in Mississippi, made the announcement in a news release Saturday.

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But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.

Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.

Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons — Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured — are innocent.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

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On Thursday, the White House and other top Obama administration officials said that U.S. intelligence had concluded with "varying degrees of confidence" that the Syrian government has twice used chemical weapons in its battle against rebels trying to oust Assad.

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, a government official said Assad's military "did not and will not use chemical weapons even if it had them." Instead, he accused opposition forces of using them in a March attack on the village of Khan al-Assal outside of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in Syria. The official said the Syrian army had no need to use chemical weapons because it can reach any area in Syria it wants without them.

He spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements.

His comments were echoed by Sharif Shehadeh, a Syrian lawmaker, who said the Syrian army "can win the war with traditional weapons" and has no need for chemical weapons.

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Everett Dutschke, 45, had his home and former business in Tupelo, Miss., searched in connection with the letters, which allegedly contained ricin. They were sent last week to President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and earlier to an 80-year-old Mississippi judge, Sadie Holland.

Charges were initially filed against an Elvis impersonator but then dropped. Attention then turned to Dutschke, who has ties to the former suspect and the judge and senator.

Dutschke (pronounced DUHS'-kee), who previously had kept in touch with reporters from The Associated Press, did not answer or return calls to his cellphone Thursday, a day investigators spent searching a different home where he had spent time a day earlier about 20 miles from Tupelo.

He just needed to get away from all the news media attention, his friend Kirk Kitchens told the AP. "I just helped him get out of the spotlight," Kitchens said at his home in nearby Saltillo.

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Amid the chaos, the cries for help and the smell of decaying bodies at the eight-story building where more than 300 died, what happened to 18-year-old Mussamat Anna passes as luck. Rescue workers cut off the garment worker's mangled right hand to pull her free from the debris Thursday night.

"First a machine fell over my hand and I was crushed under the debris. ... Then the roof collapsed over me," she told an Associated Press cameraman from a hospital bed Friday.

The death toll topped 300 on Friday and it remained unclear what the final grim number would be. Military spokesman Shahin Islam told reporters that 304 bodies had been recovered.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing rescue operations, said 2,200 people have been rescued. The garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed Wednesday in Savar, a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.

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The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens about 40 miles west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens U.S. Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialized long-term medical or mental health care.

The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

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The disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar came less than five months after a blaze killed 112 people in a garment factory and underscored the unsafe conditions faced by Bangladesh's garment workers, who produce clothes for brands worn around the world. Some of the companies in the building that fell say their customers include retail giants such as Wal-Mart.

Hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble in search of survivors and corpses, worked through the night and into Thursday amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers' relatives gathered outside the building, called Rana Plaza, which housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

An Associated Press cameraman who went into the rubble with rescue workers spoke briefly to a man pinned face down in the darkness between concrete slabs and next to two corpses. Mohammad Altab pleaded for help, but they were unable to free him.

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Nobody knows for sure, but some experts in sibling research say the powerful bonds that can develop between brothers may have played a role.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died last week at age 26 in a shootout with police, and his 19-year-old sibling Dzhokhar are hardly the first brothers involved in criminal acts. Three pairs of brothers were among the 9/11 terrorists, for example, and three brothers were convicted in 2008 for planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

"There are a lot of criminal enterprises where you have brothers involved," said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. "It is almost always the older brother who is the leader. ... Typically the younger brother looks up to the older brother in many ways."

Friends and relatives paint markedly different pictures of the Tsarnaev pair. Tamerlan could be argumentative and sullen, saying at one point he hadn't made a single American friend since immigrating years earlier, and he was arrested in 2009 for assault and battery on a girlfriend before those charges were dismissed. Dzhokhar appears to have been well-adjusted and well-liked in both high school and college.

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Everett Dutschke, whose Tupelo, Miss., home was searched Tuesday by dozens of officials, some in hazmat suits, had feuded with Paul Kevin Curtis, a 45-year-old celebrity impersonator who had maintained his innocence since his arrest.

The search began early Tuesday afternoon and ended about 11 p.m. CDT, with officials declining to comment on what they had found or on the next phase of the investigation.

At one point, two FBI agents and two members of the state's chemical response team left Dutschke's property and began combing through ditches, culverts and woods about a block away from his house in the neighborhood of single-family detached homes.

Dutschke, who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone during the search, said his house was also searched last week.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," he said.

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Voters turned down the $72 million school budget by 482 votes and rejected the $39 million town government budget by 62 votes Tuesday. Nearly 4,500 residents voted on the plans, which would have increased spending by 4.7 percent next fiscal year.

Officials put an extra $1 million in the school and town budgets to hire extra police officers and unarmed security guards to put in each of Newtown's seven schools. The plan was spurred by the shootings that killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

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The disparity between the brothers' struggle to assimilate in the U.S. and their alleged bombing of the Boston Marathon reflects what counterterror experts describe as a classic pattern of young first- or second-generation immigrants striking out after struggling to fit in. The U.S. has long been worried about people in America who are not tied to any designated terrorist group but who are motivated by ideologies that lead them to commit violent acts. Some are motivated by radical religious interpretations; others feel ostracized by their communities.

Three U.S. officials involved in the investigation said the brothers had no links to any terrorist groups. After interrogating Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Monday, U.S. officials believe they were motivated by their faith, apparently an anti-American, radical version of Islam. Another official called them aspiring jihadists. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

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“If getting that information, including torture, would save one innocent life, including, that we’ve seen, children, would you use torture?" Ball said. "I would be first in line.”

Ball tweeted on Saturday:

[embedtweet id="325411515333230592"]

Via HuffPo.

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