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A Massachusetts State Police sergeant was relieved of duty on Thursday after he gave graphic photos documenting the surrender of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to Boston Magazine. And the release of the photos could have an impact on the case.

Sgt. Sean Murphy, a tactical photographer for the state police, documented the capture of a bloodied Tsarnaev as he emerged from a boat parked in the backyard of a home in Watertown, Mass., on April 19—four days after the deadly bombings, which killed three and injured more than 260.

Murphy released 14 photos he took during the manhunt to Boston Magazine after being angered by the cover image of Tsarnaev on Rolling Stone magazine, whichsome have said depicts the bombing suspect in a softer light. The photo, which was taken from one of Tsarnaev’s social media accounts, has also been published in The New York Times and other media outlets.

Murphy told the magazine his photos, which show Tsarnaev bloodied and with the laser of a sniper rifle projected on his forehead, depict “the real Boston bomber. Not someone fluffed and buffed for the cover ofRolling Stone magazine.”

David Procopio, a spokesman for the state police, confirmed to Yahoo News that the photos Murphy released were taken while he was on duty and that their release had been “unauthorized by the department.”

“He is relieved of duty for one day and will be subject to an internal investigation,” Procopio said, adding that the police will also schedule a hearing soon to determine his future status with the department.

But Procopio declined to say whether the photos were considered evidence ahead of Tsarnaev’s trial. Last week, the bombing suspect pleaded not guilty to 30 charges related to the twin bombings, which detonated near the race’s finish line on April 15.

In May, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s attorneys requested and were granted the right to begin photographing the bombing suspect while he is in federal custody—as part of what some believe will be an argument to prove he was not in the right health or mental state to answer questions from authorities after his arrest. It’s an argument that could be further bolstered by the state police images of a bloodied Tsarnaev.

“The pictures do raise questions about what condition he was in,” Robert Sheketoff, a prominent Boston defense attorney who is not involved in the case, told Yahoo News. But he added, “The reality is these photos would have been eventually handed over to the defense. It’s not like they could have kept them hidden.”

But Allison Burroughs, a Boston attorney and former federal prosecutor, suggested the photos would have a bigger impact on jury selection and could possibly help the defense if it argues to move Tsarnaev's trial out of Boston.

“The more things that potential jurors see that might cause them to form an opinion before jury selection or feel prejudiced against the defendant, the harder it is to pick a jury,” Burroughs said. “But the publicity around that Rolling Stone cover alone has already had that impact. It’s hard to say that the trooper releasing a few additional photos is giving him any more notoriety than he already had.”

Trayvon Martin's parents Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin sit in court as Judge Debra Nelson reads instructions to the jury during George Zimmerman trial in Seminole circuit court in Sanford, Florida July 12, 2013. REUTERS/Gary W. Green/Pool

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - Trayvon Martin's parents were due to lead demonstrations in New York and Miami on Saturday, as protesters across the country rallied to express anger over the acquittal of the man who shot and killed the unarmed black teenager.

The protests, outside federal court buildings and police headquarters, were set to take place exactly one week after a Seminole County jury in central Florida acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter for shooting the 17-year-old Martin through the heart.

They were organized by the Reverend Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights activist, days before President Barack Obama spoke extensively about the Martin case and highlighted its racial undertones in remarks at the White House on Friday.

Sharpton has said protests were planned for more than 100 cities nationwide and organizers have voiced hopes they will be peaceful, with no further outbreaks of the violence that led to arrests in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area earlier this week.

Obama also cautioned against violence, as he urged all Americans to try to understand the Martin case from the perspective of African-Americans.

"There is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws," the president said on Friday.

"A lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush," he said. "If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario ... both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different."

Zimmerman remained free for more than six weeks after killing Martin because police in Sanford, Florida, accepted the claim that he acted in self-defense. That ignited protests and cries of injustice across the United States as the case threw a spotlight on issues including race, profiling and vigilantism.

PARENTS JOIN PROTESTS

Sharpton, who will lead one rally Saturday along with Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton, outside police headquarters in New York, has said he hopes continued public pressure will force the Justice Department to bring a civil rights case against Zimmerman.

A planned demonstration in Miami, near the home where the 17-year-old Martin lived, was due to be led by his father.

Federal prosecutors have said they were pursuing an investigation into whether Zimmerman, who is part Hispanic, violated civil rights laws. Lawyers with expertise in civil rights have said they think new charges are unlikely, however.

Public comments from one of the six jurors, citing Florida's Stand Your Ground law as a factor in reaching her conclusion that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, has stepped up pressure on the state's Republican-dominated legislature to repeal or change the law.

According to the instructions given to the jury, Zimmerman had "no duty to retreat and right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believed it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself."

Though the Stand Your Ground law was not specifically cited as part of the defense mounted by Zimmerman's lawyers, the jury instructions paving the way for his acquittal came directly from the 2005 statute.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, who met with sit-in demonstrators outside his office in the Florida capital Tallahassee on Thursday, said he supports the Stand Your Ground law and has no intention of convening a special legislative session to change it.

But Obama suggested that was the wrong course of action.

"I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case," he said.

(Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Ken Wills)

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AURORA, Colo. (AP) — Some recited the names of the dead. Some are doing good deeds for their neighbors. And some will practice yoga, take a nature walk or simply talk.

Coloradans looked for ways to heal as they marked the anniversary of the Aurora movie theater massacre with a city-sponsored "Day of Remembrance."

It was one year ago Saturday that a gunman opened fire early into a packed midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises." The rampage lasted less than two minutes but left deep wounds that still ache today in Aurora, Colorado's third-largest city which spreads out across the rolling plains on Denver's eastern side.

Twelve people died, including a 6-year-old girl. Seventy were hurt, some of them paralyzed. Countless others inside the theater and out bear the invisible wounds of emotional trauma.

"There's no script for something like this," said Nancy Sheffield, who helped plan the Day of Remembrance. What the city wants, she said, is "the ultimate way to remember the victims, the families, the survivors, in a healing way and going forward for our community."

Parents, siblings and survivors of those slain gathered early Saturday on the lawn outside Aurora's City Hall for a ceremony of prayer, song and remarks from Mayor Steve Hogan and Gov. John Hickenlooper. A U.S. flag atop the building fluttered in the breeze, backlit by the rising sun.

For the rest of the day, residents were encouraged to volunteer for community projects ranging from painting at a church to tending a community garden, from sorting food bank donations to donating blood.

Spiritual and mental health counselors were available, along with art therapy projects and poetry readings.

Democratic state Rep. Rhonda Fields, whose district includes the renamed Cinemark theater, said she is still numb and in mourning.

"It hasn't fully mended after a year," she said.

Fields said she isn't surprised by that. Her son, Javad Marshall-Fields, and his fiancee were shot to death in 2005 to keep Marshall-Fields from testifying in a murder trial.

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The Century theater is pictured in Aurora, Colo., on Friday, July 19, 2013. It was closed for six mo …

"I'm all too familiar to losing someone to gun violence," Fields said. "I know someone's missing that used to be part of the unit."

At about noon on Friday, Fields and other volunteers began reading the names of the more than 2,500 people who have been died in gun-related violence in the U.S. since the Newtown, Conn., massacre in December. The last volunteer to read names was Stephen Barton, who was wounded last year in the theater shooting.

Immediately after Barton was finished, the group of about 40 volunteers held a moment of silence at 12:38 a.m. Saturday, the time the shooting began one year earlier. The silence lasted for 82 seconds to represent the 12 people killed and the 70 who were wounded in the theater.

The ceremony under temporary flood lights at Cherry Creek State Park in Aurora was sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, not the city of Aurora. A gun rights group, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, contended the ceremony wrongly politicized a tragedy to promote gun control, so it staged a counter-rally nearby.

Anniversary observances of tragedies can help victims heal, said Charles Figley, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans and director of the university's Traumatology Institute.

"They bring people together and they recognize that they're not alone, that they are part of something bigger than they are, and that's protection. It's a sense of safety," he said.

People who endure a trauma commonly face five questions, Figley said: What happened; why did it happen; why did I act the way I did at the time, and since; what if it happens again?

"So when you have a gathering, they're able to more completely answer those questions for themselves, and communities can answer those questions for themselves," Figley said.

Saturday's events were well chosen, Fields said.

"Basically the focus is on the victims and their loss and the way to get the community together around a common purpose," she said

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PATNA, India (AP) — Soon after they served the lunch they had prepared for dozens of children at a rural Indian school, the two cooks realized something was very wrong. The students started fainting. Within hours, they began dying.

By the second day after that fateful meal, 23 children between the ages of 5 and 12 had died from eating food laced with insecticide and many others had fallen ill.

Authorities discovered a container of insecticide in the school's cooking area next to the vegetable oil and mustard oil, but it wasn't yet known if that container was the source, according to Amarjeet Sinha, a top official in the state of Bihar, where the tragedy took place.

Some officials have said it appeared that the rice had somehow been tainted with insecticide and might not have been properly washed before it was cooked.

"It's not a case of food poisoning. It's a case of poison in food in a large quantity, going by the instant deaths," Sinha said Thursday.

More answers were expected Friday, when a forensic laboratory was to issue the results of its tests on the dead children, the food and the uncooked grain stored by the principal in her house, he said. Police were searching for the principal, who fled after the students started falling sick, Sinha said.

The cooks, Manju Devi and Pano Devi, told The Associated Press that the principal controlled the food for the free daily lunch provided by the government at the school. On Tuesday morning, she gave them rice, potatoes, soy and other ingredients needed to prepare the meal and then went about her business. As the children ate, they started fainting, the cooks said.

The two cooks were not spared either.

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Manju Devi, 30, ate some of the food and fainted. Her three children, ages 5, 8 and 13, fell ill as well. All were in stable condition Thursday.

While Pano Devi, 35, didn't eat the tainted food, her three children did. Two of them died and the third, a 4-year-old daughter, was in the hospital.

"I will stop cooking at the school," she said. "I am so horrified that I wouldn't grieve more if my only surviving child died."

Sinha said one of the cooks told authorities that the cooking oil appeared different than usual, but the principal told her to use it anyway. Doctors believed the food contained an organophosphate used as an insecticide, he said.

The free midday meal was served to the children Tuesday in Gandamal village in Masrakh block, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Patna, the Bihar state capital.

Some of the victims were buried Wednesday in front of the school building in protest.

Those who survived the poison were unlikely to suffer from any serious aftereffects from the tainted food, said Patna Medical College hospital superintendent Amarkant Jha Amar.

"There will be no remnant effects on them. The effects of poisoning will be washed after a certain period of time from the tissues," Amar said.

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Indian children who fell ill after eating the daily free lunch at a rural Indian school undergo trea …

Amar said Thursday that the post-mortem reports on the children who died confirmed that insecticide was either in the food or cooking oil. He said authorities were waiting for lab results for more details on the chemicals.

India's midday meal plan is one of the world's biggest school nutrition programs. State governments have the freedom to decide on menus and timings of the meals, depending on local conditions and availability of food rations. It was first introduced in the 1960s in southern India, where it was seen as an incentive for poor parents to send their children to school.

Since then, the program has been replicated across the country, covering some 120 million schoolchildren. It's part of an effort to address concerns about malnutrition, which the government says nearly half of all Indian children suffer from.

Although there have been complaints about the quality of the food served and the lack of hygiene, the incident in Bihar appeared to be unprecedented for the massive food program.

But with the country focused on the safety of the program Thursday, reports emerged that others had fallen ill across India.

In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, at least 100 girls became sick, vomiting and fainting, after eating lunches made with contaminated eggs, the Press Trust of India reported.

In Maharashtra, dozens of students fell ill after drinking contaminated water, media reported.

In Bihar, the state director of the feeding program, R. Lakshamanan, told PTI that some students refused to eat the lunches Thursday in the wake of the tragedy.

The national government announced it would set up a second committee to review the functioning of the meal program in addition to one that already monitors the program.

AURORA, Colo. (AP) -- Survivors of mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut gathered with dozens of supporters Friday in a suburban Denver park to honor those killed in the massacre at an Aurora movie theater almost a year to the day after the attack.

Vigil participants read a list of names of those killed in recent gun violence around the nation and talked about the pain of losing loved ones as they called for strict federal gun control laws.

"Why wait any longer?" asked Carlee Soto, whose sister was killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School rampage in Newtown, Conn. "The time for change is now."

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which promotes tough gun laws and was founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, helped sponsor the vigil.

The scene was somber, even as about 100 gun rights activists held a protest nearby to oppose new firearms restrictions as infringements on Second Amendment rights. Many wore orange National Rifle Association hats and T-shirts reading, "I will not comply."

"To the families and victims of the tragedy, we offer our condolences and prayers," said Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. "To Mayor Bloomberg and the group that would politicize this, we offer our opposition."

Brown helped organize the rally and carried a .45-caliber pistol to the park.

The shooting victims, meanwhile, called for more universal background checks and tighter restrictions on gun sales. Colorado has been the only state outside the East Coast to ratchet back gun rights in reaction to last year's mass shootings. A recent push for new federal restrictions failed in Congress.

"I think that Coloradans get it, that something must change," said Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the theater.

Just before their rally started, one gun rights activist, Rob Blancken, tried to stand behind a lectern with a sign that read, "Tell billionaire Mayor Bloomberg to stay the hell out of Colorado." He was told to move by a state parks ranger.

Gun rights organizers said they sympathized with the victims but didn't see new gun control laws as a solution.

"We want the families of the victims to know that we are sorry for their loss," said Alicia Perez, a Colorado organizer with Gun Rights Across America.

For his part, Stephen Barton, who was wounded in Aurora, said, "You shouldn't wait until it affects you to start caring about it."

"I never thought I would ever be affected by gun violence personally," Barton added.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns said participants were reading the names of about 2,500 people who have been killed by gunfire since Dec. 14, when a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook.

The Aurora vigil came almost a year to the day after 12 people were killed and 70 others were wounded, some paralyzed, in a July 20 attack at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

The victims' names were being read until 12:38 a.m. Saturday, the moment that the shootings began in the theater last year.

The theater planned no midnight showings on July 20 this year.

At least eight uniformed police officers were at the theater complex Friday, including one inside the auditorium where the shootings took place.

Dallas Hill of Aurora, who was among about 30 people who watched "Red 2" in that theater Friday night, said he had no qualms about being there.

"We've been in there several times before," he said. "The first couple times (after the shooting) it was a little eerie," he said.

Denver Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila, accompanied by more than 20 white-robed priests, led a memorial Mass for the theater victims Friday night at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Aurora.

"Sin, violence and evil does not have the final word," he said in his homily.

Names of those killed alternated on video screens outside the sanctuary.

Remembrance events planned for Saturday included an early morning memorial service and a host of volunteer civic works, music, arts and even meditation. Aurora officials say they wanted to promote healing.

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Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert contributed to this report.

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