Boston Suspect Dead: A late night robbery, police chase and shootout ended with the death of bombing suspect #1 and #2 on the run, police said at dawn in Boston. Police say the suspects robbed a 7-11 store in Cambridge then shot and killed an MIT campus police officer who responded to the call. The suspects drove away in a stolen Mercedes, but the pursuit ended in another shootout in nearby Watertown in which a transit cop was wounded and the first suspect killed.

The entire area is on alert and the governor suspended all public transit services in and around Boston. A police bulletin said #2 was carrying an assault rifle and possibly explosives.

The two suspects still have not been publicly identified by name.

Events moved quickly yesterday after the FBI released video and still photos of two men they described as the bombing suspects. Suspect #1 wore a dark cap and had a black backpack. Suspect #2, wearing a white baseball cap backwards, was seen on video dropping a grayish backpack at the site of the second bomb moments before it exploded. The two walked one behind the other along Boylston Street toward the finish line.

Texas: Authorities are still assessing the damage and accounting for the dead, missing and injured in that huge fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas. Fourteen people are reported dead and five firefighters missing. The dramatic explosion, which was caught on video, destroyed dozens of homes, an apartment complex, a school and a nursing home.

National: The man accused of sending letters with deadly ricin in them to the President, a US Senator, and a county judge is Paul Curtis, a 45-year-old Elvis impersonator from Corinth, Miss. Senator Roger Wicker, the target of one of the letters, said he actually hired Curtis for a party about 10 years ago and, “he was quite entertaining.”

➢The so-called “Gang of Eight” Republican and Democratic senators are pushing their immigration reform. It includes a 10-year wait for illegal immigrants to be granted a green card, and a path to citizenship for people brought illegally into the country when they were children. It also includes “low skill” and agricultural guest-workers programs.

So Shoot Me: Adolphus Busch IV, heir to the beer fortune, resigned his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association after defeat of gun control and background checks in the Senate. He said, “I fail to see how the NRA can disregard the overwhelming will of its members who see background checks as reasonable.”

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