Paul and JP Norden, both of whom lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing, were reunited Monday.

MICHELE McPHEE reports from Boston:

Two brothers who each lost a leg in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing were reunited Monday, seeing each other for the first time since the horrific blast that changed their lives forever.

“It’s good to see you,” Paul Norden, 31, told his brother JP as his eyes welled with tears.

“Real good,” said JP, 33. The brothers embraced the best they could from their wheelchairs.

Just moments before the April 15 bombs exploded, killing three and injuring 170 others, a photograph captured the two brothers in a happier time, laughing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Paul Norden, in a grey baseball cap, and JP Norden, in a black cap, are standing immediately behind the man in the red hat. A few feet to their right, in a backwards white baseball cap, is suspected bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

When they were hit by the second of two bombs, the Norden brothers were among five friends in their group badly wounded. Paul’s girlfriend Jackie Webb had a piece of the bomber’s backpack removed from the shrapnel embedded in her leg and handed over to FBI evidence technicians, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Both brothers lost their right leg. They both suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds as well.

But through the pain, giant smiles spread across their faces Monday when they both were wheeled into a room where their families waited at the Brigham & Women’s Library. JP is being treated on the same floor there along with several other amputees from the April 15 terror attack. Paul is being treated at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital.

Their family members – their mother, father, another brother, two sisters and aunts and uncles – have been visiting both brothers separately, and finally got to see them together again.

The youngest Norden boy, 28-year-old Jonathan, who didn’t go to the marathon, said he would gladly “give up both of my legs for my brothers.”

During their visit, the injured Norden brothers refused to talk about the suspected bombers – one of whom was killed and another captured by police.

“They don’t want to even think about those bastards,” Liz Norden, the Norden brothers’ mother, said.

READ: Feds Probe Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect’s Link to Russian Militants

Instead, they talked about going to rehabilitation together, learning to walk again and planning their new future.

“We’re going to get through this,” Paul Norden said.

Caitlin, one of their sisters, smiled at that and said, “My brothers are tough, tough guys with giant hearts. They can do anything.”

For her part, Liz Norden just said she is thankful that her sons are recovering and feels for the families of those who were not so lucky.

“I’m just so grateful that my boys are alive,” she said. “They are alive.”

The family friend has set up a benefit fund to help the Norden’s recovery. CLICK HERE for more information.

Freelance writer Michele McPhee is a Boston-based reporter and frequent contributor to ABC News.

A new unclassified bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security, sent to law enforcement Tuesday, says that in addition to fake Twitter accounts, dozens of new websites have been registered with names linked to the deadly event – many characterizing themselves as fundraising efforts.

“It is unclear what each registrants intent may be, but historically, scammers, spammers and other malicious actor capitalize on major news events by registering such domains,” the bulletin says.

The DHS’ National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, the office that sent the notice, recommends that anyone who wants to donate money in support of the Boston victims should “rely on official fund raising charities such as the American Red Cross.”

Boston Marathon Victims: How to Help, Find Information

FULL COVERAGE: Terror at the Boston Marathon

A new security bulletin from the FBI showed images of one of the mangled, partially exploded “pressure cooker” bombs from the Boston Marathon explosions as well as a shredded backpack in which the bomb was reportedly hidden.

The unclassified bulletin was sent Tuesday evening to law enforcement agencies across the country and said that the bomb inside the backpack was an “improvised explosive device (IED)” made out of a common pressure cooker. ABC News had previously reported that law enforcement recovered mangled parts of a pressure cooker bomb that included wires, shrapnel and a circuit board.

(FBI)

The advisory said there was “insufficient evidence” to determine if the second explosive, which was also hidden in a backpack less than a block away, was made from a pressure cooker as well.

Authorities have not yet determined the fusing system for the devices or what exactly set them off, the advisory said. The blasts erupted at approximately 2:50 p.m. EST near the marathon’s finish line Monday afternoon killing three people — including an 8-year-old boy — and injuring more than 170 others. Authorities have no suspects in the case and no group, domestic or international, has taken responsibility for the attack.

READ MORE: Boston Marathon Breakthrough With Recovery of Bomb Remains

(ABC News)

RYM MOMTAZ, CARLOS BOETTCHER and RHONDA SCHWARTZ report:

An unidentified Boston Marathon runner leaves the course crying near Copley Square following an explosion in Boston on April 15, 2013. (Winslow Townson/AP Photo)

Teams of federal and local law enforcement agents searched an apparently vacant fifth floor apartment on Ocean Avenue in the Boston suburb of Revere just hours after a pair of bombings killed at least three people at the Boston Marathon, residents told ABC News.

Marcus Worthington, a law student who lives in the apartment complex, told ABC News he saw dozens of law enforcement vehicles arrive at his building Monday afternoon, including FBI, ATF and local police and fire departments. Other neighbors who declined to be named said FBI agents entered the complex around 7:30 p.m. and went to the fifth floor.

LIVE UPDATES: Boston Marathon Explosion

Though law enforcement agencies have not confirmed the action was related to Monday’s bombing, Worthington told ABC News an agent from the ATF told him they were responding to a tip “concerning the incident at the Boston Marathon.”

“The agent said they were searching an apartment for a dangerous device,” Worthington said.  But the agent added there was no longer “anything to worry about.”

Residents said the apartment building is home to many students and security is generally relaxed.

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“Making scientific claims is free for all, but registration of these claims as inventions should undergo certain legal stages based on scientific proofs and evidence,” Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research and Technology Mohammad Mehdinejad Nouri said today, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. “Such a claim has not been registered in Iran’s State Organization for Registration for Strategic Inventions.”

Nouri’s announcement in Fars — also reported by Iran’s PressTV — came days after Fars ran a bizarre story in which 27-year-old Iranian inventor Ali Razeqi reportedly claimed to have registered the “Aryayek Time Traveling Machine.” The young man’s definition of “time travel” is a far reach from Marty McFly’s, however, as he said his device is only meant to allow the user to predict the “next five to eight years of the life of its users” with up to 98 percent accuracy.

“It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you,” Razeqi said, according to today’s Fars report. No flux capacitor here.

Razeqi’s original story, which appeared on Fars’ Farsi-language site, mysteriously vanished from the web Thursday, according to The Washington Post, but not before it gained a curious following on social media and with some skeptical Western news outlets – apparently enough to prompt Nouri’s public response.

Foreign Policy noted that beyond the major claim of the original article about a watered-down “time machine,” some of the details in the report raised enough questions that their reporter concluded, “If this story is true at all, it’s actually just about one obscure crank saying ridiculous things – a phenomenon hardly unique to Iran.”

The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s rejection of claims by a number of defrauded Madoff clients who argued “the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] negligently failed to adequately investigate Bernard Madoff despite numerous warnings.”

INVESTIGATION: The Madoff Scandal: Behind the Headlines

The three-judge panel said SEC employees are shielded by what’s known as the Discretionary Function Exception, which protects the government from certain lawsuits even if a private employer could be held liable under similar circumstances.

“We recognized that challenging the SEC would be difficult but this was a case that needed to be fought,” said plaintiff’s attorney, Howard Elisofon.  “We believe that our clients were wronged (both by Madoff and the SEC) and their rights needed to be vindicated.”

PHOTOS: The Secret World of Bernie Madoff

The judges said they have “sympathy” for the plaintiffs, and they called the SEC’s failure to uncover Madoff’s scheme “regrettable.”  However, the judge said, “Congress’s intent to shield regulatory agencies’ discretionary use of specific investigative powers… is fatal to the plaintiffs’ claims.”

“We were disappointed,” said another of the plaintiff’s attorneys, Howard Kleinhendler, who told ABC News he plans to appeal to the United States Supreme Court.  “The SEC completely failed.  They failed to collect the facts.  They failed to properly investigate.  They broke down and should be held accountable.”

The SEC declined to comment on the decision.

Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 to orchestrating a colossal fraud that cost his clients at least $17 billion.  He is serving what amounts to a life sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina.

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A U.S. Army veteran has been arrested for allegedly fighting alongside an al Qaeda group in Syria and then bragging about it online.

Phoenix man Eric Harroun, who served in the Army from 2000 to 2003, was arrested Wednesday upon returning to the U.S. from Turkey, where he had described to FBI agents his bizarre journey to the front lines of Syria’s civil war with fighters from the al-Nusra Front, a designated terrorist organization also referred to as al Qaeda in Iraq.

According to charging documents, Harroun traveled to Turkey in November 2012 and eventually found people there who agreed to help him slip into Syria to help the rebels in January 2013.

Eric Harroun/Facebook

Once in Syria, he linked up with al Nusra and allegedly participated in several battles against pro-government forces. In later voluntary interviews with FBI agents in Turkey, Harroun claimed to have shot at least 10 people, but said he was unsure if he killed anyone.

Throughout his ordeal, Harroun appears to have posted pictures of himself online in military fatigues with his fellow fighters and weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade. In one post, he reportedly claimed to have downed a helicopter. He also appeared in online videos threatening Syria’s President Bashad al-Assad, court documents said.

The court documents say Harroun admitted online and to the FBI agents that he had fought with the al-Nusra Front, but claimed that he hates al Qaeda and was only trying to help topple the Assad regime. The U.S. government has repeatedly called on Assad to step down and recent news reports allege the U.S. is helping the rebels acquire weapons from friendly regional governments.

In an interview with Fox News earlier this month, Harroun said he was welcomed by al-Nusra.

“Getting into al-Nusra is not rocket science,” he said, according to Fox News. “It just takes balls and brains.”

A follow-up article published in Foreign Policy, written by the same reporters as the Fox News report, described the journalists’ curious interactions with Harroun, who is described as unpredictable, inconsistent and, at times, suddenly hostile.

“Pinning Harroun down is never easy,” the Foreign Policy article says. “At times he will provide very specific details about himself, while at other times he becomes more reserved, preferring to not comment or flat-out denying his previous statements – only to retract his retractions.”

The criminal complaint against Harroun says federal officials believe they have probable cause to believe Harroun “conspired to use a weapon of mass destruction,” meaning the RPG. He will remain in custody pending a preliminary hearing in early April, federal officials said.

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In videotaped police interviews from the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case that the public has not seen, police talk to many of the teenage partiers who witnessed the 16-year-old victim getting more and more intoxicated.

“I could tell that she was gradually getting more drunk and worse throughout the night,” said Farrah Marcino, 16. “Just, like, that she couldn’t, like, she didn’t walk.”

RELATED: Parents of Steubenville Rape Victim Want ‘Everything Over’

“She was a mess,” said Anthony Craig, 18. “She wasn’t responding. ”

The question many are asking now may be: Why did Craig and others stand by and watch the victim being sexually assaulted rather than call for help? And why did they spread the assault around town, turning it into a social media event?

Watch the full story on “20/20″ tonight at 10 p.m. ET

Craig told detectives that he took two pictures at the home where the assault occurred.  Those photos were deleted and never recovered, but police did find two nude photos of the victim on high school football player Trent Mays’ cell phone.

On the night of the crime, tweets were posted and a YouTube video was made joking about it. An Instagram photo of Mays, 17, and fellow football player Ma’lik Richmond, 16, carrying the seemingly unconscious body of the victim was also uploaded.

Mays and Richmond were convicted of rape Sunday for penetrating the victim with their fingers and sentenced to at least one year in a juvenile detention center.

“She was passed out,” Craig told detectives. “That’s when they picked her up, and they carried her out of the house.”

“She wanted to go with Trent. Like, we just kept trying to tell her: ‘You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to go with them,’” Marcino said. “I just let her do what she want[ed], which I understand was wrong.”

Investigators want to know how so many honor students, athletes and all-American kids could just stand by and let it all happen.

RELATED: Steubenville Social Media: By the Numbers

“Think about the number of students that witnessed this, that saw this,” said Denice Evans, a documentarian. “What about the ones that didn’t text or tweet, but that were there watching. … If you’re drinking alcohol – a lot of teens are drinking alcohol – they have just entered the phase where decision-making is completely gone out the window. There’s no deciding right or wrong in a moment.”

Evans said there was no impulse control when an adolescent brain was mixed with alcohol, social media and power.

Days before the guilty verdict was delivered, Richmond shared with ABC News, exclusively, his mindset that night.

“I realize that I did, I was doing wrong by drinking and partying, you know, after dark,” he said. “But I really did not, I didn’t rape anybody. I didn’t witness a rape going on. And if I would have thought that somebody was being raped or anything like that, I would have stopped it.

“I really just think that everybody was just, had a few drinks in them and they wasn’t really thinking,” he said. “I think everybody was just out of their minds, see.”

ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas and Sean Dooley contributed to this story.

Image credit: ABC News

(Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo)

Alabama-born jihadist Omar Hammami never could make much of a rapping career in Somalia, but the U.S. government now believes he – or at least information leading to his arrest – is worth a whopping $5 million.

Hammami, also known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, and fellow U.S. citizen Jehad Serwan Mostafa are the latest additions to the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program, which already hosts dozens of designated terrorists including al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Hammami, already a member of the U.S. Treasury’s Designated Terrorist List and the FBI’s Most Wanted List, has been a high-profile member of the Somalia-based al-Shabaab terrorist organization for years. The U.S. government accuses Hammami of being a propagandist and, at times, a military leader of the group; though recent, curiously public spats between Hammami and al-Shabaab’s leadership seem to have thrown his status into question.

READ: American Terrorist’s Mom Wants Him Back Home

U.S. authorities believe that Mostafa, a resident of California, is also in Somalia. According to the State Department, Mostafa “served as a media expert and leader of foreign fighters for al-Shabaab.”

The State Department is also seeking information on Californian Adam Gadahn, an alleged terrorist and supporter of al Qaeda. There is a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

MORE INFO: Rewards for Justice Program

ABC News’ Dana Hughes contributed to this report.

“They went above and beyond the call of duty,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told ABC News. With nine fellow Republican co-sponsors, Hunter introduced legislation Thursday that would posthumously award ex-SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors given by Congress.

Woods and Doherty, who served nearly three decades in the Navy between them before their discharge, were working as independent contractors with the CIA in Libya when they were killed together on the rooftop of a CIA annex in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.

Hours earlier Woods had raced from the annex to the aid of Americans in another U.S. diplomatic facility that had come under attack, trapping U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and several other officials. While under fire, Woods and his colleagues evacuated the facility and ferried it’s the survivors to the nearby CIA annex. However, they were too late to save Ambassador Stevens and computer specialist Sean Smith, who both died as a result of the attack.

Doherty, who was in Tripoli when word of the initial assault came through, was part of a response team that rushed to charter a private plane to fly into Benghazi to help their distressed colleagues. After arriving at the CIA facility in Benghazi hours later, Doherty went to the roof to check on Woods.

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: Glen Doherty

It was then that a second attack wave was launched, this time on the CIA annex, and Doherty and Woods were soon killed in the mortar strike.

In an unclassified State Department account of the incident, the department praised the “U.S. personnel on the ground in Benghazi [who] performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues, in a near impossible situation.”

PICTURE STORY: Remembering the Fallen in Libya

Kate Quigley, Doherty’s sister, told ABC News today that giving her brother the Congressional Gold Medal would be “awesome.”

“For me, it’s not only about what Glen and Ty did the night of Sept. 11, but about how they lived their lives selflessly on and off the battlefield that makes them so deserving,” she said. “I would just love to know who would vote ‘No.’”

Tyrone Woods’ father, Charles, told U-T San Diego his son never did the dangerous work for the recognition, but, “He deserves it as an inspiration to other people.”

Hunter said he introduced the bill because Woods and Doherty were working as private contractors and therefore weren’t eligible for military or State Department medals for their heroism.

“I think this is a good way to go to recognize them, before the American people and Congress,” said Hunter, himself a Marine veteran.

READ EXCLUSIVE: Glen Doherty, Ex-SEAL Killed in Libya, Helped Track Weapons

The Congressional Gold Medal, which was created to recognize “historical events and outstanding achievements by individuals or institutions,” has been awarded a diverse group of 150 people since 1776, including George Washington, Neil Armstrong and Jackie Robinson, according to a 2012 Congressional report.

The medal has previously been given to “acclaimed lifesavers,” as “Congress has still periodically expressed its own admiration for acts of heroism.” It was also awarded to the “Fallen Heroes of 9/11″ in “honor of the men and women who perished as a result of the terrorist attacks…”

Hunter’s bill has been referred to the House Financial Services Committee.

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