Boston Marathon bombers' next target was Times Square, says Bloomberg

The Boston Marathon bombing suspects had Times Square in their sights before law enforcement authorities put an end to their bloody terror spree, according New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"New York was next on their list of targets," Bloomberg said of brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Bloomberg said he received confirmation of the chilling second phase of their plot from the FBI. “The fact is, New York City remains a prime target for those who hate America and want to kill Americans.”

"New York was next on their list of targets."

- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the brothers, Muslims from Dagestan, a breakaway republic in Russia, hatched their plot to attack Times Square while driving the streets of Cambridge last Thursday in a Mercedes SUV they had carjacked from a man who later escaped. Kelly called the New York plot "spontaneous," and said they had six bombs with them in the car, some of which they hurled at police cars hours later when they were being pursued in a chase that culminated in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's death.

One of the bombs the brothers had in the stolen car was a pressure cooker bomb, identical to one used in the marathon attack, and packed with gunpowder and shrapnel, Kelly said. Both Kelly and Bloomberg noted surveillance cameras, a contentious subject in New York, played a key role in solving the bombing in Boston, Bloomberg's hometown. Still, the mayor said there was no way of knowing if the brothers could have pulled off a second attack in America's largest city.

"We don’t know if we would have been able to stop the terrorists had they arrived here from Boston," Bloomberg said. He said he did not know of a specific target within Times Square.

Times Square was targeted by Muslim terrorist Faisal Shahzad in a failed 2010 plot. Kelly said at least one Tsarnaev brother was photographed in Times Square last year, first on April 18 and then later on an unspecified day in November.

Kelly said the plot was revealed in a bedside interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he remains in fair condition. Kelly said Tsarnaev told investigators during his first interrogation that they were headed to New York City to "party." Subsequent questioning, however, revealed that the two brothers decided spontaneously that they would travel to Manhattan to detonate their remaining explosives, Kelly said.  

The 19-year-old suspect spoke to FBI agents intermittently over a 16-hour period before a federal judge showed up at the hospital and read him his Miranda rights, after which he clammed up, according to law enforcement sources. But another senior law enforcement official, speaking to FoxNews.com, characterized the brothers' plans to go to New York as "aspirational, at best."

"I wouldn't say 'plot,' it was just talk," the source said.

The brothers are suspected of setting two bombs at the finish line of the race April 15. Three people were killed and more than 200 injured. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could face the death penalty if convicted in the attacks, which he said were prompted by the brothers' religious beliefs and anger over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

FoxNews.com's Cristina Corbin contributed to this report. 

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Samsung's new target: BlackBerry

Samsung has spent the last several years luring smartphone consumers away from Apple's iPhones. Now, the South Korean giant is taking aim at Research In Motion's still-formidable grip on the world's most security-conscious government and corporate clients.

Samsung is wooing chief information officers and government agencies, promising its phones—which run off Google's Android operating system—are just as secure as BlackBerrys. It has hired dozens of executives and salespeople from rivals and from mobile-security companies, while investing in other smaller, mobile security and data firms.

And it has tweaked a massive marketing campaign aimed at consumers, airing ads during the recent National Football League playoffs that poked fun specifically at the BlackBerry.

Samsung executives in South Korea have made enterprise sales a "top three priority" company-wide, said Tim Wagner, Samsung's Dallas-based general manager and vice president for enterprise sales, who was hired away from RIM in 2010. The company has recently closed deals for thousands of company-issued Samsung smartphones and tablets for big corporations like American Airlines Inc., Waste Management Inc., and Boston Scientific Corp.

IDC, a market researcher, found over 50 percent of smartphones shipped to corporate customers last year were iPhones, while Samsung shipped 16 percent of that market. RIM, which had dominated the sector just a few years ago, saw its share shrink to 10 percent last year, IDC said.

Read more about the growing rivalry between Samsung and BlackBerry at The Wall Street Journal.

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Did Obama supporter vote 6 times in 2012? Ohio poll worker target of investigation

The Obama/Biden lawn sign remains proudly planted in front of Melowese Richardson's Cincinnati home, three months after the presidential election.

It seems that President Obama has an especially ardent supporter in the veteran Ohio poll worker.

Richardson told a local television station this month that she voted twice last November. She cast an absentee ballot and then voted at the polls as well.

"Yes, I voted twice," Richardson told WCPO-TV. "I, after registering thousands of people, certainly wanted my vote to count, so I voted. I voted at the polls."

Authorities also are investigating if she voted in the names of four other people, too, for a total of six votes in the 2012 presidential election.

"I'll fight it for Mr. Obama and for Mr. Obama's right to sit as president of the United States," Richardson vowed when asked about the voter fraud investigation that is now under way.

Richardson is one of 19 people suspected of illegal voting by the Hamilton County Board of Elections in the last election.

"I'm outraged, and every voter, regardless of their political affiliation, should be outraged," said Hamilton County Board of Elections member Alex Triantafilou, who is also chairman of the county Republican Party. "It causes folks to have real doubts about the fabric of our very democratic process, and it's dangerous. It is disconcerting that someone would be so bold as to admit their conduct in such a fashion ... We fully intend to prosecute these cases."

Richardson claimed she had submitted an absentee ballot, but was afraid her vote would not count so she also voted in person. She also said she voted in the name of her granddaughter and yet another person.

"There was absolutely no intent on my part to commit any voter fraud," she insisted.

Richardson's granddaughter, India Richardson, confirmed to Fox News that her grandmother voted for her, by submitting an absentee ballot in her name. India told Fox News that she is not angry, and gave her permission to cast her absentee ballot.

"It wasn't a big deal," she said. 

But election authorities say voting more than once, or in someone else's name, is a big deal because it is illegal and threatens the credibility of the nation's election system.

"It appears she not only attempted to vote more than once, but was actually successful at it and having those additional votes counted," Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, who is in charge of the state's elections, told Fox News.

"She appears to have used her position as a poll worker to cover her tracks. That would be someone who is an official in the elections process, using that position to commit a fraud. That is especially troubling to me, as the chief elections officer of the state, because it is my responsibility to make sure the system runs effectively, that it has integrity. When I find issues like this, I know that it undermines voter confidence in our elections, and we must pursue it."

Three other absentee ballots in the names of different people were submitted to the Board of Elections from Richardson's address on Nov. 1. Officials say the handwriting on those ballots is similar and that they were all received together, on the same day that Richardson's absentee ballot arrived at the office. Richardson maintains that some of the other voters live at her house.

Attempts by Fox News to reach Richardson were unsuccessful, but she claimed to the local station that the votes were "absolutely legal votes."

In written reports detailing the 19 cases, Board of Elections investigators described their findings. In one instance, an investigator called a suspected double voter and was hung up on.

"I explained that she voted twice and she told me not to bother her and get off her phone and she hung up," the investigator wrote.

Another voter admitted to double voting, but did not think it was an issue.

"The voter said yes she 'voted early' and then voted again, then she asked 'what's the problem?'" according to the report.

Yet another voter was at a loss for explaining why he voted more than once.

"Voter said he remembered both times. He doesn't know why he voted twice," the report said.

The documents show that another voter said he had received a phone call before Election Day telling him his absentee ballot would not count. When investigators questioned him about voting two times, the voter replied "'as usual, you guys are wrong.' ... he was curious about the investigation and asked 'Now what will you do' and 'are you taping me now?"

The Hamilton County Board of Elections is holding hearings to further investigate these cases.

"It is so fundamental to people's faith in the democratic process, that we need to act very strong to make sure that we are doing everything we can to keep people's faith," declared Triantafilou. "There is always the concern, though, that there are those situations where we didn't catch folks."

As part of a new effort to root out any voter fraud, Secretary of State Husted has ordered all 88 of the state's county Board of Elections to hold public hearings on any credible voter fraud allegations or claims of voter disenfranchisement during the 2012 election. He said any substantiated allegations should be turned over to prosecutors.

"Once the election is over, and once the winner is declared, everybody forgets about it. I want to make sure that we don't forget about it, that we make sure we do, essentially, an audit of that process to ensure that we know what happened, and then use that evidence to guide us going forward. ... We need to learn from that last election so that we can be better before the next one gets here."

"Fraud does happen," noted Husted. "Most attempts are caught by the system. But there are cases that do slip through, as this one does, and we need to make sure that we really send a strong message, that if you do this, you are going to be held accountable. It might mean fines, it might mean jail time."

Voter fraud, said Husted, "undermines public confidence in democracy, and that's why we need, whether you are a Democrat or Republican, to root out all cases of voter fraud."

If you suspect voter fraud where you live, tell us: Voterfraud@Foxnews.com

Meredith Amor contributed to this report.  

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