Welcome to the brave new (kind of neat and also chilling) world of real-time chat forum amateur bombing investigators.

Rapidly breaking news.

Over the last 15 minutes, CNN has reported that investigators report “substantial progress” in the investigation of the Boston bombing probe. Additionally, CNN’s John King, on the basis of unnamed law enforcement sources, says investigators believe they have identified a suspect from videotape evidence.

More as we hear it.

We’ve got a number of overlapping stories breaking out or in motion at the moment. There are two letters — one to Sen. Wicker and another to President Obama — that are believed to have been contaminated with the poison ricin. In addition there are two ‘suspicious package’ situations currently in progress on Capitol Hill.

I would emphasize that neither of these letters got to within any physical proximity of their intended recipients. And there is still on-going testing to confirm definitively that it is in fact ricin.

With the suspicious package situations, remember quite often these suspicious package situations turn out to be false alarms. For the moment we’re waiting to hear more.

We’re publishing running updates on each of these stories here.

Late Update 12:49 PM: CNN’s Dana Bash is reporting that Capitol Police are now saying that the suspicious packages have been removed from the buildings and that the buildings are now open again for business. The statement was less clear on whether there’s been a determination about what the ‘suspicious packages’ were.

So remember the disgraced former Justice of the Peace who’s now the ‘prime suspect’ in the killings of those Texas DAs? Well, now his wife has been arrested and charged with capital murder.

Mark Sanford got a rude awakening last night on the Appalachian Trail back to the House of Representatives. His now ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and she’s taking him to court.

Fox pulls an episode of “Family Guy” that came out before Monday’s bombing but which involves joking reference to a character mowing down Boston marathon runners with his car.

Benjy Sarlin has the definitive explainer on how the path to citizenship would work under the proposed Senate plan.

Terrorist weapons expert: Pressure cooker bombs don’t suggest any particular culprits in marathon attack.

Today the Senate will vote on expanded background checks for gun purchasers– but … it’s not looking good for gun control proponents.

Okay this might get interesting.

The ex-wife of ex-SC Gov. Mark Sanford (of Appalachian Trail fame) has accused Sanford of trespassing in her home. He’s been ordered to appear in court two days after the special election.

“I am doing my best not to get in the way of his race,” said Jenny Sanford according to the AP. “I want him to sink or swim on his own. For the sake of my children I’m trying my best not to get in the way, but he makes things difficult for me when he does things like trespassing.”