New York bombs 'were both shrapnel pressure cooker devices'
The bomb detonated on Saturday in New York, and a device found nearby, were both shrapnel-filled pressure cookers - similar to the bombs used at the 2013 Boston marathon, US media report.
Citing officials, separate reports said both had mobile phones and Christmas lights as makeshift detonators.
The blast, in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, injured 29 people.
The FBI said it stopped a "vehicle of interest" in Brooklyn on Sunday but made no arrests.
Five people were taken into custody for questioning, officials told US media. But a spokeswoman said no-one had been charged and the investigation was continuing.
The Manhattan blast followed a pipe bomb explosion on the route of a charity race in New Jersey.
Haze from Indonesian fires may have killed more than 100,000 people – study
Harvard and Columbia universities estimate tens of thousands of premature deaths in areas closest to blazes clearing forest and peatland
A smog outbreak in Southeast Asia last year may have caused over 100,000 premature deaths, according to a new study released Monday that triggered calls for action to tackle the “killer haze”.
Researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities in the US estimated there were more than 90,000 early deaths in Indonesia in areas closest to haze-belching fires, and several thousand more in neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.
The new estimate, reached using a complex analytical model, is far higher than the previous official death toll given by authorities of just 19 deaths in Indonesia.
Did North Korea abduct American David Sneddon in 2004 — to teach English to Kim?
Even by the standards of strange tales that come out of North Korea, this one is particularly bizarre.
Did Kim Jong Il's regime order the abduction of an American in 2004 so his children could learn English? Did North Korean agents, with the help of Chinese officials, snatch a student who had been hiking near the border with Burma?
Yes, or at least probably, if his parents, a South Korean abductees' advocate and human rights proponents are to be believed. No, if you're talking to American officials.
Philippines President to extend violent war on drugs for six more months
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said his country's drug problem was far worse than he anticipated when taking office. Around 3,500 suspected dealers and traffickers have been killed in the last 10 weeks.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Sunday that his government may need to extend its bloody anti-drug campaign for six more months.
Speaking at a media briefing in Davao, Duterte said he was overwhelmed by the scale of the problem. "I did not realize how severe and how serious the problem of the drug menace in this republic was until I became president," he said.
Duterte was elected in May on the back of violent anti-drug rhetoric that promised to wipe out the country's illicit drug trade in three to six months.
"We would need time to put everything in order," he said on Sunday. "Give me a little extension, maybe of another six months."
We, the (very important) People
FARAZ TALAT
We all play the cards we’re dealt, and some of us just have better cards than others.
Imagine driving on a highway in your Civic or Corolla and getting flagged by a police officer. Parked on the side of the road, you roll down your window, and feign curiosity as to why you’ve been stopped.
You needn’t do so.
You know you’ve been over-speeding, and you understand what the law authorises the police officer to do in this case.
But somehow, you feel you shouldn’t be subjected to the same rules as everyone else. You can hardly resist intimidating or charming the policeman with your class privilege.
WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)
THREE OF THE four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the NSA whistleblower to return to the U.S. with no charges. That’s the normal course for a news organization, which owes its sources duties of protection, and which — by virtue of accepting the source’s materials and then publishing them — implicitly declares the source’s information to be in the public interest.
But not the Washington Post. In the face of a growing ACLU and Amnesty-led campaign to secure a pardon for Snowden, timed to this weekend’s release of the Oliver Stone biopic “Snowden,” the Post editorial page today not only argued in opposition to a pardon, but explicitly demanded that Snowden — the paper’s own source — stand trial on espionage charges or, as a “second-best solution,” accept “a measure of criminal responsibility for his excesses and the U.S. government offers a measure of leniency.”
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