Bernama news agency quoted Najib’s press secretary Sariffuddin Ahmad as saying that contrary to what Swiss newspaper Le Temps published, Malaysia does not sanction attempts to interfere with the internal affairs or judicial process of other countries.
“Furthermore, the Prime Minister was not accompanied by the individuals Le Temps named,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
Tengku Sariffuddin said the reality was that at the meeting, security and joint efforts to combat extremism topped the agenda, while pacts on trade, economic growth for the people and inclusive development for Muslims in southern Thailand were also signed.

The blast tore through Chelsea, one of the most fashionable district of Manhattan packed with bars, restaurants and luxury apartment buildings, late Saturday at around 8:30 pm local time (0130 GMT Sunday).

Police later discovered a second bomb four blocks away, which was safely defused and taken away for analysis.

The attack put New York on full alert, just one day before world leaders are due to gather in the city for the UN General Assembly.

It came as a jihadist-linked news agency claimed that an Islamic State group “soldier” carried out a stabbing attack in a shopping mall in Minnesota that left eight people injured also late Saturday.

Local police said the attack “made some references to Allah,” but the motivation of the attack was unclear. The attacker was shot dead by an off-duty police officer.

In New York, police and law enforcement have sealed off the traffic for five blocks around the scene and dozens of officers were out in force Sunday.

An AFP photographer said there was lots of debris, including rubble and glass on 23rd Street, where the explosion happened.

“Whoever placed these bombs, we will find and they will be brought to justice,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters at the scene.

“A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism, but it’s not linked to international terrorism. In other words, we find no ISIS connection, et cetera,” said Cuomo in reference to the Islamic State extremist group based in Iraq and Syria.

No further threat

“But a bomb going off is generically a terrorist activity. That’s how we’ll consider it. And that’s how we will prosecute it,” he added.

An extra 1,000 state police and National Guard will deploy to airports, bus terminals and subway stations to reassure New Yorkers returning to work on Monday that the city is up and running, he said.

“We have no reason to believe at this time that there is any further immediate threat,” Cuomo said.

He said that while there was no evidence of an international terror link “at this time,” it was still “very early in the investigation.”

The explosion outside a building on 23rd Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, caused “significant” property damage with glass and shrapnel “everywhere,” the governor said.

While the two devices planted in Manhattan appear to be similar, at this stage they seem to be different than a pipe bomb that exploded in the neighboring state of New Jersey on Saturday, he said.

The New Jersey blast occurred in Seaside Park during a Marine Corps charity run and caused no injuries.

There were up to four timed explosives but only one detonated, Al Della Fave, a spokesman for the Ocean County prosecutor, told CNN.

Trump, Clinton wade in

Of the 29 people who sustained injuries in New York, 24 were taken to hospital with various degrees of scrapes and abrasions from glass and metal, said Fire Department commissioner Daniel Nigro.

Witnesses living three blocks away told AFP they heard a large boom from their fifth floor apartment, followed by the sound of sirens.

New York lauds itself as the safest big city in the United States. Violent crime has become rare in Manhattan and stringent security checks the norm in many areas since the 2001 Al-Qaeda hijackings destroyed the Twin Towers.

The explosion in New York, the country’s largest city, its financial and entertainment capital as well as home to the two presidential candidates, could impact America’s divisive presidential election.

“I would like to express my warmest regards, best wishes and condolences to all of the families and victims of the horrible bombing in NYC,” Republican nominee Donald Trump tweeted Sunday.

On Saturday, way before officials confirmed the cause of the explosion, Trump said it had been a bomb.

His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton immediately took swipe at her opponent, although later also used the word “bombings” to refer to what had happened in New York and New Jersey.

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said that police, law enforcement and the city’s “anti-terror capacity in particular” was on full alert.

The city routinely goes on extra security alert following attacks in other American cities or in Europe, and police claim to have foiled multiple alleged terror plots since September 11, 2001 when nearly 3,000 people were killed.
– AFP

The final report by the Air Accident Investigation Bureau concluded that Captain Clifford William Fournier had failed to inspect an excessive oil leak and damage to parts of the Eurocopter Dauphin after landing on a football field in Muadzam Shah, Pahang.
There was also passenger intervention on several occasions prompting the pilot to rush home, which could have created pressure on him, the report said.
The helicopter crashed into a rubber plantation near Kampung Sungai Pening Pening, in Selangor, on April 4, killing the captain and his passengers Rompin MP Jamaluddin Jarjis, the prime minister’s principal private secretary Azlin Alias, operations assistant Aidana Baizieva, bodyguard Razakan Seran and businessman Huat Seang.
Those on board were returning to Subang from Pekan after the wedding reception of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s daughter Nooryana Najwa and Daniyar Kessikbayev.
Inspections of the cockpit voice and flight data, as well as the last landing site before the accident, revealed that the helicopter’s left main landing gear had sunk 50.8 centimetres in the loose soil. This caused the aircraft to tilt more than 13 degrees to the left.
“There was also evidence of an excessive fluid leak in the sink hole made by the left landing gear as well as on the grass some 10 metres ahead of the landing point.”
The report also published transcripts of the conversations between Fournier and the passengers, recorded by the cockpit voice recorder.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted the source as saying that every Pyongyang district, particularly where the North Korean leadership is possibly hidden, will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells as soon as the North shows any signs of using a nuclear weapon.
“In other words, the North’s capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map,” the source said.
The disclosure of the detailed bombing operation came after the Defense Ministry reported the “Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation” (KMPR) to the National Assembly last week in response to the North’s fifth nuclear weapon test.
“The defense ministry’s operational concept ‘Korea Massive Punishment & Retaliation’ is aimed at wiping a certain section of Pyongyang completely off the map,” the source was quoted by Yonhap online.
The operational concept is intended to launch pre-emptive bombing attacks on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the country’s military leadership if signs of their impending use of nuclear weapons are detected or in the event of a war, the source added.
South Korea plans to mobilize its locally developed surface-to-surface ballistic missile arsenal for the operational concept, including Hyunmoo 2As, 2Bs and Hyunmoo 3s, according to the source.
The ballistic missiles have ranges of 300, 500 and 1,000 kilometers, respectively.
By next year, the military plans to finish launch tests of the missiles and sharply expand the Hyunmoo missile arsenal, the source said.
“The KMPR is the utmost operation concept the military can have in the absence of its own nuclear weapons,” he also noted.
Another source indicated the military has recently launched a special operational unit in charge of destroying the North Korean military leadership.
“This military unit is dedicated to targeting the North Korean leadership and launching retaliatory attacks on them,” the source noted.

The former prime minister, in a blog post on chedet cc Friday, explained that with better education as well as technological progress, numerous representations of men and animals, which had been previously forbidden by Islam, were soon allowed.