“France taking strong action against failed Iranian terrorist plot in Paris — Tehran needs to know this outrageous behavior will not be tolerated,” the White House’s National Security Council tweeted.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters the incident reinforced that Iran was “the world’s top sponsor of terrorism.”

France said Tuesday it was freezing assets of two suspected Iranian intelligence operatives over an alleged plot to bomb a rally in Paris three months ago.

The event was being held by the armed opposition group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), which Tehran considers a terrorist group but which Western powers have removed from its blacklists.

Iran immediately denied any involvement, as it did in July when the MEK accused it of being responsible.

The incident comes after President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on curbing Iran’s nuclear program, defying allies including France which says that the deal is working.

The Trump administration has vowed to curtail Iranian influence and criticized the Europeans for seeking to evade impending US sanctions on transactions with Iran.

European officials, and the administration of former president Barack Obama, pointed to divisions in Iran’s government and hoped to strengthen moderates such as President Hassan Rouhani over elements in the security and clerical establishments that are deeply hostile to the West.

The US considers Iran to be the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism because of its links with a host of armed groups, particularly the powerful Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, as well as other networks in Iraq and Yemen.

No reason was given for the conservative jurist’s decision to pull out but the announcement follows a petition for his ouster signed by hundreds of alumni.

Administrators at the prestigious college emailed students late Monday to say Kavanaugh “indicated that he can no longer commit to teaching his course in January Term 2019, so the course will not be offered.”

A Harvard Law School spokesman confirmed that Kavanaugh would not return to teach.

The federal appeals court judge had taught the three-week course, entitled “The Supreme Court since 2005” at what is one of the most distinguished law schools in the United States, for around a decade.

An online letter, begun last Friday and on Tuesday morning signed by more than 860 Harvard Law School alumni, asked the college to rescind his appointment as lecturer and bar him from teaching.

“We believe that Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment as an HLS lecturer sends a message to law students, and in particular female students, that powerful men are above the law,” it says.

“Judge Kavanaugh is not leadership material and he is not lectureship material. HLS would be tarnished to have him on campus in any position of authority. We ask that you rescind his lectureship.”

Three women say the conservative jurist drunkenly sexually abused or harassed them when they were students in the 1980s.

In an extraordinary Senate hearing last Thursday, Kavanaugh denied the abuse allegations and was adamant he did not drink to the point of blacking out, despite enjoying beer in his younger years

“In addition to the substance of these allegations, Judge Kavanaugh’s comportment and testimony during the appointment process have cast further doubt on his fitness to serve on the Supreme Court,” said the alumni letter.

This prank gone wrong happened at a 24-hour launderette in Taman Sentosa, Rawang, Selangor, after midnight on Tuesday (Oct2).

The boy had accompanied his mother and uncle to the launderette, when the uncle decided to put him in one of the washers.

The washer door locked, trapping the boy in the machine. The workers broke the glass panel of the washing machine and managed to rescue the boy.

The boy, who appears to be four or five years old, was shaken by the incident. He was handed over to his mother unharmed.

The scene was recorded on a smartphone and the two-minute and 45-second video has gone viral on social media.

The outlet owner Hazmal Hassan said he was shocked when he was informed of the incident.

“This is the first time I have seen such an outrageous incident here,” he said, adding the launderette has not been vandalised since it began operating one year and two months ago.

Hazmal told The Star that a police report has been made because the washing machine, which costs about RM3,000, was damaged in the incident.

“I would advise parents who bring their children here to watch over them, as they might think this is a playground or a place to play hide-and-seek.

“Those using the washers and dryers here should follow the instructions and rules, which are stated on the walls,” he said.

Many people condemned the act, saying that it was irresponsible of the uncle to pull such a stunt. Others praised the restaurant workers for rescuing the child.

Last month, two men threw a pregnant cat into a coin-operated dryer at a launderette in Taman Gombak Ria, near Kuala Lumpur, killing it.

The cruel incident caused an uproar among the public, especially among animal lovers. The two men were later arrested and brought to the Selayang Sessions Court, Selangor, where they claimed trial to the offence.

S. Ravi Chandaran, 47, also told the court that the offer was made through a prisons officer and besides this, he also received an offer from Kevin Morais’s younger brother, Datuk Richard Morais, to do the same.

Ravi Chandaran, who is the defence’s sixth witness, said this when cross-examined by counsel Datuk N.Sivananthan who is representing military pathologist Colonel Dr R. Kunaseegaran during the proceedings on the 24th day of the defence’s case.

Sivananthan : You said Dr Kunaseegaran offered RM1.5mil for you to admit guilt. This was done on Dec 29. 2017.

Ravi Chandaran: True.

Sivananthan: You also lodged a police report that on Jan 26, 2018, Richard Morais offered RM2mil to you to plead guilty.

Ravi Chandaran: Yes, true.

Sivananthan: In the same report you said in February 2018, there was a prisons officer who offered you RM3.5mil to plead guilty on behalf of Najib Tun Razak.

Ravi Chandaran: Yes, true.

Ravi Chandaran also agreed to Sivananthan’s suggestion that the amount of money offered to him by the individuals concerned for him to plead guilty was RM7mil.

To a suggestion that the accused just made up the story about the money, Ravi Chandaran said he disagreed.

He also disagreed with a suggestion that there was no reason for the individuals to offer him the money.

When asked by Sivananthan whether Dr Kunaseegaran had ordered him to kill Kevin Morais, the accused said: “No”.

To a question whether Dr Kunaseegaran had ordered him to do something to Kevin Morais such as to kidnap the victim, the accused also replied “no”.

In the previous proceeding, Ravi Chandaran had told the court that Dr Kunaseegaran had offered him RM1.5mil if he pleaded guilty to killing Kevin Morais.

R. Dinishwaran, A.K Thinesh Kumar, M. Vishwanath; S. Nimalan, Ravi Chandaran, and Dr Kunaseegaran had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Kevin Morais during their journey from Jalan Dutamas 1, Sentul, to No.1 Jalan USJ 1/6D, Subang Jaya, between 7am and 8pm on Sept 4, 2015.

They are charged under Section 302 of the Penal Code and read together with Section 34 of the same code, which carries the mandatory death sentence upon conviction.

Dinishwaran, 26, Thinesh Kumar, 25, Vishwanath; 28, Nimalan, 25, and Ravi Chandaran, are represented by lawyer Rajehgopal while the prosecution is led by deputy public prosecutor Saiful Edris Zainuddin.

The hearing before Judge Datuk Azman Abdullah resumes on Friday (Oct 5).

Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said Hassan was detained by the police on Monday (Oct 1) for being in a “forbidden area” of the airport.

“Flight passengers with boarding passes at the boarding area are supposed to get on their flight. But this man did not do so. So he is situated in a forbidden zone, therefore the authorities had to take the necessary action,” said Mustafar at a press conference at the Immigration headquarters here Tuesday.

Mustafar said after police finished questioning Hassan, the Syrian national would be referred to the Immigration Department.

“In this case, we will then communicate with the Syrian embassy to facilitate his deportation to his home country.

“The man claimed that he does not want to return to Syria because he is afraid of becoming a soldier there, or whatever his real reason is.

“But we need to have closure here,” said Mustafar.

The 36-year-old Syrian has reportedly been stuck in transit at KLIA2 since March.

He posted videos of his life stuck in transit on social media, and has attracted the attention of human rights groups and the media.

Meanwhile, at the same press conference, Mustafar announced that Immigration Department had unveiled the new design for the Malaysian visa and Malaysian pass, which came with high-tech security features.

Mustafar said the new design had features that made it more difficult to forge.

“The new design for the Malaysian visa and Malaysian pass was officially released yesterday. New applications for the visa will receive the new design.

“Those who hold visas that are still valid need not replace them with the new one until the term has expired,” said Mustafar.

Muoi, a party member for nearly 80 years, passed away in a military hospital in Hanoi following a long illness, the government and state media said.

“Comrade Do Muoi… made many great contributions to the revolutionary cause of the party and the nation,” the official state-run Vietnam News Agency said Tuesday.

Born in Hanoi in 1917, Muoi joined Ho Chi Minh’s communist revolution at age 19, eager to expel Vietnam’s French colonial rulers who were eventually overthrown in 1954.

His revolutionary activities landed him in Hanoi’s infamous Hoa Lo prison in 1941 — later dubbed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by American POWs, including John McCain, imprisoned there during the Vietnam War.

Muoi escaped four years later by slipping out of his prison uniform and fleeing via a sewer drain.

Muoi spent much of his political career climbing party ranks, eventually joining the politburo in 1982 and gaining a reputation as a conservative ideologue.

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, he led a campaign dubbed “X2” to dismantle tens of thousands of private enterprises in the south — then the economic engine of the newly-unified country.

He made no secret of his anti-capitalist views and became known for an infamous motto.

“Capitalists are like sewer rats, whenever one sees them popping up one must smash them to death!” he said, according to Nhan Tri Vo’s book “Vietnam’s Economic Policy Since 1975”.

He later admitted the X2 crusade was “a little too dogmatic”, though he never took personal responsibility for the brutal campaign.

But he retained his hardline reputation throughout the 1990s, decrying peasant protests against taxation as attempts to “sabotage” the state, and pushing for a compulsory labour scheme to rebuild the country’s tattered infrastructure.

Muoi eventually fell in step with the party’s embrace of “Doi Moi” economic reforms starting in the 1980s, which saw Vietnam slowly open its doors to privatisation and foreign investment.

And as party leader — he held the powerful title from 1991 to 1997 — he oversaw the government’s push to normalise relations with Washington in 1995.

But repairing ties with the former wartime foe came with conditions.

In 1997 he told then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Washington should help Vietnam recover from “consequences left by the war, including rehabilitation for handicapped people and consequences caused by the Agent Orange”, according to the party’s official newspaper.

Muoi’s death comes after Vietnam’s president Tran Dai Quang died in Hanoi on September 21 at age 61.

He is expected to be given a state funeral, though details have not yet been released.

About 21 percent of the 7,991 candidates running for a seat in the House of Representatives are aged 21 to 35 years old. Many of them are eschewing traditional forms of campaigning for social media, opting for a refreshing and interactive campaign style as they allow voters to ask questions through various platforms.

Take 31-year-old Kirana Larasati, a popular television actress-turned-political novice who is now running for a seat in West Java’s first electoral district for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

In a video posted on her Twitter account, Kirana answered questions from her followers about her foray into politics. The video, edited with YouTube vlog-like jump-cuts and spiced up with many popular memes, drew praise from both young voters and more senior politicians.

At least 844 people are already known to have died in the disaster, and officials say that toll is likely to rise — perhaps into the thousands.

The 7.5-magnitude quake, which struck early evening on Friday — a time when many in the Muslim-majority country would have been at the mosque — brought buildings down all over Palu and its surrounding area.

But it was an unlikely confluence of geophysical conditions that gave rise to a localised tsunami that washed away many other structures and certainly added to the human cost.

“The waves were at least two-to-three metres high, and possibly twice that,” said Jane Cunneen, a research fellow at Curtin University’s Faculty of Science and Engineering in Bentley, Western Australia, and an architect of the Indian Ocean’s tsunami warning system, developed under UN guidance.

Judging by the earthquake, however, the tsunami shouldn’t have been nearly that big.

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, tsunamis are generated by so-called thrust earthquakes, which create a large vertical displacement of the seafloor,” said Baptiste Gombert, an expert on tectonics at Oxford University’s department of earth sciences.

The Palu tsunami, by contrast, was generated by a strike-slip fault, where chunks of Earth’s crust move over or under each other along a horizontal plane.

“Strike-slip faults are less likely to generate tsunamis, as they don’t uplift the seafloor too much,” said Cunneen.

So what caused the deadly waves? At least three factors, experts told AFP.

Submarine landslide

One is the singularly long channel of ocean water dead-ending at the low-lying city of Palu.

“The shape of the bay definitely played a major role in amplifying the size of the waves,” said Anne Socquet, an earthquake expert at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble who has studied the region’s seismic faults.

“The bay acted like a funnel into which the tsunami waves entered.”

As the bay narrowed and became more shallow, the water was pushed up from below and squeezed from the sides at the same time.

A second ingredient was the size and location of the quake.

Magnitude 7.5 is a powerful earthquake — only a few are recorded every year.

The one that struck Palu “was also really shallow, which means greater seafloor displacement,” said Gombert.

To make things worse, the rupture was close to shore, leaving scant time or distance for the waves to dissipate.

Finally, circumstantial evidence suggests that the tsunami was magnified by the underwater equivalent of a landslide.

“The earthquake may have caused a submarine landside near the mouth of the bay, or even within the bay itself,” said Cunneen, noting the waterway’s steep earthen walls.

This would help explain why the waves were so big near Palu, but much smaller in the surrounding area.

“Such events are very hard to predict with our current tsunami warning systems, which rely on quick estimates of earthquake magnitude and location,” Cunneen added.

The Air Niugini Boeing 737-800 was attempting to land at Weno airport in Micronesia on Friday morning but fell short of the runway and splashed down in Chuuk lagoon.

The airline initially said all 35 passengers and 12 crew aboard evacuated safely.

But divers examining the submerged wreck had made a grim discovery.

“It is with great sadness I confirm that the body of a male passenger was discovered by divers today as they conducted a further search of P2-PXE and the surrounding area in Chuuk lagoon,” Air Niugini chief executive Tahawar Durrani said in a statement late Monday.

The Micronesian government said US Navy divers recovered the body from the aircraft. Further details about the deceased were not available.

The government said nine people were injured in the crash, four of them critically.

It said an investigation team from the Federated States of Micronesia was working with officials from Papua New Guinea and the United States to determine the cause of the crash.

“Plans are underway to recover the black box from the submerged airplane,” it said in a statement.

Air Niugini said Friday it had been informed that “the weather was very poor with heavy rain and reduced visibility at the time of incident”.

A shallow and moderately strong 5.9 quake struck at 2359 GMT, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) off Sumba, an island of some 750,000 people.

It was followed up some 15 minutes later by a stronger 6.0 magnitude quake in the same area at a depth of 30 kilometres.

Sumba lies some 1,600 kilometres to the south of Sulawesi island which was struck by a devastating quake and tsunami on Friday, killing more than 800 people.