In Brief: Nation & World: 9-16-16

Authorities call NYC explosion a bombing, say motive unknown

NEW YORK (AP) — Investigators scrambled Sunday to find out who planted a bomb that rocked a bustling New York City neighborhood, scouring shrapnel, forensic traces and surveillance video for any link to an unexploded pressure-cooker device found just blocks away.

Hours after the Saturday night blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan, there seemed to be more questions than answers. All the injured had been released from the hospital by Sunday afternoon.

“We just know there was a bombing,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at briefing at New York Police Department’s headquarters. “That much we do know.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who toured the site of the blast in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, said there didn’t appear to be any link to international terrorism. He said a second device found blocks away from the bombing appeared “similar in design” to the first.

That device — described by a law enforcement official as a pressure cooker with wires and a cellphone attached to it — was removed early Sunday by a bomb squad robot and was being examined by forensic experts. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation.

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FBI investigates Minnesota stabbing as possible terror act

ST. CLOUD, Minn. (AP) — A man in a private security uniform stabbed nine people at a Minnesota shopping mall, reportedly asking one victim if they were Muslim before an off-duty police officer shot and killed him in an attack the Islamic State group claimed as its own.

None of the nine people who were stabbed in Saturday night’s attack received life-threatening wounds, St. Cloud police Chief Blair Anderson said. He said it doesn’t appear that anyone else was involved in the attack at the Crossroads Center in St. Cloud, which began at around 8 p.m. and was over within minutes.

At a news conference Sunday, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Rick Thornton said the attack was being investigated as a possible act of terrorism and that agents were still digging into the attacker’s background and possible motives.

An Islamic State-run news agency, Rasd, claimed Sunday that the attacker was a “soldier of the Islamic State” who had heeded the group’s calls for attacks in countries that are part of a U.S.-led anti-IS coalition.

It was not immediately clear if the extremist group had planned the attack or even knew about it beforehand. IS has encouraged so-called “lone wolf” attacks. It has also claimed past attacks that are not believed to have been planned by its central leadership.

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FBI: Beaches reopened after pipe bomb blast, probe ongoing

SEASIDE PARK, N.J. (AP) — Jersey Shore beaches were reopened Sunday as an investigation continued into a pipe bomb explosion at a seaside community before thousands of runners were to participate in a charity 5K race to benefit Marines and sailors.

Officials would not say if they believe the Saturday afternoon blast in Seaside Park was terror-related, but said it didn’t appear to be connected to an explosion that rocked a crowded Manhattan neighborhood Saturday night, injuring 29 people.

They said each bomb contained different materials, but added that they weren’t ruling anything out yet. The New Jersey device contained evidence of a black powder.

Special Agent Michael Whitaker, a spokesman for the FBI office in Newark, said state and federal investigators were still canvassing the Seaside Park area Sunday and conducting interviews. He said travel restrictions imposed after the blast had been lifted.

He declined further comment, citing the ongoing investigation. New Jersey state police also wouldn’t comment and referred questions about the blast to the FBI.

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Trump supporters struggle to sideline ‘birther’ issue

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s most prominent supporters insisted Sunday that he’s put the burden of “birtherism” behind him with his concession that President Barack Obama was born in the United States. But like their candidate, they tried to blame Hillary Clinton’s campaign and rejected any notion that Trump’s political identity is founded on five years of peddling the false rumor that Obama was born elsewhere.

“It’s over,” said Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

But saying Trump’s admission of the error was behind him — as two sitting governors and several other Trump supporters did across the Sunday talks shows— doesn’t necessarily make it true. The issue is nearly certain to come up during Trump and Clinton’s first debate, Sept. 26.

The episode reflects Trump’s penchant for spreading unsubstantiated claims when he stands to gain from them and his refusal to apologize or take responsibility when he’s been wrong. That operating style did not stop the billionaire developer from vanquishing 16 Republican challengers and capturing the GOP nomination. But in a one-on-one battle with Clinton, it can add up to a character questions with three debates and mere weeks to go before the Nov. 8 elections.

Recent polls suggest Trump may have benefited in recent weeks by his own newfound discipline and Clinton’s missteps. She called half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables” — then apologized for saying “half” — only to fall ill with pneumonia and wobble during an abrupt exit from this year’s 9/11 memorial ceremony. For hours, Clinton’s campaign obfuscated about what was wrong with her. It was the worst stretch of her campaign, and during it, a newly confident Trump for the first time in several weeks began to veer off his written remarks.

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Drugmakers fought state opioid limits amid crisis

The makers of prescription painkillers have adopted a 50-state strategy that includes hundreds of lobbyists and millions in campaign contributions to help kill or weaken measures aimed at stemming the tide of prescription opioids, the drugs at the heart of a crisis that has cost 165,000 Americans their lives and pushed countless more to crippling addiction.

The drugmakers vow they’re combating the addiction epidemic, but The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity found that they often employ a statehouse playbook of delay and defend that includes funding advocacy groups that use the veneer of independence to fight limits on the drugs, such as OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl, the narcotic linked to Prince’s death.

The mother of Cameron Weiss was no match for the industry’s high-powered lobbyists when she plunged into the corridors of New Mexico’s Legislature, crusading for a measure she fervently believed would have saved her son’s life.

It was a heroin overdose that eventually killed Cameron, not long before he would have turned 19. But his slippery descent to death started a few years earlier, when a hospital sent him home with a bottle of Percocet after he broke his collarbone in wrestling practice.

Jennifer Weiss-Burke pushed for a bill limiting initial prescriptions of opioid painkillers for acute pain to seven days. The bill exempted people with chronic pain, but opponents still fought back, with lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry quietly mobilizing in increased numbers to quash the measure.

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Syrian truce receives new blows with airstrikes, shelling

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s fragile cease-fire started to unravel on Sunday with the first aerial attacks on rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo and a southern village that killed at least eight people, violations that came as tensions between the American and Russian brokers of the deal worsened following a deadly U.S. strike on Syrian government forces.

The air raid by the U.S.-led coalition killed dozens of Syrian soldiers and led to a harsh verbal attack on Washington by Damascus and Moscow. The U.S. military says it may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against the Islamic State group in eastern Syria on Saturday.

The seven-day cease-fire is supposed to end at midnight Sunday, according to a Syrian army statement issued last week. The U.S. and Russia have said that if it holds for seven days, it should be followed by the establishment of a Joint Implementation Center for both countries to coordinate the targeting of Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked militants.

Despite largely holding, the cease-fire has been repeatedly violated by both sides, and aid convoys have not reached besieged rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and one-time commercial center, which has been the center of violence in recent months. Aid delivery to Aleppo is part of the U.S.-Russia cease-fire deal.

Earlier this month, Syrian government forces and their allies captured areas they lost south of the city, re-imposing a siege on its opposition-held eastern neighborhoods. More than 2,000 people were killed in 40 days of fighting in the city, including 700 civilians, among them 160 children, according to a Syrian activist group.

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Clinton outdoing Trump in Pennsylvania, a must-win state

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Hillary Clinton’s campaign is aggressively outworking Donald Trump in battleground Pennsylvania, a state the billionaire businessman can scarcely afford to lose and still hope to become president.

Despite polling well in Pennsylvania throughout the summer, Clinton’s team is nevertheless bearing down in a state her party has carried in six straight elections. They are ratcheting up advertising and dispatching their top supporters to Pennsylvania, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden to last week’s visit from President Barack Obama.

“We’ve got to fight for this thing,” Obama thundered at a rally in Philadelphia last Tuesday. “I need you to work as hard for Hillary as you did for me. I need you to knock on doors. I need you to make phone calls. You’ve got to talk to your friends, including your Republican friends.”

At a minimum, an energized Pennsylvania campaign is a balm for Clinton as she weathers a dip in national polls and dips in the swing states of Florida and Ohio. But with roughly seven weeks until Election Day, Trump’s scattershot approach to the state also puts his White House prospects in jeopardy.

“There is no Trump turnout organization, and you can’t construct one” in the time remaining, said former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.

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UN holds first-ever summit on refugees and migrants

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The issue of what to do about the world’s 65.3 million displaced people takes center stage at the United Nations General Assembly Monday when leaders from around the globe converge on New York for the first-ever summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants.

With more people forced to flee their homes than at any time since World War II, leaders and diplomats are expected to approve a document aimed at unifying the U.N.’s 193 member states behind a more coordinated approach that protects the human rights of refugees and migrants.

“It’s very interesting because if we are able to translate that paper into a response in which many actors are going to participate, we will solve a lot of problems in emergency responses and in long-term refugee situations like the Syrian situation,” Fillipo Grandi, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees told The Associated Press.

That may prove an uphill struggle, however, as the document is not legally binding and comes at a time that refugees and migrants have become a divisive issue in Europe and the United States.

A number of countries rejected an earlier draft of the agreement that called on nations to resettle 10 percent of the refugee population each year, something that has led a number of human rights groups to criticize the document as a missed opportunity. The U.S. and a number of other countries also objected to language in the original draft that said children should never be detained, so the agreement now says children should seldom, if ever, be detained.

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In the Cards: Louisville surges to No. 3 in the AP Top 25

Louisville surged to No. 3 in The Associated Press college football poll on Sunday, matching the best ranking in school history, and Ohio State moved up to No. 2 behind Alabama.

The Crimson Tide received 50 first-place votes after coming from 21 points down to win 48-43 at Mississippi on Saturday. The Buckeyes moved up one spot after an emphatic 45-24 victory at Oklahoma.

No team made a bigger move than Louisville, which jumped seven spots and received six-first place votes after Lamar Jackson and the Cardinals beat Florida State 63-20. The Seminoles slid 11 spots to No. 13.

The Cardinals were No. 3 on Nov. 5, 2006, during coach Bobby Petrino’s first stint with Louisville.

North Dakota State didn’t make the rankings, but received 74 points after upsetting Iowa — the most points ever for a Football Championship Subdivision team. Iowa dropped out.

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World leaders to focus on refugee crisis and Syria at UN

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — World leaders meeting at the United Nations starting Monday will be trying to make progress on two intractable problems at the top of the global agenda — the biggest refugee crisis since World War II and the Syrian conflict now in its sixth year which has claimed over 300,000 lives.

Against a backdrop of rising ethnic and religious tension, fighting elsewhere in the Mideast and Africa, extremist attacks across the world and a warming planet, there are plenty of other issues for the 135 heads of state and government and more than 50 ministers expected to attend to try to tackle.

“It’s no secret there’s a lot of fear out there,” U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters Thursday, citing the uncertainties sparked by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the threat posed by the Islamic State extremist group, and attacks in many parts of the world by IS and other terrorist groups.

But Syria, where a tense cease-fire brokered by Moscow and Washington went into effect last Monday, remains at the top of the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting. An apparently errant airstrike on Saturday in which the U.S. military may have unintentionally struck Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against the Islamic State group could deal a crushing blow to the U.S.-Russian-brokered cease-fire. The cease-fire, which does not apply to attacks on IS, has largely held for five days despite dozens of alleged violations on both sides.

The U.N. Security Council held a closed emergency meeting Saturday night at Russia’s request to discuss the airstrike. The acrimonious meeting offered a harbinger of the difficulties ahead as the U.S. and Russia remain suspicious of each other’s intents in Syria. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power accused Russia of pulling “a stunt” that is “cynical and hypocritical” in calling for the meeting while not taking similar action in response to atrocities committed by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he had never seen “such an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness” as displayed by Power.