Stop profiling on terrorism and in Arizona

San Diego, California (News Today) - Michael Bloomberg is out a quarter. That's how much New York's mayor, who has an estimated net worth north of $15 billion, wagered that he knew exactly what type of person would try to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

I'm sorry for Bloomberg's financial setback. But he can take comfort from the fact that he taught Americans a valuable and timely lesson about the dangers and limits of profiling.

The lesson: Profiling -- especially of the racial and ethnic variety -- isn't just wrong. It's also imperfect. It can lead police to focus on the wrong people while the right ones get away.

In October 2002, Washington authorities -- in pursuit of a serial killer in the Beltway sniper attacks -- spent days looking for a white male because that's what the profile says serial killers look like. Ultimately, two suspects were arrested, charged and convicted. Both were African-American.

In the case of the New York bombing plot, before any arrests were made, Bloomberg told "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric that the suspect was likely a domestic, anti-government terrorist acting alone.

"If I had to guess 25 cents," he said, "this would be exactly that -- homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything."

A person who doesn't like the health care bill, eh? Why not just say the words "Tea Party" and get it over with?

Now that an arrest has been made, let's see how Bloomberg did in his attempt to play FBI profiler.

The bombing suspect, who reportedly admitted his role in the plot and was charged by federal authorities, is a 30-year-old Pakistani-American named Faisal Shahzad. He is not homegrown; Shahzad was born in Pakistan and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Apparently, he didn't act alone but rather as part of a conspiracy; authorities in Pakistan have made at least a dozen arrests in connection with the attempted bombing.

There is no evidence that Shahzad is mentally deranged; while he obviously could have benefited from reading "Car Bombs for Dummies," he also allegedly participated in a premeditated international conspiracy. And, finally, there's no evidence that Shahzad is a member of the Tea Party movement or even drinks tea.

He doesn't seem to have been motivated by an opposition to Obama-care; an official familiar with the investigation said Shahzad thought Islam was under attack.

So, it seems, Bloomberg's profile didn't hold up very well. But he wasn't alone. The day before Shahzad was arrested, I heard a radio talk host in Los Angeles -- a conservative but also a critic of the Tea Parties -- speculate that the attempted bomber was a "right-wing militia type." That's how profiling works. People use it to fit whatever political agenda they're pushing at the moment.

Of course, it's one thing when politicians acting as pundits jump to conclusions about a terror suspect. There's no evidence that Bloomberg's theory about the profile of the bomber drove the investigation down what would have been a dead-end road. It's a bit more serious when law enforcement agencies are encouraged to jump to conclusions about who could be an illegal immigrant. Then you're playing with fire.

Let's say, you live in the state of Arizona. And let's say that, after at least two decades of hiring illegal immigrants or at least turning a blind eye to friends and neighbors who do, you and other 'zonies are suddenly afraid -- not of Mexican drug cartels but of changing demographics, taco trucks, Spanish billboards, having to "press 1" for English, quinceañeras, and other signs of the cultural apocalypse.

Why you might be willing to buy a pig and poke and support a ghastly, half-baked law that -- as originally written and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer -- didn't just allow for racial profiling of people (read: Latinos) who look like illegal immigrants (although even Brewer admitted to reporters that she doesn't have the faintest idea what an illegal immigrant looks like) but all but required it by threatening law enforcement agencies that refused to do this kind of dirty work.

This is how broken the law is. It had to be "fixed" before the governor's signature had even dried. One week after Brewer signed the law, apparently without reading it carefully, she took a "do-over" and signed an amendment intended to address concerns about the potential for racial and ethnic profiling.

Shows how much I know. I would have thought a halfway-competent governor would have made sure those concerns were addressed before signing the bill in the first place.

Be that as it may, one of the changes is that, under the revision, police officers can hunt for illegal immigrants only in the course of enforcing some other law or ordinance. Before, it was open season. Another change is that now the state attorney general or a county attorney cannot investigate complaints that are, in any way, based on a person's race, color or national origin. Before, the law allowed for race, color and national origin to be considered as one of several factors and only prohibited law enforcement from focusing "solely" on those characteristics.

Those changes do not satisfy one of the law's most spoken critics from the world of law enforcement -- Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. A law enforcement veteran who has been on the job for more than 50 years, Dupnik has had the courage and good sense to call Senate Bill 1070 what it is -- a "stupid" and "racist" and "unnecessary" law.

Dupnik thinks the law is a license to profile and said he won't enforce it because it's impossible for his deputies or any other law enforcement in the state to make a judgment call about who is or isn't an illegal immigrant without taking race and ethnicity into account.

Take it from the law enforcement professionals. Profiling may make for good politics. But, in the hands of those who lack the proper training, it makes for lousy police work.

I think most Americans understand that. They know that, when police are looking for lawbreakers, casting a wide net isn't the best way to go. The more details you have about a suspect, the better off you are. And they bristle when it's their group being caricatured and targeted. How dare someone make generalizations about us or groups with which we identify? Yet we have no trouble condoning the practice when it's done to someone else.

Maybe what we should be profiling for is hypocrisy. Having situational ethics is the same as having no ethics at all.

Source : CNN

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Times Square suspect had Taliban ties

Washington (News Today) - Investigators believe that Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad had ties to TTP, a Pakistani Taliban group, a senior law enforcement official and a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.

The law enforcement official said the extent of Shahzad's involvement with TTP has not been determined and could range from communications to training, and does not necessarily mean that TTP directed the attack.

TTP released a video making a claim of responsibility for the attack on a website established the day before the failed bombing attempt, but a spokesman for TTP has denied any connection with the 30-year-old Pakistani-American.

A U.S. official said earlier in the day that connections to TTP were "plausible," but noted that numerous connections among insurgent groups in Pakistan made it difficult to zero in on a single responsible group.

The advance came shortly after a senior U.S. official said that new leads developed from the Pakistani end of the investigation show Shahzad likely had training in Pakistan from extremists. The official has direct knowledge of discussions between senior U.S. and Pakistani officials about the case.

"Did he receive help in Pakistan? Yes he did," said the official. The official said Shahzad is believed to have received training of some sort but would not say if the training was specific to the Times Square bombing attempt.

The official and another U.S. official said investigators had not concluded from which group Shahzad may have received help.

Also Thursday, a high-level team of U.S. and Pakistani investigators grilled Shahzad's father and interrogated four people linked to a notorious Pakistani militant group, intelligence officials said.

The interrogators questioned Bahar Ul Haq in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The retired senior Pakistani air force officer is the father of Shahzad.

Ul Haq -- who lives in the Peshawar suburb of Hayatabad -- was neither detained nor arrested, the source said.

Another official said the team was also questioning four men suspected of having links to the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Banned in Pakistan, the group's aim is to unite the disputed territory of Kashmir with Pakistan and to expel foreign troops from Afghanistan, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. It is also close to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. India and Pakistan have had disputes over Kashmir for decades.

Shahzad told investigators he recently received bomb-making training in the Waziristan area of Pakistan, sources said. North and South Waziristan are regions in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas; both border Afghanistan.

Officials said they suspect that Shahzad may be part of the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group fighting Pakistani forces. While the Pakistani Taliban has praised Shahzad in the wake of the failed bombing, it has denied a link to the man.

In recent days, authorities in Pakistan have rounded up a number of people for questioning.

One was Muhammed Rehan, an alleged associate of Shahzad who allegedly has links to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a senior Pakistani official said. Rehan allegedly was instrumental in making possible a meeting between Shahzad and at least one senior Taliban official, the official said.

The official said that Rehan drove Shahzad on July 7 to Peshawar. At some point, they headed to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders, the official said.

Several officials in Karachi said Rehan was picked up in Karachi's North Nazimabad district. They said others were taken into custody for questioning on Wednesday, but they could not say how many, who they were or where they were seized.

It was not clear if Rehan was one of the four with alleged Jaish links being questioned on Thursday.

Others taken in for questioning include Iftikhar Mian, the father-in-law of the suspect, and Tauseef Ahmed, a friend of Shahzad. They were picked up in Karachi on Tuesday, two intelligence officials said.

Meanwhile, efforts to determine what may have motivated the suspect continued. An official familiar with the investigation said Wednesday that Shahzad felt Islam was under attack.

Any grudge Shahzad may have held against the United States appears to have developed recently, according to a senior U.S. official who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.

The investigation has found nothing to indicate that Shahzad had any long-standing grudge or anger toward the United States, the official said.

In Connecticut, where Shahzad was living, a prominent member of the Pakistani-American community said Thursday that he had maintained a low profile and appeared to have become more religious over the past year.

CNNMoney: Faisal Shahzad's $65,000 home equity piggy bank

"He was somebody who was under the radar; he was never a part of our community, never a part of our events or meetings," said Dr. Saud Anwar, founder and past president of the Pakistani American Association of Connecticut.

After news broke about the suspect, the pulmonologist sent out e-mails to others in the community to dredge up what he could about Shahzad.

"As a physician, I look at it as a disease," Anwar said of Shahzad's apparent radical turn. "I try to understand what led to the disease ... how we can prevent a disease like this."

Anwar said his e-mails turned up a man who studied with Shahzad at the University of Bridgeport and had stayed in touch with him since then, but does not want to be identified publicly.

"He recalled him as a regular individual, outgoing, interacting with people, interested to learn, not isolated," Anwar said.

But, in the past year or so, "he felt there was a change in his personality," Anwar said, explaining that Shahzad appeared to become introverted, asocial and "a little bit more religious."

Anwar added, "There was a little anger in there. [The friend] felt [Shahzad] was looking at things as true black and white."

Returning to his disease analogy, the physician said that, after Shahzad returned from Pakistan early this year, "The disease became a little bit more progressive, much stronger."

Shahzad told his friend that, as a Pakistani-American, he was looking for work in the Middle East "because he was having challenges with his job over here," Anwar said.

"He just mentioned that he was seeking something. I don't know if he found anything or not."

Shahzad has admitted he drove a Nissan Pathfinder into Times Square on Saturday night and attempted to detonate the vehicle, which was packed with gasoline, propane tanks, fireworks and fertilizer, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York.

The previous day, he carried out a dry run, parking his Isuzu SUV on West 38th Street between 9th and 10th avenues a few blocks from Times Square to be used the following day as a getaway car, a law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told said.

But on Saturday, after he left the smoking Pathfinder on West 45th Street just west of Broadway and walked to the Isuzu, he realized he didn't have the Isuzu keys, the source said. So he headed to Grand Central Terminal and boarded a train to Connecticut.

Two store owners on West 38th Street said they had turned over surveillance tapes to authorities at their request.

After a 53-hour police manhunt, Shahzad was arrested late Monday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after boarding a flight bound for Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His final destination was to have been in Pakistan.

Read complaint filed in federal court Tuesday (PDF)

He has been charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, and three other counts in connection with the incident. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

Source : CNN

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Questions surface over Times Square investigation

(News Today) - Questions remained in the days following the dramatic arrest of the Times Square bombing suspect, who was captured only minutes before his plane was due to take off for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Faisal Shahzad was able to board Emirates Flight 202 late Monday despite being put on a no-fly list earlier in the day, but at the time of his ticket purchase, the airline had not refreshed its information so his name did not raise any red flags, a senior counterterrorism official said.

Authorities had tailed Shahzad throughout the day, but lost him before he arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he was ultimately arrested, the official said.

However, an FBI official responded that surveillance operations are designed with redundancies in place, and that agents had to avoid tipping off Shahzad that he was being followed.

At a Tuesday news conference, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended surveillance efforts.

"I was here all yesterday and through much of last night and was aware of the tracking that was going on, and I was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him," Holder said.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York, noted that, along with a Nigerian man who tried to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day, this is the second high-profile incident in recent memory where someone on the U.S. no-fly list has managed to board a plane.

"Whatever went wrong, I hope they get their acts together and correct it," Rangel said. "The good thing about this is that nobody was hurt in either case, but ... someone ought to come up with the answer and see that it doesn't happen again."

Shahzad was arrested shortly before midnight Monday at JFK airport after U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which reviews all flight manifests, caught his name when the airline sent the agency its passenger list, according to the counterterrorism official.

The terror plot may dominate discussions Wednesday as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg travels to Washington for a previously scheduled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on terrorism.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine and ranking member of the committee, has already expressed concerns.

"A key question for me is why this suspect was allowed to board the plane in the first place," Collins said, according to the New York Times. "There appears to be a troubling gap between the time they had his name and the time he got on the plane."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that U.S. intelligence efforts have to be better.

"Being lucky can't be our national security strategy," Hoekstra said. "We were lucky on Christmas Day. We were lucky last week."

Source : CNN

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Times Square bomb suspect 'didn't like the sunlight'

(News Today) - A suspect charged in the failed Times Square car bombing is a Pakistani who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 2009 and used to work as a financial analyst in Connecticut.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, most recently of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested Monday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as his flight to Dubai was about to take off, law enforcement officials said.

Federal authorities had put him on a no-fly list earlier in the day, with investigators having determined that he had purchased the vehicle used in Saturday's failed bombing attempt, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said Tuesday.

Customs and Border Protection agents reacted quickly to the name match and made the arrest, Pistole said.

Shahzad has been charged with five counts in connection with the case, according to documents filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York. According to the documents, he admitted to law enforcement officials that he attempted to detonate the bomb and that he recently received bomb-making training in the Waziristan region of Pakistan.

Also according to the complaint, Shahzad returned to the United States via a one-way ticket from Pakistan on February 3. He had told immigration officials upon his return that he had been visiting his parents in Pakistan for the previous five months, the complaint said.

Shahzad has a Karachi identification card, a sign of Pakistani residency, and his family is from northwestern Pakistan, according to Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik.

His father is a retired senior officer in the Pakistani Air Force, Shahzad's cousin, Kafayat Ali, said on Tuesday. The father, Bahar Ul Haq, a former air vice marshal, lives in the Peshawar suburb of Hayatabad in Pakistan.

Shahzad came to the United States and attended college, earning a bachelor's degree in computer applications and information systems from Connecticut's University of Bridgeport in 2000. He earned an MBA at the school in 2005.

He started working as a junior financial analyst for Affinion Media Group in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2006, leaving voluntarily in June 2009, according to Affinion spokesman Michael Bush.

Before what the court document says was Shahzad's trip to Pakistan, he lived in Shelton, Connecticut. A woman who said she had lived next door to him in Shelton told CNN on Tuesday that the man she knew didn't say much and claimed to work on Wall Street in New York.

"He was quiet. He would wear all black and jog at night. He said he didn't like the sunlight," Brenda Thurman said.

She said Shahzad, his wife and two children and his wife's two sisters lived next to her for about three years, moving out in July 2009. People whom she believes were plainclothes law enforcement officers appeared to be staking out the house Monday, Thurman told CNN affiliate WTNH-TV.

The neighbor said she often saw Shahzad leaving the home in the morning and returning in the evening. She also saw him in his yard with his children, a boy and a girl, and the family usually wore traditional Muslim attire, she told WTNH-TV.

She said she never suspected he might be involved in a possible terror attack.

"I didn't think he was capable of doing something like that. ... I'm very shocked," she said.

Thurman said her daughter often played with Shahzad's daughter, but she herself didn't have much contact with the family.

Shahzad's wife spoke English, but was apparently so insecure about her language ability that she told people she did not, Thurman said.

"I never knew she spoke English until it was time for her to move," Thurman said.

Shahzad's wife told Thurman in July 2009 that the family was moving to Missouri. A few weeks after they left their home, the lender foreclosed on the property and changed the locks, the neighbor said.

At the Bridgeport residence where authorities say he lived most recently, agents with the FBI and local police, including members of a bomb squad, conducted a search, and investigators removed filled plastic bags.

Cell phone calls conducted for the purchase of the vehicle used in Saturday's bombing attempt helped lead police to the suspect, law enforcement sources said.

Sources said investigators got cell phone information from the daughter of the Nissan Pathfinder owner. She sold the vehicle to Shahzad on behalf of her father.

She had been talking on the phone to Shahzad in arranging the purchase of the SUV, which was advertised for sale on Craigslist.

The Nissan Pathfinder was parked in Times Square containing propane tanks, fertilizer and gasoline on Saturday night. After police retrieved the vehicle identification number of the Pathfinder, they located the registered owner of the vehicle.

The sources said the owner's daughter had met with Shahzad at a Stratford, Connecticut, grocery store, for the sale. Shahzad took the car for a test drive in the parking lot and bought the vehicle for $1,300 in cash.

Bridgeport is a working class city of 130,000 on Long Island Sound, 66 miles northeast of New York City. Per capita income there is 26 percent below the national average, and 27 percent of its residents are foreign-born, more than twice the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Source : CNN

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Bomb plot suspect arrested trying to catch flight to Dubai

New York (News Terupdate) - A U.S. citizen has been arrested in the Times Square bombing probe, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced early Tuesday.

Faisal Shahzad was arrested at JFK airport in New York as he prepared to board a flight to Dubai, Holder said.

"It is clear the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," Holder said. "We will not rest until we bring everyone responsible to justice."

Law enforcement officials said the suspect is the person who bought the Nissan Pathfinder used in the bombing attempt.

Earlier, a law enforcement official said the buyer is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, and that investigators are looking at more than one person in connection with the unsuccessful bombing.

CNN has learned that the Joint Terrorism Task Force investigating the bombing attempt is considering the possibility that the attempt involved more than just a "lone wolf."

According to a source familiar with the investigation, investigators believe the plan was an intended terrorist attack to set off explosives in the heart of midtown Manhattan on Saturday night, but the individuals didn't have the expertise to detonate their device.

The Nissan Pathfinder had been sold three weeks ago in a cash deal with no paperwork exchanged, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN earlier Monday. The $1,800 deal was closed at a Connecticut shopping mall, where the buyer handed over the money and drove off, the source said.

The seller described the buyer as a man in his late 20s to early 30s, and investigators are checking into phone records between the two, the source said.

A bomb made up of propane tanks, fertilizer and gasoline failed to detonate inside the SUV. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the device could have produced "a significant fireball" in the heart of Midtown Manhattan on Saturday night had it detonated properly.

Earlier, authorities said they were searching for two people they wanted to question in connection with the would-be bomb. A video obtained from a tourist in the area shows a person apparently running north on Broadway, while another video shows a balding man with dark hair removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of view of the camera, which was inside a restaurant.

"These are not suspects," Kelly said. "These are people we would like to speak to."

The question of who was behind the failed bomb attempt was the subject of intense scrutiny Monday. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said investigators have some "good leads," but he declined to elaborate. And Kelly said it was "too early to say" whether the attempt was carried out by a lone wolf, international terrorists, or any other type of network.

Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud appeared on a video released less than 24 hours after the attempt, claiming Taliban fighters were prepared to inflict "extremely painful blows" in major U.S. cities. But a senior U.S. military official said there was no "credible evidence" at the early stages of the investigation that the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the Times Square bomb incident.

And one counterintelligence official told CNN there was no evidence of any communications among terrorist organizations overseas about the device after Saturday night's attempt. "People overseas were not giving high fives ... or saying anything about the bomb not working," the official said. "There is no indication that there was that kind of tie."

Another U.S. official with direct awareness of the latest U.S. understanding of the incident said the Pakistani group has never shown "trans-national capabilities" like other groups, such as al Qaeda. But such a possibility is "not something one can rule out at this early stage," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

But Pakistan's Taliban movement has been linked to a 2008 plot to blow up subway stations in the Spanish city of Barcelona, and at least two of the 11 men convicted in the plot came to Barcelona from Pakistan, Spanish prosecutors said.

And Jim Cavanaugh, a former agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the bomber could have been "internationally inspired," but the device showed little sign that a group like al Qaeda was behind it. "Their bombs would be better funded, better fused, better materials, better knowledge," he said.

The device inside the Pathfinder was made up of propane tanks, gasoline and fertilizer that turned out to be of a non-explosive grade, along with a metal pot containing wiring and firecrackers. More firecrackers were found in a can on the back seat of the vehicle, sandwiched between two full, five-gallon gasoline cans and connected by wires to clocks.

Cavanaugh called the bomb "a Rube Goldberg contraption" that would have been difficult to set off.

"That does not mean that the bomb's not deadly," he said. Someone close by could be hurt or killed. "But it's not a very reliable working system, a fusing and firing system, at all," he told CNN.

Kevin Barry, a former New York bomb squad member, said the device had "no known signature" -- a style of construction that might link it to known terrorist groups. That suggests it was the work of either an individual or a new organization, said Barry, who is now an adviser to the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators.

Barry said the detonating mechanism lacked the energy needed to properly set off the explosion.

New York police have been examining the device for clues such as fingerprints, hair and fibers since Saturday. The vehicle and bomb components were taken to the FBI's forensic laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, on Monday, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday evening.

Source : CNN

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Police scour latest evidence in Times Square bombing attempt

New York (News Terupdate) - Law enforcement officials early Monday pored through evidence, including a 20-second video, after a failed car bombing attempt in Times Square over the weekend.

The video released by authorities showed an image of a man, who police say is possibly connected to the attempted bombing, changing his shirt along a New York street. A balding man with dark hair is seen removing a shirt and putting it in a bag before walking out of the camera's view from inside a restaurant.

The investigation was focusing on examinations of a Nissan Pathfinder where the attempted homemade bomb was placed. New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Sunday that the vehicle was being combed for fingerprints, hair, fibers and other evidence that may help identify who was responsible.

Police were also combing through hours of surveillance footage in the area for possible clues.

Of the video, Kelly said it "shows a white male in his 40s, in Shubert Alley, looking back in the direction of West 45th Street" in a "furtive manner."

"He also was seen shedding a dark-colored shirt, revealing a red one underneath. He put the darker one into a bag that he was carrying," he added.

Kelly acknowledged that the actions of the man "could be perfectly innocent."

Asked whether police had a video showing a man getting out of the Nissan, Kelly answered, "no."

The video was captured about a half block from where police said the Pathfinder containing bomb-making materials was found Saturday evening on West 45th Street in the city's iconic Times Square area.

iReport: Were you there? Share pics, videos

The police also have a videotape from a Pennsylvania tourist who believes he may have caught the suspect's image on camera, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.

Kelly said Sunday that a New York police bomb squad blew open a large gun locker found in the Pathfinder, revealing eight bags of an "unknown substance" and a pressure-cooker-type metal pot containing a "bird's nest of wires and M-88 firecrackers."

Preliminary tests later determined the substance to be "nonexplosive grade fertilizer incapable of blowing up," according to Browne. Some types of fertilizer can be used in bomb-making.

The gun locker was one of many items found in the rear of the Pathfinder after a T-shirt vendor alerted a nearby police officer to smoke coming out of the vehicle.

Officials removed three propane tanks weighing between 15 and 17 pounds from the SUV, Kelly said, comparing them to the kind typically used on backyard barbecues. One of the tanks had more M-88 firecrackers attached to the side, Kelly said, some of which detonated inside the vehicle.

Also found in the vehicle's back seat were two full five-gallon gasoline containers, Kelly said. Between those gasoline containers was a "16-ounce can filled with between 20 and 30 M-88 devices," he said, adding that two clocks on the floor of the car's back seat were connected by wires to the can containing the firecrackers, and possibly to the gun locker as well.

Had the car bomb detonated, Kelly said it would have caused casualties and a "significant fireball."

Times Square evacuation captured on iPhone

"I'm told the vehicle itself would have at least been cut in half," he said. "You have large numbers of pedestrians in that area, so, yeah, we were lucky that it didn't detonate."

Browne added that the materials found were "capable of producing human casualties and broken windows," but did not have enough force "to take down a structure, in the opinion of NYPD bomb experts."

Officials did not immediately know how the bomb would have been detonated, but Kelly offered a few hints into its design.

"(We believe) the timers would ignite the can of explosives and that would cause the five-gallon cans (of gasoline) to go on fire and then explode the propane tanks and have some effect on that rifle box," Kelly said.

Meanwhile, Times Square returned to its bustling self Sunday, even as questions remained about the source of the attempted car bombing.

In a purported Pakistani Taliban video that surfaced on the internet Sunday, the group took responsibility for the foiled attack, though Kelly said Sunday afternoon that "we have no evidence to support this claim."

The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, said in the video that the attack was revenge for their leaders killed by American forces, and for United States and NATO interference in that part of the world.

Another claim of responsibility e-mailed by an individual to a local New York news station is being investigated, Kelly said.

Kelly called the foiled attack "a sober reminder that New York is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm."

President Obama, speaking from Venice, Louisiana, where he was monitoring a massive oil slick creeping toward the Gulf Coast, promised "to see that justice is done" in the failed car bombing.

"Since last night, my national security teams have been taking every step necessary to ensure that our state and local partners have the full support and cooperation of the federal government," he said. "We're going to do what's necessary to protect the American people, to determine who's behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done."

In an advisory sent to local and national law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security wrote, "There is no information to indicate that this was anything more than a single incident. Additionally, there is no reporting suggesting targeting of other specific locations."

Police officers did a search for secondary devices in the area and found none, Kelly said after the discovery of the Pathfinder.

Another angle of the investigation involved the license plates found on the vehicle.

Authorities said that the Connecticut license plate on the front of Pathfinder did not belong to that car, but to a pickup truck that was last reported at a junkyard.

Following that lead, police were spotted at an automobile used parts company, Kramer's Used Auto Parts of Stratford, Connecticut.

Kelly said that the plate found on the rear of the Pathfinder was also registered to a different vehicle, which was located in an auto repair shop in Connecticut, where its matching plate was also found.

The Pathfinder's vehicle identification number had been removed from the dashboard, but officials recovered it from another location on the car, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Kelly said officials have identified the registered owner of the Pathfinder, but were not yet making his name public.

A New York police official told CNN the owner lives in the tristate area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Read more about the discovery of the car bomb

The lockdown of the popular New York attraction began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday after a T-shirt vendor -- a Vietnam veteran -- saw the SUV, found it suspicious and alerted a mounted police officer.

Officer Wayne Rhatigan peered inside and noticed a box with smoke coming out and smelled gunpowder. Authorities immediately evacuated the area.

Rhatigan, a 19-year NYPD veteran, and vendor Lance Orton were called "heroes" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday.

"We're very lucky that people like Wayne and ... Lance Orton saw something and did something about it, and that's what we all have to do," Bloombergsaid outside Blue Fin restaurant in Times Square, where he later dined with Rhatigan in a show of the safety around the area.

"There are some people around the world that find our freedoms so threatening that they're willing to kill themselves and others to prevent us from enjoying it, but we're not going to let them win," Bloomberg said.

Rhatigan said that after smelling the gunpowder he thought, "Uh oh, this is a little bit more than just a parked car and a cigarette in the ashtray."

He said that despite the potential danger, there wasn't time to be scared as he and other officers sought to set up a perimeter and evacuate passers-by.

"It's what we do, this is our job," Rhatigan, 46, said outside the restaurant.

Source : CNN

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Fists fly in Ukraine parliament punch up

(News Terupdate) - Lawmakers in Ukraine scuffled with each other, throwing punches and eggs, as parliament met Tuesday to ratify a treaty with Russia that extends the latter's navy presence in the Ukraine's Crimean peninsula until 2042.

The ruling Regions party eventually ratified the treaty but not before howls of protest from the opposition.

Someone set off a smoke bomb inside the building, while Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn sought refuge behind an umbrella as he was pelted with eggs.

During a rally attended by thousands on Saturday, opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko -- the former prime minister who lost to Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential election run-off in February -- said the ratification must be prevented at all costs.

She claimed that Yanukovych is "selling out" Ukraine, has "openly embarked on the path of destruction of (Ukraine's) national interests, and has actually begun the process of eliminating the state's sovereignty."

The deal was signed last week by Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Tymoshenko said it violated part of the Ukrainian Constitution, which forbids the country from hosting foreign military bases after 2017.

The deal extends Russia's lease of a major naval base in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol for an additional 25 years, in exchange for a 30 percent cut in the price of natural gas that Russia sells to Ukraine.

The agreement may bring an end to years of disputes over natural gas prices, which culminated in Russia turning off the pipeline to Ukraine.

The dispute affected not only Ukrainians, but many Europeans who depend on Russian gas pumped through Ukraine.

The two countries had been at odds ever since the "Orange Revolution" swept Yanukovych's fiercely anti-Russian predecessor Viktor Yushchenko to power in 2005.

Throughout his time in office, Yushchenko repeatedly threatened to expel Russia's Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol. The Russian military lease there was scheduled to expire in 2017.

Yanukovych said the new deal added a "concrete and pragmatic dimension" to centuries of relations between Ukrainians and Russians.

Opposition groups in Ukraine, however, were quick to denounce the agreement. Yuschenko's "Our Ukraine" party said the treaty would lead to the "Russification" of Ukraine.

Source : CNN

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Victims of Baghdad bombing mourned

Baghdad, Iraq (News Terupdate) - Shiites in Iraq on Saturday mourned the victims of Friday's bombings in Baghdad, a wave of attacks thought to be retaliation for the killings of two top militants.

The violence brought an offer from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- whose militia supporters fought Iraqi and U.S. forces during the war -- to help the Iraqi government provide safety for citizens.

Friday, bombers linked to al Qaeda in Iraq targeted Shiites across the teeming capital on the day of the week that Muslims customarily go to their mosques for prayers.

Dozens of caskets were brought to the holy Shiite city of Najaf south of Baghdad for Shiite preburial rituals. They were taken into the Imam Ali shrine to give the victims a traditional last visit before the bodies are buried.

Angry and sad relatives toted the caskets and chanted "No God but God " and "God is great."

Mourners paid their last respects to families of the victims in funeral tents across Baghdad, including the predominantly Shiite district of Sadr City where the deadliest of the attacks occurred. Car bombings killed at least 39 worshipers and wounded dozens more.

In all, police said, the strikes killed at least 55 people and wounded 124 others across the capital on Friday, prompting fears of a return of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that once engulfed Baghdad.

Another bombing in the Anbar province town of Khaldiya on Friday left six people dead. Anbar is predominantly Sunni.

No one has claimed responsibility for the Baghdad attacks, but authorities believe such coordinated bombings bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda in Iraq, a predominantly Sunni group.

The bombings came days after Iraqi and U.S. officials announced they had killed the two most wanted al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the bombings "cowardly terrorist attacks aimed to overshadow" the deaths Sunday of the two militants.

Al-Sadr -- an anti-American Shiite cleric with a political movement and a lot of grassroots support -- posted a statement on his website Saturday calling for restraint and offering help to security forces.

He asked Iraqis to not get drawn into what he described as the "malicious American plots" that want to pull Iraqis back into fighting, giving them an excuse to stay longer in Iraq.

"At the same time I offer my readiness to provide hundreds of believers ... to be official brigades in the Iraqi army and police so they can defend their shrines, mosques, prayers, markets, homes and cities in a way that saves face for the Iraqi government so it does not resort to the occupiers to protect its people and so Iraqis can live safely in their country," he said.

"If it refuses this, they are free to do so, but we will be fully ready to assist always."

Al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia was blamed for much of the sectarian attacks on the Sunni population at the height of the violence in 2006 and 2007, and it was also involved in fierce fighting with Iraqi and U.S. forces in early 2008.

A freeze of the militia's activity by al-Sadr two years ago was credited as one of the main factors for the drop in violence across the country.

Sadrist politicians could be the kingmakers in Iraqi politics after last month's parliamentary elections, in which they fared well.

Al-Sadr has called for the formation of a "united Iraqi government that is non-sectarian, non-partisan and representative of all Iraqis far from the occupation, the Baath, terrorism and the militias."

The attacks came during the delay in the formation of a government, and many observers fear that a political vacuum could portend an increase in violence.

Al-Maliki, whose coalition lost the election by a hair to former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's bloc, has called for a recount, and a court has granted it. But the Independent High Electoral Commission board of commissioners on Saturday asked the judiciary for a clarification of the decision, such as what ballots need to be recounted.

Source : CNN

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At least 61 dead in Iraq bombings

Baghdad, Iraq (News Terupdate) - A wave of bombings targeting Shiites, a market in Baghdad and a neighborhood in Anbar province killed at least 61 people and wounded more than 100 others Friday, police said.

The strikes conjured memories of the bloodshed that once engulfed both the capital city and the vast province every day.

No one has claimed responsibility for the string of attacks, but authorities believe that such coordinated bombings bear the hallmarks of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The bombings come days after Iraqi and U.S. officials announced that they had killed the two most wanted al Qaeda leaders in the country. Although the deaths hurt the insurgents, military officials don't discount insurgents' continued ability to carry out attacks.

This week, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Baghdad Military Operations Command, boasted about the killings of insurgent leaders Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

He said security forces must capitalize on this "great victory" but cautioned about the possibility of reprisals.

Of the Iraqi-U.S. joint operation Sunday that killed the two leaders, Atta said, "We had information that they were planning attacks that would target churches, Shiite mosques and bridges, and the security forces took precautions and prepared security plans specifically for this."

Former Deputy Minister of Health and Sadrist politician Hakim al-Zamili said he thinks Friday's bombings could be retaliation for the killing of the al Qaeda in Iraq leaders.

"This political and government vacuum led to such bombings and will lead to many disasters for the Iraqi people," he said.

The strikes occur during the delay in the formation of a government, and many observers fear that a political vacuum could portend an increase in violence, such as the sectarian bloodshed that took place in early 2006 while the government was being formed.

Among the string of attacks:

• Two car bombs targeted worshipers in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, killing 39 and wounding 56 people. Also, a car bomb exploded outside one of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's offices there, wounding five people.

The attacks enraged Sadr City residents, who say the government is turning a blind eye to militants. Al-Sadr's office distributed a statement Friday afternoon calling for his followers to show restraint and called for three days of mourning. Al-Sadr has a political movement and a large grass-roots following.

• In southeastern Baghdad, eight people died and 23 were wounded when a car bomb and a roadside bomb detonated outside Muhsin al-Hakim mosque.

• In the northwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriya, a car bomb explosion outside Hadi al-Chalabi mosque killed five people and wounded 10.

• A roadside bomb outside the Sadreen mosque in the Zafaraniya neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad killed two people and wounded seven.

• One person was killed and six people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in an outdoor market in the southern Baghdad district of Dora.

• A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in the Ameen neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, wounding two people.

• West of Baghdad, in the Anbar province town of Khaldiya, six people were killed and 10 were wounded when six roadside bombs exploded in a residential area where a police officer and a judge lived. Authorities imposed a curfew.

Source : CNN

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