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Obama's orphans and widows at work. Which is it this time oblameo? Workplace violence or a lone nut?

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An explosion that injured 29 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood was an “intentional act,” but there so far are no concrete links to international terrorist groups, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. 

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Cuomo added that  “a bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism.”

The explosion happened at 8:30 p.m. Saturday in front of 131 West 23rd St., which houses a residence for the blind on a busy east-west thoroughfare.

Surveillance video from nearby businesses showed windows shattering and pedestrians running for cover. The device was believed to have been placed near or in a construction dumpster parked at that address.

Shortly after the explosion, police found an unexploded device in a pressure cooker about four blocks away. 

The blast came on the same day that a pipe bomb went off before a Marine charity race in New Jersey and a stabbing attack at a Minnesota mall left eight injured, raising the specter of terrorism in multiple U.S. states. 

A man wearing a private security uniform stabbed eight people Saturday night at a mall in St. Cloud, Minn., authorities said.

The suspect repeatedly mentioned Allah and asked at least one victim if they were Muslim before an off-duty police officer shot and killed the assailant, St. Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson said at a news conference.

The stabbings were carried out by "a solider of the Islamic State," the Amaq news agency claimed on Sunday. The agency, which is affiliated with the militant group, said the man was acting "in response to calls to target the nationals of the crusader alliance countries."

Other Islamic State-affiliated accounts have yet to address who was responsible for the attack.

It was not immediately clear if the extremist group had planned the attack or even knew about it beforehand. Islamic State 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.

All eight victims were treated at a hospital for wounds that weren't life-threatening, and all but one were later released, Anderson said. The eighth was admitted, but no other details about that person's condition were released.

Anderson declined to call it an act of terrorism, saying the motive was still unknown.

"We will be diligent and get to the bottom of this," Anderson said. "Starting tomorrow, things won't be the same here."

In a Sunday morning teleconference among senior counter-terrorism officials, investigators said they were proceeding under the theory that the Chelsea explosion was an act of terrorism, but had few leads to follow this early in the investigation, according to an official who discussed the call on the condition of anonymity to describe internal assessments.

The call included senior officials from the FBI, local New York law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security. 

No physical evidence yet connects the dumpster blast to the unexploded pressure-cooker bomb discovered nearby, but investigators believe the two are likely related, the official said. The pressure-cooker device is similar to the two bombs that exploded at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding 264 others. Instructions for making a bomb out of a pressure cooker appeared in terrorist instruction manuals and magazines published online by Islamic State and Al Qaeda and have been widely circulated.

Cuomo said both New York devices had been sent to the FBI’s labs in Quantico, Va., for further analysis. The investigation is being led by the New York Police Department-FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force.

“There’s significant property damage,” he said. “That there were no fatalities is something to give thanks for today.”

Twenty-four of the 29 people injured were treated and released at local hospitals for cuts and abrasions from flying glass shards and shrapnel, he said Sunday. The other five were not brought to hospitals.

Cuomo said the state planned to deploy 1,000 state police and National Guard officers to patrol the city’s train stations and public areas ahead of New Yorkers returning to work on Monday.

The increased security, the governor said, was to “err on the side of caution. We want New Yorkers to be confident that New York is up and running and we’re doing everything we can” to keep them safe.

The incident happened less than a week after the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, and came at a time when security in the city was already heightened for the arrival of world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday.

The governor urged New Yorkers to go about their business and not be intimidated by whoever set off the explosion. “Feel safe,” he said.

“Whoever placed these bombs, we will find and they will be brought to justice. Period,” Cuomo said. “We will not allow these type of people and threats to disturb our life.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, said the prospect of a terrorist link to the New York explosions will be “looked at very, very closely.”

“I know everyone is looking to see what the cause was, could it potentially be connected to terrorism? No evidence yet, but I know that’s going to be looked at  very, very closely,” Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services and and Foreign Relations Committees, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

On the same program, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that the pipe bomb explosion in his state on Saturday morning was “clearly an act of terrorism.”

The blast “was done intentionally to terrorize the people of New Jersey,” Christie said, adding that there were promising leads in the case, but that no one had been taken into custody. 

The race in Seaside Park, N.J., had not started when the bomb exploded in a garbage can near the race course; there were no injuries. 

“It had to be a bomb,” said Steven Ochs, 43, who was eating paella inside a Spanish restaurant when the blast hit. “There was just one big explosion, no smoke or fire, but the smell of gunpowder was present. There was one big, big explosion. Then there were all these dust particles swirling around. It was a scene of chaos and madness.”

The blast, Ochs said, appeared to come from street level — consistent with reports that it came from a dumpster — and it blew out the windows of passing cars and an adjacent mid-rise apartment building.

 

Ochs saw one older man who was bleeding, apparently injured by flying glass. A video he took on his phone showed traffic stanchions and garbage blowing around the street as though in a whirlpool.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called terrorism “a real possibility” in the Chelsea explosion, noting that evidence often does not emerge in such cases for several days.

“You have to assume from the start that terrorism is a real possibility,” King said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Americans “are always vulnerable to these attacks” whether they are committed by overseas or homegrown terrorists or malcontents, he said.

King also defended the idea of focusing scrutiny on Muslim communities, saying an “over-concern” for civil liberties should not get in the way of “solid law enforcement.”

Just as authorities target the Mafia in Italian American communities, “right now if the threat is from Islamic terrorism, we go to Muslim communities,” he said. “You don’t look for the Ku Klux Klan in Harlem,” he added. (No, you look for the much worse black panthers).

http://www.latimes.com/nation/...0918-snap-story.html

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Its only when New England Liberal mentality emerges, as the Bombs are going off, you hear the slogan by Democrat Mayor reminding New Yorkers, "See Something/ Say Something", after the fact.. Heaven forbid, should you describe that person/s by race or religion dress, with a back pack of objects with wires hooked to cell phones and such. We democrats have to be careful how we present the information to public and media, we don't want to offend our refugee visitors, soon to be voting for democrats. Obama is guaranteeing us an additional 100,000 more before leaving office... 

Lets see, 2% hell bent deviants = 2000  lone wolf's mentioning Allah repeatably, before you hear Boom....

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