Trump administration lifts laptop ban on planes from certain Middle Eastern airports

“The laptop ban is over,” Micah Maidenberg reports for The New York Times. “Passengers flying into the United States from airports in 10 Muslim-majority countries affected by the ban may now take their laptops and other large electronic devices into the cabin with them, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Thursday.”

“Security officials imposed the ban in March, warning then that the Islamic State was developing bombs that could be hidden in portable electronic devices,” Maidenberg reports. “But the airlines and airports affected by the ban have all complied with the initial phase of the new Homeland Security standards, allowing the prohibition to be lifted, the department said.”

“John F. Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, announced last month that there would be new security standards for carriers flying into the United States. The first phase of those new rules required airports with carriers flying to American destinations to quickly demonstrate that they had the ability to screen passengers for trace amounts of explosives,” Maidenberg reports. “More than 280 airports — including the 10 targeted by the original laptop ban — complied with that rule, officials said Thursday… In addition to adding explosive-detection equipment, airlines must, by this fall, demonstrate that they have the ability to conduct tougher security checks, including interviewing passengers as part of the screening.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s good to see the level of airport security increasing globally.

SEE ALSO:
Trump administration’s U.S. ban on laptops and tablets on flights from Europe ‘off the table,’ for now – May 18, 2017
Trump administration considers expanding laptop ban in Europe; would cost airline passengers $1.1 billion – May 17, 2017
Trump admin considers widening electronics carry-on ban to European airports; nothing larger than iPhone permitted in cabin – May 11, 2017
US-UK electronic devices ban on planes came after plot to make iPad bomb uncovered – March 27, 2017
Trump administration bans iPads, laptops and other devices in cabin on flights from certain Middle Eastern airports; Britain follows suit – March 21, 2017

49 Comments

      1. No improvement but the case could reasonably be made that he is only a caretaker until the next election. NO major initiatives.

        After all, isn’t it the republicans that said no to a sitting President because he was in the last year of his Presidency (an excuse).

        1. SAD!. You get more and more desperate, pathetic and silly daily bottwipe.

          I don’t need your form but it seems to be your current dried cat turd. Maybe it’s time to give you some fresh dried cat turds.

          I did 3 (three), trois, tres, etc… jail sentences… and still got out and changed the world along with Jobs, Gates, Osborne, Pava, The Terrels, Jane, Kevin, Lori and others…..

          Fresh dried cat turd for you bottwipe. Where is your other personality buttwipe?

        2. same old broken record. you could say xcon all you want. it’s a badge of honor that I survived and changed the world.

          I should be your idol, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and doing so well, but I’m black so ….

        3. Hey bottwipe…

          Just a simple question. How many professional victims would put themselves right up there with Jobs, Gates, Osborne, The Terrells and the rest of the pioneers in the PC business?

          You were much more accurate when you said I was a megalomaniac. At least that took some thought and intelligence.

          By the way. I’ve never been anybodies victim.

          But you.. sniveling and crying that that Mean Black President dared to make your pathetic life better. Rescued you from your underwater house. Got you health insurance for the first time in your life…. saved your job at 7-11 since the factory didn’t close after the last republican maladministration.

          You are so pathetic that a sexual predator is looking up to you. That a liar makes you feel special.

          Keep hoping for that full time coal mining job. Keep hoping you don’t get black lung disease cause you won’t have health insurance.

          Pathetic pile

        1. “…which is it folks?”
          you have no allies, XCon…you’ve been thoroughly exposed for race huckstering felon you are.

          you lose.

          again.

      1. maybe someday you will be embarrassed enough to stop worshiping a lying, incompetent sexual predator.

        By the way. Where are the defenders. Being awful quiet as your stupidity at being tRumps cockholster is on display for all to see.

        1. so you point to 2 successful Black people, I guess to show that you aren’t racist, which I don’t believe and you mock one for a medical condition?

          Pathetic, but what do you expect from a bottwipe.

        2. about what i’d expect you’d say. something mindless.

          ahem… pardon me and jared and ivanka and junior and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

        3. so you stand by your attack on someone with a medical condition? Figures, your sexual predator idol liked mocking the disabled.

          drug addled. hardly. What is actually scary is the allegiance to tRump. It’s disturbing.

          Sitting here with my granddaughter. Biracial, like my own children. Thinking that for her future and the future of this country that there is no higher calling than resisting tRump and his minions rape of this country. Your stupid decision to force this incompetent carnival barker on all of us shows you to be the spiteful bitches you are. All to get back at Obama. That Black President that dared to be Presidential and a human being even though the garbage side of our society CHOSE to be mean, spiteful, little bitches and whiners.

          It’s awfully quiet on here. Not many impassioned defenses of the sexual predator occupying the white house.

          But I guess all you russian trolls have jobs. Spreading confusion about tRumps impending impeachment or resignation.

        4. pardon me…. no wait… pardon tRump and his crime family?

          so all the clowns have spilled out of the tiny car and the sh*tshow is there for all to see and bottwipe and 2014bc and MDN have to feel like rags, blowing in the wind from the overflowing swamp that used to be our government.

          No. Not rags. Banned plastic bags.

          pardon me and “pardon my analysis”

      2. Pot, kettle, black much!!??
        Calling out absurdity with an equally absurd “leftist” generalisation.
        Seemingly there is no political depth in America’s intelligence-free irony desert.
        “A plague o’ both your houses” Romeo and Juliet : Wm. Shakespeare.

  1. Back on subject: We all now know that the amount of explosive required to blow a hole in the fuselage of a commercial aircraft is about the side of a AAA battery — so pretty small.

    Swabbing for signs of explosives is slow, inefficient and not wholly accurate (your handsoap may contain glycerine or glycerol, ingredients found in high explosive, for example).

    Traditionally, drugs were wrapped in tin foil and secreted in the small gap between laptop screens and the outer case. Nobody does that any more because Customs got wise.

    If the Department of Homeland Security (on Trumps’ orders), were serious about looking for small bombs at US-bound departure airports, they would have sent a thousand devices nicknamed ‘electronic nose’ to foreign Customs.

    That’s the only efficient way to ‘sniff’ for explosives hidden in, say, a jar of coffee.

    I don’t know the bulk retail prices of these devices today — but about five years ago they were around $20,000 apiece.

    Doubtless, this will have occurred to one of the smart guys in the Administration somewhere — closely followed by the realisation that (because it wasn’t done) that they weren’t really looking for bombs made out of high explosive after all.

    Is it too much to hope that the US government weren’t simply seeking to harass and inconvenience a list of mainly Muslim-majority countries they don’t like the look of?

    Given the evidence, one expects most *intelligent* people can make their own mind up on this one.

    (The rest, however, will believe anything they’re told to believe, sadly).

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