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Royal Jordanian Airlines Bans Use of Electronics After US Voices Security 'Concerns' (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Royal Jordanian airlines banned the use of electronics on flights servicing the U.S. after government officials here expressed concerns. Details are scant, but CNN is reporting that other carriers based on the Middle East and Africa may be affected as well. The news broke when Royal Jordanian, a state-owned airline that operates around 500 flights a week, posted this cryptic notice on its Twitter feed. The ban, which includes laptops, tablets, and video games, but does not include smartphones or medical devices, is effective for Royal Jordanian flights servicing New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Montreal. A spokesperson for Royal Jordanian was not immediately available for clarification. Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that Royal Jordanian may not be the only carrier affected by these new security provisions. Jon Ostrower, the network's aviation editor, just tweeted that as many as 12 airlines based in the Middle East and Africa could be impacted. A Saudi executive also tweeted that "directives by U.S. authorities" could affect passengers traveling from 13 countries, with the new measure set to go into effect over the next 96 hours.
This probably has nothing to do with the fact that several middle-east based carriers have been consistently highly rated by passengers and, with their top notch service and low fares luring plenty of international travelers away from legacy US carriers.
C'mon now. HRC was a terrible candidate, but against Trump? She was Churchill. I honestly can't believe the later was a viable option for half the country.
Seriously, what the living fuck?
It was because Trump promised something, anything. What did Hillary promise? Nothing.
C'mon now. HRC was a terrible candidate, but against Trump? She was Churchill. I honestly can't believe the later was a viable option for half the country.
Half the country is very concerned with job loss due to immigration (and for some, increased crime in their neighborhoods). Most candidates responded to these concerns - the hot-button single issue for a huge swath of voters - with "shut up, you racist". Trump didn't. Why is it in any way surprising he had a strong base?
Only Trump and Cruz even presented an immigration plan of any kind. It was obviously going to be one of those two who won the GOP primary, but I'm still surprised that it was Trump. I think credibility of anyone who works in DC is just that damn low now with the American working class. So low they took "crazy" just to get "outsider".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Your emails have cost us yet again. Everything that's gone wrong for over a year has been ALL HILLARY'S FAULT!
E-mails where the least of her failures.. Remember, she lost the election to Donald Trump of all people... She lost to a guy who had never run for ANY public office before.... She lost to an opponent even though she had significantly more money. She lost, even though she didn't have a serious primary challenge and had the nomination sewed up long before her opponent. She lost even to a guy who said the stuff on that Access Hollywood tape that came out as a great October Surprise. She lost to a guy who got into stupid twitter fights though out the whole campaign. She lost the election yet won the popular vote because she campaigned in the wrong places... Hillary was horrible as a candidate...
Even more, this isn't the first time she lost to a novice, trying to be president, she lost in 2008 to a freshman Senator......
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
HRC lost the election, Trump did not win it. It was remarkable that Trump got elected.
I voted for neither of them (in the state I live in, it really doesn't matter who I vote for for President due to the EC and the solid political demographics in my state) and instead voted for a third party candidate whose party platform (not necessarily the candidate) better aligned with my political preferences. However, if I lived in a state where my vote had any chance of impacting the outcome, I would have found it an agonizing choice.
Neither Clinton or Trump are honest so there was little difference there.
Clinton was much better at evading and triangulates more expertly. She, for example, refused to answer a question, even when pressed, during the debate because any answer would have cost her some votes and gained her some votes and she wasn't sure which answer was the best "net gain" (that was when she essentially refused to state her opinion on if the Second Amendment supports an individual or a collective right -- she of course in reality subscribes to the discredited "collective rights" interpretation that was popular decades ago when she was coming of political/legal age). Trump on the other hand is crude and unsophisticated and says whatever random thing he's thinking at the moment. Generally I have to give advantage to Trump here -- Trump's lies and misconceptions are more likely to be exposed and obvious to more of the populace than Clinton's would be.
Clinton was much more technically qualified to be President of the United States, although supporting some questionable foreign policy decisions (such as the Iran deal) does not give me extreme confidence in her decision making skills. So, advantage to Clinton on this aspect.
However, what would probably have tipped me towards Trump, if I was faced with making the awful choice, would be the Supreme Court. I think judges should apply the law, not make it or fix it to match their social, religious, or political preferences -- if the law is broken, in their opinions they can suggest that maybe the legislature might want to look at fixing it but until it's "fixed", they should apply it. This President was likely to have the opportunity to seat two or three justices on the Supreme Court (obviously Scalia's replacement is one of these) and these are lifelong appointments that could shape the court for 30 years, long after the day-to-day stench of a Clinton or Trump term in office is hopefully little but a a trivial pursuit question (barring WWIII). Trump proposed a list of possible nominees who tended towards reading the Constitution and the law as written, not as they wish it were written. Clinton has consistently chosen to advocate laws that pretend the Second Amendment does not exist or is, at a minimum, not of the same "class" as, for example, the First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment or Fifth Amendment. Therefore, I had little confidence that she would nominate SCOTUS justices who, themselves, followed the "apply the law, do not make it or fix it" judicial philosophy.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Jon now reporting that Royal Jordainian has deleted its tweet.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
A tablet has a lot more internal volume than a smartphone does.
This sounds like a concern about explosives or some other phyical attack.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Jordan is one of the few beacons of hope in the Middle East - An American ally that is peaceful and provides a real example of what a mideast success story could be (if you haven't visited Jordan I encourage it - Great country).
But sure America, go and screw with them, because FREEDOM.
The only jobs we lose to immigrants are low pay shit jobs. The good jobs are not list to illegals, not taxes, not even the EPA, but to machinery that works nearly 24/7/365.
Your. Shovel. Can't. Compete. With. A. Dump. Truck.
Something doesn't compute for me with that argument. Isn't the current unemployment level ~4%?
Disclaimer: I do not live in the US.
Half the country is very concerned with job loss due to immigration
Yet they seem far more interested in kicking out the immigrants than in punishing the companies who are hiring them. An immigrant can't take your job unless your employer gets rid of you and hires the immigrant. Instead of ICE showing up at courthouses to round up and deport people, maybe the Department of Labor should start showing up at corporate headquarters and carting those folks off.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Based on the fact that they allow certain (small) electronics, as another posted noted it may be some sort of physical attack.
Maybe someone has figured out to (expertly) disguise small explosives as batteries? I don't know how current X-ray technologies (in the airport) work but maybe they can't easily distinguish between a lithium ion battery and an explosive? So if you were able to package them in the same volume and then wire them so that they "look" on the scanner like batteries then they would pass that review.
While it might be possible to detect this alteration by asking the passenger to prove that they are, indeed, unaltered electronic devices by turning them on, I can image a decent electronics guy could leave in one small battery so it could be powered on briefly (it would probably have to be wired differently to provide the necessary voltage). In addition this would cause the (already long?) delays to become longer as passengers would have to open them and boot up the devices (and afterwards shut them down and repack them). I think there may be neutron(?) based scanners that can detect the nitrogen compounds in explosives but I believe they are large and very expensive and would again add delays.
What's interesting is that (so far) this is not a worldwide prohibition but thankfully (at least for people not planning on traveling to and from the middle east/africa) restricted to just that area. So the ability to do this possible physical "hack" is only for now in the middle east and they only think people heading to the U.S. (and not say Europe) will use it. It must by some pretty specific intel to generate this kind of warning. Maybe the security measures/machines in that part of the world are not capable of reliably discriminating these attacks. Then again some restrictions, as other posters have mentioned, only apply to travel to the U.S., for example at Taipei's airport you must go through an additional screening step when on flights bound to the U.S. so perhaps it's just due to more heightened security awareness/paranoia on the American end.
Ok, fair enough. I do agree that Trump's rhetoric has "emotional resonance". But I don't agree that it actually solves any problems. Do we need to solve problems? Yes. Do we need our politicians to get their heads out of their asses and make efforts to implement real solutions? Yes. Does polarization, manipulation, and scapegoating help us actually solve those problems? No.
Just one small example:
Do people need access to affordable health coverage? Yes.
Was the ACA a perfect solution? No. It was a compromise that attempted to adhere to free market principles that we value while also trying to protect the vulnerable and not balloon deficits.
Did the ACA achieve at least some of its goals? Yes. Coverage was increased. Deficits did not balloon out of control. And the incentives for hospitals to seek ways to improve care and reduce costs were having some promising early results.
Did the ACA have problems? Yes. The individual market was not stable, due to a variety of reasons. There was a gap in subsidy eligibility that caused some people to experience undue hardship with the increased cost of premiums. And medium-small business owners faced hardship providing health coverage to their employees.
Can those problems be solved without scrapping the ACA entirely? YES. The causes to most of those problems are understood fairly well, especially the problems with the individual market. The ACA can be tweaked to solve these problems and achieve more of its goals.
Is that what is currently being sought by the powers that be? No. Because, as you said, "repeal and replace" has emotional resonance. People fell for the rhetoric and are now demanding that promise be kept. However, it is not possible to keep all of the campaign promises. The proposed AHCA is a shitty plan that exposes the compromises that must be made (coverage, cost, choice), and almost nobody likes it. As Trump admitted himself, "health care is unbelievably complicated."
So what are we going to do? Are we going to set priorities and look at data to solve real problems? Or are we going to hype up our rhetoric so that we can keep winning elections, but ultimately fail at actually solving problems?
To partially answer my own question: a) we need a legislature that is willing sacrifice some ideological purity for the sake of practical solutions (the shortcomings to the ACA were known years ago, but Obama was unable to get congressional support to implement any fixes), and b) we need a more concerted effort by political leaders to work locally, so that proper two-way communication can occur (here's the legislative intent. is it working? what problems remain? what are the most important priorities?). Neither Democrats nor Republicans have done either of these things in LOOONNNGGG time.