Word: northwest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Almost immediately after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to annihilate Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, aviation officials let fly a slew of ferocious new security regulations. Passengers were submitted to pat-downs and luggage searches, said goodbye to their in-flight Internet access and forfeited the ability to move about the cabin or rest pillows, blankets or personal belongings in their laps for the last hour aloft, among other inconveniences. But the crackdown was short-lived; by Sunday, Dec. 27, the rules had reportedly been eased, and on Dec. 30, less than a week after they were implemented, they...
...flight has little apparent safety value. "I've discussed that with many people within the aviation-security field. Nobody for the life of them can figure out what that would accomplish," says Douglas Laird, president of the international aviation-security consulting firm Laird & Associates and former security director for Northwest Airlines. A lengthy transatlantic flight would provide ample opportunity to set up and detonate an explosive device; limiting passengers' movements in the final 60 minutes, Laird says, is "just a symbolic gesture...
...American officials either missed all these warnings or failed to act on them. Not until Northwest Flight 253 was beginning its final descent into Detroit, at about 11:40 Christmas morning, did a handful of passengers step in to do what all the early-warning systems and security personnel could not: stop a terrorist trying to detonate a bomb on a plane on the quietest morning of the year. Just as the cabin crew strapped in for landing, an explosion - it sounded like a firecracker - came from the left side of the fuselage just over the wing. Alain Ghonda...
...result, many passengers familiar with the Lagos airport aren't surprised that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, could have boarded his flight with liquid explosives. "They tell you, Take your shoes off, take your boots off, take your belt off, but the woman who is looking at the X-ray machine is looking at you to give her a tip," says Victor Chidi Asaba-One, 41, a businessman who shuttles between Detroit and Lagos about 20 times a year, often on the same KLM and Northwest flights that...
...Wahabi-inspired militant groups that regard them as heretics or apostates. With the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban, that threat has intensified. In recent years, the town of Parachinar in the wild tribal areas along the Afghan border, Baluchistan province's capital of Quetta, Dera Ismail Khan in the northwest, and parts of Punjab have been among the areas scarred by anti-Shi'ite attacks. The latest bombing will call attention to the Taliban's long-standing but murky presence in Karachi. Until this past week, they have resisted mounting attacks in the city, preferring to use the sprawling metropolis...