Dutch airport officials announced new security measures on Tuesday, after a Dutch investigative journalist reported smuggling a refilled liquor bottle through the heightened security checks at the airport where a young Nigerian boarded a flight for the US on Dec. 25 with explosives in his underwear.
The journalist, Alberto Stegeman, said in a report televised on Sunday that he had purchased a bottle of rum from a duty-free shop at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on Feb. 16, emptied it and refilled it with water before returning it to the store. Then he returned to the shop and “bought” the refilled bottle, which the shop sealed in a bag with a receipt, allowing him to take it through security checks and onto a plane that landed in London, where he transferred to a flight to Washington.
“This was a real big security gap, and the system failed,” Stegeman said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
The ploy worked even though Stegeman was subjected to additional checks after he was recognized by airport security; he had breached their measures in 2008, first posing as a worker for three months and then passing through security unchecked, and later using a worker’s pass to get to the hangar housing the royal family’s plane.
“When they recognized me, they had a lot of extra security guards and asked a chief to come and look at me,” he said.
“Still, they didn’t look inside the bag. They looked at the bag, checked the flight number, but that was it,” he said.
Dutch officials said on Tuesday that they had added security, while accusing Stegman of increasing the danger of flying by broadcasting and publicizing ways to get around airport security.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS