Explosives sent via FedEx from Yemen

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NY Times:

Two packages containing explosive devices originating in Yemen and bound for two places of Jewish worship in Chicago set off a global terror alert on Friday. One package was found at a FedEx facility in Dubai, and another was found early Friday morning at an airport in Britain, sparking a day of dramatic precautionary activity in the United States.

Speaking at the White House Friday afternoon, President Obama called the packages a “credible terrorist threat against our country,” and confirmed that they “did apparently contain” explosives. Earlier reports had said that the device found in Britain did not.

The wide-scale alert spread to the United States on Friday morning, when officials isolated two cargo planes at airports in Newark and Philadelphia and searched them for packages originating in Yemen, and New York police searched a delivery truck in Brooklyn. None of the shipments reaching the United States from Yemen were found to contain explosives.

In the afternoon, fighter jets escorted a passenger jet from Dubai to John F. Kennedy Airport because the plane had cargo from Yemen.

...

Mr. Obama said that investigators were looking into the possibility of a connection to a Yemen-based, Al Qaeda-affiliated group.

Mr. Brennan characterized the incident as attempted terrorism. “They were in a form that was designed to try to carry out some type of attack,” he told reporters at the White House. “The materials that were found and the device that was uncovered was intended to do harm.”

Mr. Brennan did not elaborate on the extent of the potential damage of the explosives. “It’s still at the very early stage of the analysis,” he said, adding that both devices had been rendered inactive. He said that there were no suspects in custody.

...

An official familiar with the Dubai investigation said that the suspicious package was identified at the FedEx hub in Dubai on Thursday and was found to contain an “explosive device” similar to the one found in Britain.

The package was sent from the same location in Yemen as the British package that was found early on Friday, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

As soon as it was discovered, the authorities in the United Arab Emirates — where Dubai is located — began investigating, in cooperation with intelligence agencies from several other countries, the official said. “Somebody in Yemen is sending devices in packages to the United States, using different courier companies,” the official added. It was not clear whether there were more than two packages, but intelligence agencies investigated those possibilities on Friday in the United States.

...
Whoa. I am going to be flying through Dubai next week on my way home from Bangkok. Hopefully there will be no packages from Yemen on board. It is possible the packages were intended to hit before the US election. Obama's announcement on the subject looks like an attempt to show he is on top of the situation. If the situation involved a Republican President making a similar announcement, you can be sure that the Democrat kook base would say the announcement was political and meant to sway the election.

Since I am not a Democrat or a kook I blame al Qaeda religious bigots in Yemen for trying to sway the election. That their targets were American Jews also exposes their ethic hatred of Jews.
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