Word: usefully
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...Experts say the undergarment bomb probably would have shown up on the new generation of whole-body imaging scanners that are chiefly designed to detect explosives. These devices, using millimeter waves or X-rays, generate a picture so detailed that the officials reviewing them are located elsewhere for the sake of passenger modesty. But Amsterdam's Schiphol has only about 15 of these machines serving some 90 gates, and they are used on a voluntary basis only on short-haul flights within Europe. That's partly because the wave scanners are costly - they sell for $180,000 - and partly because...
...five years after the bipartisan 9/11 commission recommended that Congress and the Transportation Security Agency "give priority attention" to screening passengers for explosives, the practice remains overwhelmingly the exception and not the rule. Only about 40 millimeter-wave devices are in use, at 19 U.S. airports. Standard magnetometers, which are used at the vast majority of the more than 2,000 checkpoint lanes nationwide, can detect metal in guns and knives but are worthless against explosives like PETN...
...spent nearly $800 million trying to develop sniffers and scanners that could be more widely used - a whole-body imager, a bottled-liquid scanner, an automated explosive-detection system for carry-on baggage and another made especially for shoes, designed to work while they're still on your feet. But they have been slow to be deployed. Only one device, which sniffs the air for trace explosives, is in relatively widespread use, at just 36 airports - and it would not have detected Abdulmutallab's bomb...
...execution of a British man convicted of heroin-trafficking has drawn attention to the country's harsh criminal-justice system. The execution has sparked a diplomatic row between China and the U.K., but global condemnation will do little to provoke reform. China is the world leader in the use of the death penalty - Amnesty International documented some 1,700 judicial killings in China last year, but the true total could be as much as three times that - and Beijing makes no apologies for its hard line. In a statement issued after the execution, a Chinese court said drug crimes were...
...while China often complains that criticism by foreign governments amounts to outside interference in its internal affairs, there are signs that the rapidly modernizing country is curbing its use of the death penalty of its own accord. The reforms are modest, to be sure, but some observers see them as a rare bright spot amid an overall bleak trend for human rights in China. (Read "China's Harsh Warning to Political Dissidents...