Tuesday 21 March 2017

Digital flight ban, Bank plays my cards close to its chest

Last push on the Quekett Bulletin and have done the bulk of the work, just a day or two more work to do. It will have to wait a week as I travel to Spain tomorrow.

Seeing as I'm flying, the news today is particularly of interest. Earlier today, the US banned the carriage of electronic devices large than a smartphone in cabin baggage for airline passengers from 10 airports in north Africa and the Middle East, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia. This was followed by the UK, which instigated a similar ban.

The devices have to be placed in the checked baggage in the hold, creating , as stated on the BBC, new opportunities for thieves!

The fear is that cavities in laptops and other digital devices could be used to hide explosives.

As well as striking the fear of work withdrawal in executives from the restricted countries on long haul flights, there have also been the first cries of anguish from parents whose children cannot be digitally sedated.

Now unsure whether I should take the additional charger for my phone

The other frustrating thing today was trying to ensure that my cards would not be blocked whilst away. The bank advises going online and registering your trip. This is what I did. When I then tried to check on my entry, it looked as if it had not been submitted. So I tried a further two times before initiating the online chat help. They could not help me apart from passing me on to the security section, who I should call. Phoned the number and got through to the fraud section. After a long wait in the queue, it turned out I should be talking to customer services and they passed me on. I then had to go through the same security checks as online, for someone to acess my account and enter exactly the same information that I did, with no absolute guarantee that the card would not be blocked anyway.

Over an hour later, both cards allegedly registered for travel abroad, I also had the two phone numbers to use in a blocked card emergency.

Brexit preparations had not only given me a worse exchange rate for Pounds to Euros. The price pressures of additional fuel costs and other food and commodity prices is gradually creeping up the list of main worries for UK consumers.

Some good news for space science as President Trump signs legislation funding NASA for the coming year. NASA will continue its efforts to eventually send humans to Mars, and the legislation "amends current law by adding human exploration of Mars as one of the goals and objectives of NASA and directs NASA to manage human space flight programs to enable humans to explore Mars and other destinations," according to a statement from Ted Cruz of Texas.

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