UK blocks UPS facilities over security concerns

Associated Press

LONDON

U.S.-based shipping firm UPS has been ordered to stop moving air cargo through some of its U.K. facilities because of security flaws, the British government said Friday.

The order is the result of a planned security check rather than a new threat to aviation — and a sign of heightened concerns about the vulnerability of cargo in the wake of an al-Qaida plot that saw bombs disguised in toner cartridges shipped on freight flights from Yemen.

Britain’s Department for Transport said that “following careful consideration, the department has restricted the number of sites in the U.K. at which UPS Ltd. are permitted to screen air cargo until it has satisfied current security requirements.”