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whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.
• The device is an upgrade of the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009. This new bomb was also designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time al-Qaida developed a more refined detonation system, U.S. officials said.
• Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday night that she had been briefed Monday about an "undetectable" device that was "going to be on a U.S.-bound airliner."
• There were no immediate plans to change security procedures at U.S. airports.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate is steaming toward a showdown on a Democratic proposal to keep student loan interest rates from doubling for 7.4 million students. In a measure of how the upcoming election is driving work in Congress these days, it's a vote Democrats won't terribly mind losing -- which is probably what will happen.
• The Senate planned a Tuesday roll call on the plan, which would extend today's 3.4 percent interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans for another year. Without congressional action, those rates

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