(ABC Newsone) -- The Department of Homeland Security is issuing an emergency directive to eight countries banning fliers from taking any electronic device larger than a cellphone on board direct flights to the U.S.
The U.S. ban prevents laptops, tablets, cameras, DVD players, and electronic games from entering the cabin. It does not include phones or medical devices.
Flights coming from Amman, Jordan; Cairo; Istanbul; Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; Kuwait City; Casablanca, Morocco; Doha, Qatar; and Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, must start following the ban.
They are trying to take anything that could be packed with explosives out of the cabin and prevent some sort of device from manually detonating in the cabin.
Some affected airlines include Jordanian Airlines, Egypt Air, Emirates, and Etihad.
What likely happened is that the U.S. government developed some intelligence that a group or an individual has developed some type of device that they can carry-on to an airplane using a laptop or some other electronic device.
