Ethiopian airliner crashes near Beirut

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 10:29 AM - 0 Comments

An Ethiopian Airlines flight plunged into the Mediterranean Sea five minutes after taking off from Beirut on Sunday night. The Lebanese army says the plane lost contact with Lebanese air traffic controllers within minutes of taking off, and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has said that “a sabotage attack is unlikely.” So far, of the 90 passengers, 24 bodies have been recovered, some of them so unrecognizable that DNA testing will be needed to identify them.

Reuters

Caption Challenge Vol. 2, No. 4

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 10:04 AM - 94 Comments

Forgive the quality of the picture (it’s a screen grab) and the quality of the minister (it’s a Van Loan.)

None of this should stop you from regarding this image from outside Rideau Hall and making with the funny.

Will the prorogation of Parliament set off a populist revolt?

By John Geddes - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM - 96 Comments

Of all the possible issues to trip him up—the deficit, stubbornly high unemployment, Afghan detainees—who would have predicted that a four-syllable term for a parliamentary procedure would send Stephen Harper’s poll numbers tumbling? Yet prorogation, the antique-sounding word for suspending Parliament, has done it. Harper’s Dec. 30 decision to send MPs on an unscheduled break until March 3 galvanized dismay over both his leadership style and the state of a democracy in which the Prime Minister feels free to wield such unchecked power. “It’s solidifying a very deep sense that there’s something wrong with the way we govern ourselves,” says Rick Anderson, a long-time advocate for democratic reform who, like Harper, worked for Preston Manning back when Manning’s Reform party embodied a grassroots desire for politics less dominated by prime ministerial power.

Harper, though, never really swam in that populist Reform current. Manning wanted to change the way Ottawa worked in order to give more clout to ordinary MPs, and in turn make them more responsive to voters; Harper was mostly interested in economic policy and conservative ideology. Later, after uniting the right to create a winning new Conservative brand, he proved himself an uncommonly disciplined top-down organizer, first of his party and then of his government. Harper’s underdeveloped populist instincts never seemed a serious liability—until lately. He clearly underestimated the backlash against proroguing for the second time in about a year. In late 2008, he suspended Parliament to avoid being defeated in the House by an opposition coalition. Last month, he resorted to it again, this time, his critics say, to cool the Afghan detainee controversy until after the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Continue…

Horror in Haiti

By Michael Petrou in Port-au-Prince with Charlie Gillis, Jonathon Gatehouse and Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:54 AM - 12 Comments

The earthquake that broke the back of an already ailing nation struck just before 5 p.m., a time when many Haitians were still at work or school. The 7.0-magnitude tremor was centred near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and lasted a mere 45 seconds—a temporal eyeblink that will go down as the nadir of the Caribbean country’s long history of misery and chaos. Shantytowns that litter the island’s southwest peninsula went down domino-style. Larger buildings comprised of cinderblock and unreinforced concrete collapsed like wedding cakes, in many cases with a full complement of their day-to-day occupants inside. The ones left standing quickly emptied; survivors scrambled to help those still inside, tugging at the shards of cement with bare hands.

Fredson Demostherma, a resident of Léogâne, 30 km west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, jumped to safety from a second-floor window in his house when the ground started to rumble. He turned around and watched the building collapse, trapping seven members of his family inside, including an infant. He paid someone with a sledgehammer to help him dig his family, who survived, out. “Haiti’s future is in the hands of other nations, and God,” Demostherma told Maclean’s. Pierre Cherami, who ran an auto parts business in Gressier, just outside of Port-au-Prince, was in his house with his wife and daughter, who perished. “Their names are Denise and Myrline,” he said. “Myrline wasn’t feeling well and was sleeping. My wife was with her. When the quake hit, I saw the wall begin to topple. I tried to hold it up but couldn’t. I recovered both of their bodies. It will be difficult to rebuild my life. I’ve lost everything.”
Continue…

The only protest that counts

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:42 AM - 17 Comments

Glen Pearson arrives at the crux of the matter.

Perhaps we should shift things around a bit.  How would it look if average citizens followed the lead of many of those at the rallies yesterday and actually got back to work, engaging in dialogue and ultimately voting their consciences in significant enough numbers to change the channel and undo the skepticism of our age?  That would be a marvelous thing – politicians and citizens in serious conversation.  It would have to be significant though.  Last election only 59% of Canadians voted – an all time low.  Will the PM’s caustic prorogation of Parliament be enough to turn the tide?

… On Saturday we saw Parliament subtly on the move.  Only the dedicated actions of more citizens voting their consciences for their party of choice will determine if that journey continues.

Peter Mansbridge and Laureen Harper get a taste of the Arctic

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:10 AM - 5 Comments

“A Taste of the Arctic,” held at the National Gallery of Canada, kicked
off 2010 as the Year of the Inuit. Below, Laureen Harper (left) and Inuit
leader Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

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Mrs. Harper and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq (left).

Continue…

Stephen Harper 1988 v. Stephen Harper 2010

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 57 Comments

The Globe editorial board has another go at explaining its disappointment.

The democratic ethos that gave rise to the Reform Party was instrumental in its 1993 breakthrough, leading to the ultimate demise of the Progressive Conservatives. It was carried by Reformers in Parliament; for a time, Preston Manning even sat in the second row in the House chamber to illustrate that he was an elected MP on a par with all others. It was maintained in subsequent party platforms. It catalyzed grassroots interest in the party, inspiring Canadians to get involved in politics. To this day, the membership of the successor Conservative Party of Canada is the largest of any party in Canada…

Today, Parliament is closed, while Canadians hang on to the notion that they live under a parliamentary system of government. We don’t elect our prime minister, we elect our MPs to form a government, and then to hold the prime minister and his ministers to account. But the present reality is one in which the executive increasingly directs the activities of the legislature. That’s something at odds with the ideals on which the country, and the Reform-Conservative tradition, were built. Canadians have taken notice.

Here come the Lions

By Colby Cosh - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 8:25 PM - 3 Comments

Chris Morris’s Four Lions has debuted to uneasy but strong reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. It may be the most eagerly awaited English-language comic project on the planet. Morris is a unique figure—a secretive, almost reclusive English radio and TV writer who occasionally emerges from hiding to spray vitriol at the Establishment and, generally, the self-satisfied and delusional. His series The Day Today and Brass Eye cannot be watched without the viewer being astonished that such jokes and surreal images ever made it to air. Even to think of them makes one redden in shame for the masses of herd-followers who think of Conan O’Brien as hip and transgressive.

Morris’s most recent finished work, the six-part Nathan Barley (2005), arguably reached down to hit targets that were slightly beneath him (and his collaborator, the critic Charlie Brooker). I guess I can understand a couple of moralizing comics wanting to puncture (Canada’s own!) Vice magazine empire, but the lightly disguised vendetta seemed like a bit much coming from a creator capable of eviscerating corporations, governments, celebrity in general, and any number of global institutions without breaking a visible sweat. On the other hand, Nathan Barley‘s plentiful potshots at the internet hype machine and the twerpish little creatures who drive its noöspheric hamster-wheel have never seemed more relevant than they do in the age of the “social media” professional (2009-????).

Anyway, now Morris has taken on a worthy opponent: terrorism, and the West’s reaction to it. A couple of years back he uncharacteristically showed his hand by engaging in a brief feud with Martin Amis. I’m declaring myself firmly on the fence on that one: I don’t find anything very edifying about a contest in which one side is shouting “fascist” and the other “racist”, with the winner to be decided by means of a decibel meter. I still can’t wait to see Four Lions. Here’s a clip that hit the Web Friday.

The tally

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 208 Comments

With 51 precincts reporting specific estimates—restricting the count to media-reported figures and, where available, police counts—it’s possible to account for approximately 21,000 anti-prorogation protestors at yesterday’s rallies. Continue…

Search is called off in Haiti, as death toll hits 150,000

By macleans.ca - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 1:50 PM - 0 Comments

This weekend, Haiti declared the earthquake search and rescue effort. The death toll, from the January 12 disaster, is currently estimated at over 150,000 people—but it is believed that tens of thousands more bodies are still buried under the rubble. The shift will now move from searching for bodies to aid and relocation for the survivors. After Friday’s Benefit for Haiti event, there is more than $58 million to put towards the relief effort (another $16 million was raised in Canada, with the government promising to match the amount). Also this weekend, 24 Haitian orphans arrived in Canada to be united with their new families.

BBC

CBC

CBC

MTV

Serge Marcil found dead in Haiti

By macleans.ca - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 10:40 PM - 1 Comment

The body of former Liberal MP Serge Marcil was recovered today from the rubble of Haiti’s Hotel Montana. Erroneous reports last week had indicated Marcil was still alive. “Serge was a gift life gave me,” Marcil’s wife, Christiane Pelchat, said in a statement. “He was a humanist, a loving husband, caring, with a natural tenderness.”

CTV

Speaking of Venezuela

By Andrew Coyne - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 10:21 PM - 103 Comments

David Frum, speaking in, and of, Venezuela:

In our modern world, we have two main systems of democracy. In the United States, France, and Mexico, the executive and the legislature are elected separately. Powers are separated, and each checks and balances the other. In Britain and the British Commonwealth, in Japan, and in most of Europe, the legislature is elected directly and the executive derives its power from the legislative majority.

Political scientists argue about which system is better.

But all agree on which system is worst: a system where the executive controls the legislature. You can call this system by many names: guided democracy, Peronism, socialism with Chinese characteristics.

By whatever name, the system of executive supremacy over the legislature amounts to the same thing: unchecked power. Such power can never be trusted. And those who most avidly seek such power are precisely those who can least be trusted with it.

A grand total

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 9:40 PM - 100 Comments

Western Standard, Dec. 6, 2008. It had the feeling of a Reform Party rally. 2500 angry partisans gathered near City Hall in Calgary today to protest the Layton-Duceppe-Dion coalition … Former Conservative MP Monte Solberg stole the show with good humour and insight. He mocked the arrogance of the coalition of “the runners-up, the rejected and the rabble.”

Monte Solberg, tonight. Despite being shamelessley promoted by big newspapers, TV outlets and the opposition parties, a grand total of 3,000 showed up on Parliament Hill to protest the alleged end of democracy in Canada. There are six or seven rallies every year on Parliament Hill that attracts more people, and with none of the media hype. Seriously, you can’t propagandize people into getting mad about something that just doesn’t ring true to them.

The Commons: ‘I shouldn’t have to be here’

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 4:58 PM - 179 Comments

“If there’s a silver lining to the dark cloud of this political crisis in Ottawa, it’s an amazing, spontaneous degree of citizen engagement,” he said. “In a way, this manufactured crisis has woken Canadians up out of their so-called apathy.”

That was, to be fair, some 13 months ago and Jason Kenney, the immigration minister, had just witnessed 3,000 people gather in downtown Calgary to protest the possibility of a coalition government. “I don’t recall anything on such short notice with such a large crowd in this city,” Mr. Kenney gushed. One assumes the sentiment roughly holds for today’s events too.

Then John Baird was proudly declaring the government’s intent to “go over the heads” of the Members of Parliament and the Governor General, and go “right to the Canadian people.” Then it was Steven Fletcher, minister of state for democratic reform, encouraging all his fellow Manitobans to rally for no less than the nation we all hold dear.

Thirteen months later, a new political crisis. Then, the government side yelled “traitor!” Now, the other side yells “dictator!” Once more, our civic engagement runneth over.

Perhaps we should make political crisis an annual event.

Continue…

Toronto Proroguing Protest: polar bears and Spartans

By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3:54 PM - 145 Comments

The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Toronto protest saw thousands gather in Dundas Square. Below, Toronto Liberal MP Rob Oliphant is with the Spartans.

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Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow.

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Continue…

Serge Marcil found dead

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3:10 PM - 2 Comments

The former Liberal MP’s body has been found in the wreckage of the Hotel Montana.

Just moments before the quake, he was riding in an elevator at the now-destroyed hotel, where he was staying with a colleague … Marcil’s colleague got off on the fourth floor and was rescued the next day, while Marcil was headed to the fifth floor.

Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff offers their condolences. More from the Globe and Canwest.

'That's not to say Parliament is unimportant'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3:06 PM - 35 Comments

Jason Kenney plans to get a lot done these next five weeks.

“As a minister, I often get more done when the House is not in session,” he said as thousands of Canadians were preparing to mount protests across the country against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to suspend Parliament until March 3. ”That’s not to say Parliament is unimportant,” Kenney told reporters after making an immigration announcement. “But from a ministerial point of view, I think any minister in any government will tell you that’s probably generally the case.”

'It is time … for Parliament to be restored to its position as the ultimate sovereign body for Canada'

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 9:35 AM - 57 Comments

The Globe editorial board calls for reform.

It is time the rules governing prorogation changed. Canada’s Parliament has shown itself vulnerable to an excessive concentration of power, and hence is hampered in fulfilling its role as the “ultimate sovereign body.” The prorogation of 2008 has now been followed by another, this time simply for partisan tactical convenience. The Prime Minister is misusing the power to shut down Parliament, and in the process destabilizing Canada’s democracy. For that reason, prorogation should be made subject to legislative controls.

Rights and Democracy: Memory lane

By Paul Wells - Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 1:00 AM - 48 Comments

On April 14, 2008, Michael Ignatieff visited Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto to apologize for his belated, muddled, hastily retracted comments from the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign about the bombing of Qana, a Lebanese village, by the Israeli air force.

At the time, in 2006, Ignatieff made no public comment for weeks after the first flareup of the Israel-Hezbollah war, before saying on Tout le monde en parle that “what happened in Qana was a war crime.” Later, he appeared on another show to insist that he hadn’t called the war crime either Israeli or Lebanese, becoming the first known proponent of the theory of virgin-birth war crimes. Compounding confusion on confusion didn’t seem to help. For a while he was promising to visit the Middle East on a fact-finding mission, before announcing his invitation was rescinded so he needn’t go. It was a huge mess.

In 2008 he began wiping the slate clean in preparation for another leadership run. He wrote a long article in the New York Times magazine apologizing for his earlier support of the Iraq war, and he visited Holy Blossom Temple to try to get the Qana business behind him.

There he is in the photo above, which accompanied this Toronto Star account of the event. The man with him is Aurel Braun, the University of Toronto law political science professor. Continue…

Thoughts On the Conan O'Brien Finale

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 11:34 PM - 23 Comments

As I wait for the last Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien to begin, for some strange reason I have this song running through my head, sung (sort of) by Katharine Hepburn in Alan Jay Lerner’s musical about the life and career of Gabrielle Chanel. Who knows why?

Coco, Coco
Hoping too high
Fell down from the sky
And started to cry.

It’s the end
Of Coco, Coco,
Where is a friend
To trust and depend upon?

This isn’t really a live-blog, but here are some thoughts on the show as I watch it, when/if thoughts occur to me.

- NBC released transcripts of Conan’s opening and closing monologue before the show even started, somewhat lessening his ability to surprise us.

- I think one of the reasons the show has been so much fun in the last couple of weeks is that Conan gets to spend most of his time talking about himself. Leno is the kind of comedian who is least comfortable talking about himself and most comfortable talking about other people; even when he was good, he was an observational comic, meaning that (like his friend Jerry Seinfeld) he stands outside and looks at the follies of other people. Conan is often at his worst when making fun of other people or noting the mundane details of everyday living; he’s at his best making fun of himself, casting himself as the sheepish, tall red-haired weirdo who’s not comfortable in his own skin. The last two weeks have freed him up because he’s mostly free from his responsibility to be an all-knowing social observer.

- We now get a long musical montage of Conan Tonight Show moments, threatening to turn this into NBC’s second clip show in as many nights. Given a choice between this and the Jim/Pam musical montage, the Conan/Andy one made me tear up more.

- Steve Carell is the first of the surprise guests, to give Conan an “exit interview” (“did anything trigger your decision to leave?”). Accompanied as he is by applause from the audience and Conan shouting “Steve Carell!” as if he didn’t expect to see him, this is starting to remind me very strongly of one of those ’70s Variety specials.

- Here comes Tom Hanks. Not very likely he’ll revive his old line about “the big breakup talk,” appropriate though it would be in these circumstances, but one can always hope.

- I had not realized that Hanks was the guy who came up with the nickname “Coco.” But that’s something he should definitely be proud of.

- Coco calls for a commercial break after what seems like about two minutes’ worth of segment. I should check to see how long these shows actually are now compared to episodes from the past; late-night and daytime shows have always been shorter than prime time, but it’s obvious that they are even shorter now than they used to be. (And I’ll stop now lest this become an entire post about show timings.)

- I haven’t thought much about what makes somebody a reliably good talk show guest, but one thing that is common to both of tonight’s big guests, Hanks and Ferrell, is that they combine movie stardom with strong TV roots. They have the authority and glamour that comes with being movie stars; people who are primarily TV stars aren’t as valuable to talk shows (even when, as with Carell, they do a lot of movies in the off-season) because we see them on TV all the time. But at the same time they haven’t cut themselves off from the informality of TV performance, the way Will Smith has.

- Commercial break. A little poem that I’ve made up, mostly because I wanted to use this first rhyme:

NBC has overthrown an
Oddball red-haired host named Conan.
All because he was a sucker
Who believed the word of Zucker.
Conan hopes he’ll get some payback
If they flop by bringing Jay back.

- Neil Young is on. I hate to say this, but I can no longer see him on a talk show and not expect him to sing “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” or something like it. That really is the best recurring segment Jimmy Fallon has come up with so far.

- Conan’s big closing monologue now, the heartfelt part. Here’s the transcript (where possible I’ve added in some things he said that weren’t in the original transcript):

Before we end this rodeo, a few things need to be said. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC.  To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over twenty years.  Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways.  But this company has been my home for most of my adult life.  I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.

Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Making this choice has been enormously difficult. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium, and I will fight anyone who says I don’t. But despite this sense of loss, I really feel this should be a happy moment. Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not  regret a second. I’ve had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we’ll find a way to make it fun.

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

I would have liked a little more Andy Richter participation in this episode and this farewell — but the guy knows how to write (or supervise the writing of) a good speech. Like his famous letter that kicked this whole controversy off, the speech manages to suggest animosity without expressing it: mentioning his long relationship with NBC, the better to call attention to how the network treated him, but without openly bashing the network.

- The show now closes out with Will Ferrell, guitar-playing Conan, and some special musical guests performing “Free Bird.” It’s a good ending, but a little perfunctory — intentionally so, I think, since this isn’t a real finale in the conventional sense. The overriding feeling is of something that’s been cut off before it says all it has to say, because that is almost certainly how O’Brien sees his Tonight Show. Maybe he’ll turn up somewhere else and finish saying what he was trying to say before he was rudely interrupted.

- And this has already been mentioned a lot, but as the show ends and Fallon begins, it’s now January 23. Johnny Carson died on January 23.

Mezanmi

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 11:18 PM - 2 Comments

The Governor General has recorded messages for the Haitian people in English, French and Creole, the Creole version broadcast on radio in Haiti. Meanwhile, Canadian Press reports from Ms. Jean’s appearance at a vigil in Montreal tonight.

When seven-year-old Natasha Olivo wanted to discuss aid to Haiti, she went right to the top – Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean. The youngster bounded up to the Haitian-born Jean at a vigil Friday evening in support of the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean country and soon found herself sitting on the vice-regal knee.

“I’m going to help the people from Haiti,” Natasha said she told the Governor General, who had a lengthy conversation with the little girl which both of them punctuated with animated gestures. ”I’m going to give them some money,” Natasha told The Canadian Press. “I already gave them some money because of my mom. She (Jean) said ‘good for you.’ “

Living and dying in Port-au-Prince

By Michael Petrou - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 7:52 PM - 14 Comments

The bodies I saw scattered on the streets of Port-au-Prince on the afternoon I drove into the city shook me up, but not as much as did the premature baby boy lying motionless in an unplugged incubator on a hospital lawn an hour or so later. I choked and stepped back, immediately forgetting about a man who was having his leg cut off a few feet away.

It turned out the boy, Benjamin Jean-Marvins, was alive, just struggling for breath. Someone figured out how to get power to an oxygen tank pumping and he started to move his hands and flare his nostrils. I don’t know how long much longer he lived. He was a triplet, and a few days later two out of three triplets around the same age died within hours of each other, one in the arms of a Toronto medic on the way to an Israeli field hospital. It seems like too much of a coincidence that two sets of triplets could have been born at the same in the same neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince, but maybe it’s not. Continue…

Where would you cut to balance the budget?

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 6:41 PM - 35 Comments

If you haven’t yet read John’s piece about how difficult it’s going to be to balance the budget, what are you waiting for? In much the same vein, the good folks at Léger Marketing (yes, this is another poll-related story) have released the results of a survey in which they asked Quebecers where they would cut if they were given free rein to get Quebec City back in the black.

Here are the top 10 suggestions:

1. End the financing of private schools.
2. Significantly increase taxes on business.
3. Allow the establishment of fully-private health clinics.
4. Introduce tolls on certain bridges and roads.
5. Bring in a system to moderate access to health services.
6. Abolish school boards.
7. Close down Quebec’s diplomatic outposts.
8. Significantly increase the user fees for $7 per day daycare.
9. Abolish CEGEPs and tack on an extra year for high school.
10. Significantly reduce subsidies for festivals and cultural events.

The last item on the list is especially intriguing—I seem to recall there being a bit of a backlash last time someone tried it. Otherwise, no big suprises, except perhaps that Quebecers really don’t seem to have much of a problem with user fees.

UK terror threat raised to "severe"

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 22, 2010 at 6:37 PM - 0 Comments

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has issued a warning that the terror alert in the UK has been elevated from substantial to severe, but he also urged for calm. He said “there is no intelligence to suggest that an attack is imminent.” The highest security level in the UK is critical, meaning an attack is imminent, and Johnson said that more measures had been taken to protect the UK since the failed Christmas bomb attack at Detroit. Security sources say that the decision was made based on activity in Yemen, as well as increased activity in Pakistan—where 75 per cent of the danger to the UK emanate from.

Channel 4