From The Times
A Nigerian reported to be studying in Britain allegedly tried to blow up a transatlantic airliner on Christmas Day in what the White House called an attempted act of terrorism.
The suspect, claiming links to al-Qaeda, was taken into custody with burns after allegedly trying to detonate explosives on Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
He was identified by ABC News as Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, an engineering student at University College London. A very, very good college - not one of the visa scam fakes, a world renowned institute.
He was reportedly on a US intelligence “watch-list” but not on the US Government’s no-fly list.
A federal “situational awareness” bulletin said: “The subject is claiming to have extremist affiliation and that the device was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used.”
The suspect began his journey in Nigeria on board KLM Flight 588 and made a connection in Amsterdam on to Northwest 253. According to ABC News his visa stated that he was travelling to the US for a religious ceremony. Initial reports were that he had lit firecrackers on board the Airbus 330, which was carrying 278 passengers.
However, a senior US counter-terrorism official said later that the man had actually been planning to blow up the aircraft but the explosive device had failed.
According to ABC News, the suspect told authorities that he had explosive powder taped to his leg and used a syringe of chemicals to detonate the powder. 
The White House last night described the incident as terrorism-related. “We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official said.

A partridge (and dog) and a pear tree.
The Dog and Partridge North Stifford. The Pear Tree Hildersham.

From The Times
Captain Miles Malone 28, is a member of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps 102 Theatre Military Working Dogs Support Unit, based in Sennelager, Germany. His principal job is caring for the dogs that sniff for roadside bombs. However, in the three months that he has been in Helmand he has begun a monthly clinic for the remote farming communities around the main British base. Camp Bastion.
There is almost no understanding among the local population of veterinary care or basic animal husbandry.
“There is near total ignorance about causes and spread of disease, breeding cycles and how milk is produced,” Captain Malone said. “If a goat stops milking, it is said to be ‘Allah’s will’ rather than the fact that it has not bred for 18 months and therefore has no anatomical reason to produce milk.” How ignorant can they get? But remember, Afghanistan has never been conquered so nothing can be attributed to the exploitation or the burden of the colonial legacy. They have only themselves to blame.
He added that the concept of a vet was virtually unknown and that he was having to describe himself to wary locals as a “doctor for animals”.
For many farmers in Helmand livestock assume an importance higher than the family’s daughters, according to Sergeant Major Greg Reeve, 39, who works with Captain Malone. “The economy of Helmand is 70 per cent agricultural, 20 per cent livestock and 10 per cent other. If an Afghan man owns an animal, it will be more prized to him than any other possession, apart from his sons.”
Captain Malone said that the sheep and goats were responding extremely well to his deworming and delousing campaign. He has also encountered high levels of animal diseases such as brucellosis, which have been all but eradicated from British herds.
“These herds are fascinating because the goats and sheep are extremely ancient breeds,” he said.
“If we reduce the diseased state of the animals, the knock-on effect will be improved meat and milk production. This not only increases the value of the animals at market, but it increases the amount of protein in the locals’ diet. If the meat does not contain worms or diseases which can be transmitted to humans, so the health of the local population also improves.”
Innovation. No good will come of it.

Christmas is the season of goodwill to all twaddle. Television is terminally twaddled, and as the newspapers all tell us,  "we" -  that is the conspiratorial "we" of journalists - don't mind because we're too tired or sozzled to notice. But the newspapers themselves are not immune from twaddling.

Reviewing Meryl Streep's latest film, The Sunday Times' Christopher Goodwin twaddles thus:

 It seems astonishing that Streep, 60, is at the pinnacle of a career that has had many pinnacles.

How so? If the career has had many pinnacles, surely the latest pinnacle can't come as a surprise. It's just another pinnacle in a long line of pinnacles. Streep must be all pinnacled out by now. Or is this pinnacle bigger than all the others, and if it is, how can the others be proper pinnacles? And is there a bigger pinnacle round the corner, or is Streep over the hill, pinnacle-wise?

Perhaps they're mind-forged pinnacles, in which case each can be bigger than the last, and no harm done.

An American visits the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem for midnight Mass.

NYPost:

A Dutch airline passenger told The Post how he leapt into action when an alleged Muslim terrorist tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner packed with 300 people just moments before landing.

Chaos erupted as alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23, tried to set off a sophisticated explosive device strapped to his body.

"Suddenly, we hear a bang. It sounded like a firecracker went off," said Jasper Schuringa, a film director who was traveling to the US to visit friends.

"When [it] went off, everybody panicked ... Then someone screamed, ‘Fire! Fire!’"

Schuringa, sitting in seat 20J, in the right-most section of the Airbus 330, looked to his left. "I saw smoke rising from a seat ... I didn’t hesitate. I just jumped," he said.

Schuringa dove over four passengers to reach Abdul Mutallab’s seat. The suspect had a blanket on his lap. "It was smoking and there were flames coming from beneath his legs."

"I searched on his body parts and he had his pants open. He had something strapped to his legs."

The unassuming hero ripped the flaming, molten object — which resembled a small, white shampoo bottle — off Abdul Mutallab’s left leg, near his crotch. He said he put out the fire with his bare hands.

Schuringa yelled for water, and members of the flight crew soon appeared with fire extinguishers. Then, he said, he hauled the suspect out of the seat.

"I took him in a choke to the first class and all the people were like, ‘What’s going on?!"

"I don’t feel like a hero," Schuringa told the Post as he recuperated with pals. "It was something that came completely natural ... It was something where I had to do something or it was too late.

my true nerd gave to me, Two Chairmen carrying.
The Two Chairmen, Dartmouth Street Whitehall London.

From The Independent:

With his wealth, privilege and education at one of Britain's leading universities, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab had the world at his feet – able to choose from a range of futures in which to make his mark on the world.

Instead, the son of one of Nigeria's most important figures opted to make his impact in a very different way – by detonating 80g of explosives sewn into his underpants, and trying to destroy a passenger jet as it came in to land at Detroit Airport on Christmas Day.

As he was charged by US authorities last night with attempting to blow up an airliner, a surprising picture emerged of the would-be bomber.

Abdulmutallab, 23, had lived a gilded life, and, for the three years he studied in London, he stayed in a £2m flat. He was from a very different background to many of the other al-Qa'ida recruits who opt for martyrdom.

The charges were read out to him by US District Judge Paul Borman in a conference room at the medical centre where he is receiving treatment for burns. Agents brought Abdulmutallab, who had a blanket over his lap and was wearing a green hospital robe, into the room in a wheelchair.

Abdulmutallab's father, Umaru, is the former economics minister of Nigeria. He retired earlier this month as the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria but is still on the boards of several of Nigeria's biggest firms, including Jaiz International, a holding company for the Islamic Bank. The 70-year-old, who was also educated in London, holds the Commander of the Order of the Niger as well as the Italian Order of Merit.

Dr Mutallab said he was planning to meet with police in Nigeria last night after realising his son had joined the notorious roster of al-Qa'ida terrorists, and is said to have warned the US authorities about his son's extreme views six months ago.

Police in London were collaborating with the American-led investigation into the would-be bomber. Scotland Yard detectives were searching his flat and two others in the same mansion block in Marylebone, central London. They later cordoned off the street lined with Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and Mercedes cars. Police were also understood to be searching the basement of the building.

Abdulmutallab was reportedly on a security watch list, but those who studied with him expressed shock that the person who seemed so quiet and unassuming – a devout Muslim but not radical – apparently came close to perpetrating a Christmas Day massacre.

Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied mechanical engineering beside Abdulmutallab – nicknamed Biggie – at University College London, said that he graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalisation or of links to al-Qa'ida. "We worked on projects together," he said. "He always did the bare minimum of work and would just show up to classes. When we were studying, he always would go off to pray.

"He was pretty quiet and didn't socialise much or have a girlfriend that I knew of. I didn't get to talk to him much on a personal level. I was really shocked when I saw the reports. You would never imagine him pulling off something like this."

After graduating, Abdulmutallab tried to return to Britain but his visa request was refused. He applied to return for a six-month course, but was barred by the UK Border Agency which judged that the college he applied to was "not genuine".

Reports from Nigeria suggested that Abdulmutallab's family had seen a very different person to the one studying at UCL. He apparently cut all contact with his family after university, but is thought to have visited Egypt and then Dubai.

"I believe he might have been to Yemen, but we are investigating to determine that," his father said.

More details have also emerged of what happened on flight 253 prior to landing at Detroit. Abdulmutallab went to the bathroom for about 20 minutes. When he returned, he said his stomach was upset and pulled a blanket over himself. The 278 passengers on the eight-hour Delta Airways flight from Amsterdam were first alerted that something was wrong when they heard what was described as "a firecracker in a pillowcase".

One passenger, Jasper Schuringa, who was the first on the plane to tackle and subdue the suspect, told CNN: "I basically reacted directly. when you hear a pop on the plane, you are awake. I just jumped. I didn't think, I just went over there and tried to save the plane – and we did."

Mr Schuringa, who had burns to one of his hands, added: "A fire started under his seat. I was calling for water, water. But then the fire was getting a little worse. So I grabbed the suspect out of the seat, because, if there was any more explosives on him, that would have been very dangerous. And then the flight attendants came. We took him to first class and stripped him to make sure he had no more weapons on him. "It was very quick. Everyone was panicking," he said of the scene on the descending aircraft.

Mr Schuringa, who was due to connect in Detroit to a Miami flight for a Christmas holiday, said of the suspect: "He was shaking. He didn't resist anything. It's just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid."

Mr Schuringa also said that when he first grabbed the suspect he saw a burning liquid dripping on to the floor.

The high explosive Abdulmutallab used was identified by the FBI as Pentaerythritol, better known as PETN – a major component of Semtex. He injected a detonating liquid into the PETN with a syringe, but the bomb failed to explode...