Summary: In the latest sign that Yemen — the country where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing recently spent some time — is becoming a focus for both the West and extremists, Britain announced that it and the U.S. have agreed to fund a counterterrorism police unit there. Meanwhile, Somalia’s Islamist rebel group al-Shabab said it was ready to send reinforcements to al-Qaida in Yemen should the U.S. carry out retaliatory strikes, and urged other Muslims to follow suit. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 2, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that South African anti-apartheid icon Helen Suzman, one of the first white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of whites-only rule in that country, died on Thursday, January 1, 2009 at the age of 91.

  ::  Read Comments (0)