 Direct flights to the U.K. from Yemen were suspended Wednesday, part of a broad drive to improve airport security following the failed Christmas Day attack on an airliner bound for Detroit. The U.K. wants Yemenia to schedule a stop for the flight to London’s Heathrow airport in Paris or Cairo, where the plane will be emptied and passengers and luggage will undergo security checks, Yemenia spokesman Khaled Al-Kainayee said in a phone interview from Sana’a. “We are working closely with the Yemeni government to agree what security measures need to be put in place before flights are resumed.” 
 
 The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda said it was behind a Dec. 25 plot in which Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on its approach to Detroit. The prime minister said the government was introducing a new "no-fly list" of terror suspects barred from entering the U.K. That would be complemented by a larger list of suspect individuals who would be subject to special measures, including expanded screening, before boarding flights bound for the U.K.
– The British government yesterday ordered an immediate halt to direct flights from Yemen to the UK as a security precaution. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, describing the country as "both an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism," also announced the creation of an expanded no-fly list of people with suspected terror links, the Wall Street Journal reports. The halt to Yemen flights is pending enhanced security precautions on incoming flights from the nation, Brown said. The UK wants flights from Yemenia, Yemen's national airline, to stop in Cairo or Paris for extra security checks, but the airline has opted to cancel the flights instead. "We ourselves are very concerned by security measures,” a Yemenia Airlines official tells BusinessWeek. “They asked us to do these things, but it’s not realistic. We cannot do it. Nobody would fly, the plane would be empty.”