Tony Blair failed in his attempts to stop Nelson Mandela raising the Lockerbie bombing at a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in Scotland, despite being warned by aides the South African leader’s intervention over the terror attack would be “pretty disastrous”, new files show.
Downing Street officials warned the then-prime minister ahead of the 1997 summit in Edinburgh that Mr Mandela was visiting Libya, which later admitted responsibility for the airliner disaster, before heading to CHOGM, and urged Mr Blair to speak to him.
But Mr Blair’s efforts – including a personal letter to Mr Mandela a week before the CHOGM, urging him to “avoid a discussion” about Lockerbie – failed, and the enduring controversy over a failure to bring any perpetrators to justice ended up being one of the key themes of the leaders’ summit.
AP
Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to fly in a powered plane in 1910, after he had left office.
In the century since then, the presidential aircraft has evolved into one of the sophisticated planes in the air.
The commander-in-chief is more than just an American leader, the office is of global importance.
As the Leader of the Free World, the American president has to be able to travel all over the US and around the world safely. So of course, the United States Air Force has a special plane for the president. This wasn t always the case, however.
What we call Air Force One isn t the name of the plane, it s the callsign for any plane the POTUS happens to be on (so yes, if President Joe Biden went Groupon skydiving in a decades-old rust bucket Cessna, that plane would be Air Force One for a brief, shining moment).
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In today s Morning Brief, we look at the provincewide lockdown that sources say will go into effect in Ontario on Christmas Eve.
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Posted: Dec 21, 2020 7:14 AM ET | Last Updated: December 21, 2020
Good morning! This is our daily news roundup with everything you need to know in one concise read.
Ontario to go into provincewide lockdown on Christmas Eve, sources say
The Ontario government is poised to impose a provincewide lockdown starting Christmas Eve, sources confirmed Sunday, as the province reported more than 2,000 new cases of COVID-19 for the sixth consecutive day.