Excerpts from AP story: “A Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria, who said he was acting on al-Qaeda’s instructions, tried to blow up the plane today as it was landing in Detroit, law enforcement and national security officials said. A senior U.S. counterterror official says a passenger aboard a Delta Air Lines flight in Detroit was planning to blow up the plane but the explosive device failed, the Associated Press reported today. Passengers subdued the man and may have prevented him from detonating the explosives, the officials said. A White House official said the incident was an attempted act of terrorism….Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit. There were 278 passengers aboard the Airbus 330.” A Reuters report quotes Rep. King as saying, “My understanding is … that he does have al Qaeda connections, certainly extremist terrorist connections, and his name popped up pretty quickly” in a search of intelligence data bases.