Britain is organizing an international conference later this month to discuss the security problems. And the United States is expected to nearly double its seventy million dollars in security assistance to Yemen.

Earlier this week, President Obama said no additional prisoners from Guantanamo Bay will be released to Yemen. The president wanted to close the American prison in Cuba this month. But the recent developments seem to have only made the issue more difficult.

The failed attack on the plane happened December twenty-fifth, Christmas Day. Almost three hundred people were on the flight from Amsterdam. It was preparing to land in Detroit, Michigan. Passengers and crew restrained the man and put out the fire caused by a mixture of explosives.

A drawing of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab facing charges in a federal courtroom in Detroit

He could face life in prison. He appeared in federal court in Detroit for the first time Friday. He did not answer the charges himself but his lawyers entered a plea of not guilty. Some people say the case should have been handled in the military justice system.

On Thursday President Obama blamed the incident on what he called a "systemic failure across organizations and agencies."

"Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence," he said, "this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had."

He is ordering steps to improve airport security and the handling of intelligence information. But he admitted there is no perfect solution. "As we develop new screening technologies and procedures," he said, "our adversaries will seek new ways to evade them."