BRITAIN/ NHS links: The investigation into the failed car-bombings in London and Glasgow has assumed another subversive dimension with the discovery that the first eight people arrested all have links with the National Health Service.
The shocking revelation that doctors, medical students and a former laboratory technician are suspected of plotting mass murder will add to calls for increased screening of foreign workers.
Enhanced border controls, new travel arrangements between the UK and countries such as Pakistan and inevitable demands for increases to the security and intelligence budgets will add to the growing pressures on the Brown government as it considers its legislative approach in the form of new anti-terrorism laws.
In the Commons yesterday Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley reflected the public's shock "that members of a profession dedicated to saving lives should, it is at least suspected, be conspiring to take lives, and in such an indiscriminate act of terror".
However Mr Lansley said that this should not prejudice the view of the "integral" part played by Muslim doctors in the NHS, nor should the actions of a "tiny extremist minority" affect the positive view the public had of overseas doctors.
At the same time, the general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Muhammed Abdul Bari, said that those who plotted to kill or maim innocent people were "enemies of all Muslims and non-Muslims". He also repeated the government's view that it is "unacceptable to hold any faith group or any community as being somehow collectively responsible for the actions of the few".
As Australian media named the man arrested at Brisbane Airport as Dr Mohammed Haneef, the three suspects arrested in Scotland at the weekend were transferred to the custody of the Metropolitan Police in London.
Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, supported the decision of Lord Advocate Eilish Angiolini. In a statement, the Crown Office said that the decision had been taken in the public interest, "as part of a joint police investigation, to facilitate the wider investigation into the events in London and Glasgow and to allow, in due course, a single prosecution of these connected events".
Police have not yet arrested the man in a critical condition in hospital after suffering severe burns in the Glasgow Airport attack to avoid triggering the 28-day maximum detention period.
As South Wales Police asked home secretary Jacqui Smith to grant it powers for a 28-day period to stop and search people in Cardiff, police also arrested two men at an industrial estate in Blackburn. They were being held on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000, although police did not immediately confirm a link to the London and Glasgow incidents.
On another day of controlled explosions and security alerts - including at Hammersmith tube station and Heathrow Airport - Calor, the UK's leading liquefied petroleum gas supplier, said that it would discuss the way its gas is sold in the light of the terror plots.
The company said it was aware of reports that its gas canisters had featured in the car-bomb attempts. Officials would discuss the issue at a meeting at the firm's headquarters in Warwick today.