August 6, 2013.

State Department Urges U.S. Citizens to Leave Yemen

"There, comrades! that's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look." She bent over again. "You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to," she added as she straightened herself up. "Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better," she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

WASHINGTON----The State Department on Tuesday ordered the departure of American citizens from Yemen and pulled out all "nonemergency" staff from the embassy in San'a, citing the continuing terrorism threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates to U.S. interests.

IV

With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite toward him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.

The State Department's announcement followed its decision on Sunday to close most U.S. embassies in the Middle East for the week ending August 10, citing the al Qaeda threat.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

The U.K. which has warned its citizens not to travel to Yemen since 2011, said Tuesday that its embassy staff had also been evacuated from the country. "Due to increased security concerns, all staff in our Yemen embassy have been temporarily withdrawn," a spokeswoman for Britain's foreign office said. "The embassy will remain closed until staff are able to return," she said.