Foiled by toilet lock: How Muslim convert set off bombs in error because he couldn't open door

Daily Mail Reporter, Exeter, England, 16th October 2008--

A British Muslim convert with a mental age of ten was unable to blow up a restaurant because he'd locked himself in a toilet.

Nicky Reilly, 22, had gone into the cubicle of an Exeter eaterie to assemble the nailbombs from chemicals in bottles. He then planned to rush among the 50 diners - many of them children - and detonate the devices.

However, he found he couldn't unfasten the lock and then one of the bombs exploded, setting the others he was holding off.

Reilly, who was groomed over the internet by extremists into becoming a suicide bomber, was arrested when he staggered outside with serious facial injuries.

Failed attack: Reilly admitted attempted murder after planning to blow up a family restaurant in Exeter

Prosecutor Stuart Baker said: 'He was unable to open the lock of the cubicle door and come out, by which time the first device had already exploded.'

Anti-terror investigators believe Pakistani radicals targeted Reilly because of his history of mental illness.

A plot was hatched involving the Giraffe restaurant in Exeter, where 50 diners, many with their children, were enjoying the half-term break on May 22 this year.

Yesterday, Reilly, who has changed his name to Mohammad Abdul-Aziz Rashid Saeed-Alim, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to preparing a terrorist attack and attempted murder.

After the attack police searching his home in Plymouth found a suicide note in which he quoted Osama Bin Laden and evidence that other possible targets had been a police station and a shopping centre.

A large number of extremist websites and a video titled ‘homemade bombs’ were found on his computer.

He had gone online to find out how to make bombs and discuss targets with chatroom contacts in Pakistan.


A CCTV image of Muslim convert Nicky Reilly entering the Giraffe restaurant
in Exeter where he launched a failed suicide bomb attack

Car surfing man badly hurt mooning police

Monday Oct 20, 2008, New Zealand--A Nelson man who police said mooned other vehicles while car surfing has been badly injured after falling from the car's roof.

Kane Heal, 22, was in Christchurch Hospital's intensive care unit today after the accident in North Canterbury on Saturday morning.

Police said on Saturday that Mr Heal suffered serious facial injuries when he slid along the road.

Senior Constable Chris Hughey of Hanmer Springs police told the Nelson Mail Mr Heal had his trousers down and was mooning other vehicles from the car's roof when he fell off at a speed of at least 80km/h.

He said Mr Heal required facial surgery after sliding 20m face-first along State Highway 7 about 10km north of the Hanmer Springs turnoff.

Mr Hughey said Mr Heal had climbed on top of a Nissan car driven by his girlfriend as they travelled from Nelson to Christchurch.

Man Finds Racial Slur Printed On Receipt, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, GDI

October 21, 2008, KANSAS CITY, Missouri, USA -- A Kansas City man found a racial slur printed on his receipt after returning a pair of shoes he bought over the weekend.

KMBC's Marcus Moore reported that Keith Slater, 22, bought a pair of shoes from a store called Journeys. Slater later returned them after finding a cheaper pair at another store. Slater did get his money back, but it was what was printed on the receipt that he and his family found disturbing.

"That makes me upset. I don't want to look at that (receipt,) that makes me so upset. Why would you say that?" said a woman who was shown the receipt.

One Tree Hill Parkland, Auckland, New Zealand, David Lim

I took this picture with my Olympus Mju 1020 on a sunny day over the weekend.

Skippy Relaxing in the Garden, Auckland, New Zeland, Monavie

At a very rare moment for a Jack Russell to sit still and I I managed to get a quick shot of Skippy, relaxing in our garden.

Adeli and Skippy at One Tree Hill, Auckland, New Zealand

I took the two girls out during the weekend and we brought along Skippy, our dearest darling doggie! Please visit my other blog at wordpress.com

Woman jailed after killing virtual husband!

TOKYO - A 43-year-old player in a virtual game world became so angry about her sudden divorce from her online husband that she logged on with his password and killed his digital persona, police said.

The woman, who has been jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data, used his ID and password to log onto the popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in May, a police official in the northern city of Sapporo said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy.

"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators and admitting the allegations.

The woman, a piano teacher, had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.

She has not yet been formally charged. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to US$5,000.

Players in "Maple Story" create and manipulate digital images called "avatars" that represent themselves, while engaging in relationships, social activities and fighting monsters and other obstacles.

In virtual worlds, players often abandon their inhibitions, engaging in activity online that they would never do in the real world. For instance, sex with strangers is a common activity.

The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married to kill the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his online avatar was dead.

The woman was arrested and taken 1000km from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sapporo, where the man lives, the official said.

The police official said he did not know if she was married in the real world.

Bad online behaviour is usually handled within the rules set up by online worlds, which can ban miscreants or take away their virtual possessions.

In recent years, virtual lives have had consequences in the real world.

When bad deeds lead to criminal charges, prosecutors have found a real-world activity to cite - as in this case, in which the woman was charged with inappropriate computer access.

In August, a woman was charged in the US state of Delaware with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through the virtual reality website "Second Life."

In Tokyo, a 16-year-old boy was charged with stealing the ID and password from a fellow player of an online game in order to swindle virtual currency worth US$360,000.

Virtual games are popular in Japan, and "Second Life" has drawn a fair number of Japanese participants. They rank third by nationality among users, after Americans and Brazilians.- AP

Keyboard sniffers to steal data. (David Lim, Auckland, New Zealand)

Computer criminals could soon be eavesdropping on what you type by analysing the electromagnetic signals produced by every key press.

By analysing the signals produced by keystrokes, Swiss researchers have reproduced what a target typed.

The security researchers have developed four attacks that work on a wide variety of computer keyboards.

The results led the researchers to declare keyboards were "not safe to transmit sensitive information".

Better attacks

The attacks were dreamed up by doctoral students Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

The EPFL students tested 11 different keyboard models that connected to a computer via either a USB or a PS/2 socket. The attacks they developed also worked with keyboards embedded in laptops.

Every keyboard tested was vulnerable to at least one of the four attacks the researchers used. One attack was shown to work over a distance of 20 metres.

In their work the researchers used a radio antenna to "fully or partially recover keystrokes" by spotting the electromagnetic radiation emitted when keys were pressed.

In a web posting they added: "no doubt that our attacks can be significantly improved, since we used relatively unexpensive equipments [sic]."

In videos showing their early work the researchers are seen connecting keyboards to a laptop running on battery power. They avoided using a desktop computer or an LCD display to minimise the chance of picking up signals from other sources.

Details of the attacks are scant but the work is expected to be reported in a peer-reviewed journal soon.

The research builds on earlier work done by University of Cambridge computer scientist Markus Kuhn who looked at ways to use electromagnetic emanations to eavesdrop and steal useful information.