BBC News - Thousands of stolen iTunes accounts for sale in China: "Tens of thousands of fraudulent iTunes accounts are for sale on a major Chinese website, it has been revealed.

Around 50,000 accounts linked to stolen credit cards are listed on auction site TaoBao, the country's equivalent of eBay.

Buyers are promised temporary access to unlimited downloads from the service for as little as 1 yuan (10p) a time.

Apple, which recently stepped up iTunes' security after a series of break-ins, declined to comment."

Godfather inspiration was a fraud - Hindustan Times: "historian has claimed that the mobster who inspired the 1970s movie The Godfather was a “fake”. It was believed that Charles “Lucky” Luciano was the father of organised crime and experts hailed him as the model for legendary mafia boss Don Corleone, played by Marlon Brando. 


Luciano was credited for running New York’s underworld, and was linked to extortion rackets, punishment attacks and gangland murders.

But US author Tim Newark, in his new book Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent, claims that his reputation was fabricated by the US government to justify the expense of tracking him down."

Incendiary devices go off at Maryland state buildings - CNN.com: "Two Maryland state employees suffered burned fingers when they opened packages containing incendiary devices that set off a flash of fire, smoke and a sulfur smell, authorities said.
The packages were sent through the mail to two state office buildings. One was addressed to Gov. Martin O'Malley, said Greg Shipley, a spokesman with Maryland State Police. The other was addressed to the Maryland Department of Transportation, officials said."

Teen actor’s dad jailed for murder | Celebrities | Entertainment | Toronto Sun: "The teenage star of Scottish actor/director Peter Mullan’s gritty new film about a blade-wielding gang of Glasgow youths is the son of a real life convicted knife murderer.

Newcomer Connor McCarron has won acclaim for his role as a youth who becomes embroiled in gangland violence in the 1970s in new movie Neds.

The 17 year old recently claimed his father, John, was a 'role model' who kept him away from dangerous gang culture as he was growing up.

But the actor's comments have now come under fire from grieving parents Ronald and Helen Auld, whose son William was stabbed to death by John McCarron following an argument in a Glasgow bar early last year.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years behind bars last August.

Ronald Auld tells Britain's Daily Record, 'Connor was saying his dad was a role model and that got us upset. His father is doing 18 years for murder.'"

We may finally be let into the great secret of just how safe - or unsafe - we are as momentum builds to publish a breakdown of criminal incidents in London, though the battle is far from over. The Metropolitan Police plans to publish some data as early as next month. However, initial indications are that only property crimes (not violent crime) will be revealed, and that the data will be aggregated into large, artificial geographic regions called "super-output" areas.
I've long campaigned for the release of criminal incident data broken down by street, having lived in the US where it was easily available. I worked as a crime reporter, and not only were anonymised crime incidents published weekly in the local newspaper (and now online), but as a reporter I could go through individual incident reports down at the station.
Knowing what crimes happen and where is important for several reasons. First, people want to know how safe (or unsafe) they are. They need accurate and detailed data if they are to form an opinion of the safety of their neighbourhood. When they know what's happening, they are in a better position to help or support the police. They are also better able to hold the police to account. This is perhaps what the police fear most, but it is a misplaced fear according to Richard Pope, the creator of civic website planningalerts.com (a site that mines planning applications to local authorities and provides alerts by postcode) and groupsnearyou.com.