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Wife Guilty Of Helping Husband Plan Terror Attack

A wife who bought a combat knife and training dummy for her husband has been found guilty of helping him prepare for a planned terror attack in Birmingham.

Madihah Taheer, 21, from the city, denied preparing an act of terrorism by assisting her husband Ummariyat Mirza earlier this year.

Woolwich Crown Court heard the husband and wife team had developed their plans after falling in love as teenagers. She has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced at a later date.

In March, armed police arrested the husband at gunpoint in Birmingham.

They acted on MI5 intelligence that Mirza was going to carry out a rampaging knife attack, similar to those seen this year in London. His arrest on 29 March came exactly one week after the Westminster Bridge terror attack in London.

The court was told the pair had initially hoped to travel to Syria to aid the Islamic State group – but decided to carry out an attack in their home city instead.

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New Strain Of Ransomeware Spreading

A new strain of ransomware nicknamed “Bad Rabbit” has been found spreading in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

The malware has affected systems at three Russian websites, an airport in Ukraine and an underground railway in the capital city, Kiev.

The cyber-police chief in Ukraine confirmed to the Reuters news agency that Bad Rabbit was the ransomware in question. It bears similarities to the WannaCry and Petya outbreaks earlier this year.

However, it is not yet known how far this new malware will be able to spread. “In some of the companies, the work has been completely paralysed – servers and workstations are encrypted,” head of Russian cyber-security firm Group-IB, Ilya Sachkov, told the TASS news agency.

Two of the affected sites are Interfax and Fontanka.ru.

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Cromer Police Failed During Town Disorder

Police failed to properly deal with disorder in a seaside town because senior officers “misread the significance of events”, a report says.

A Norfolk Police review into why Cromer went into “lawless lockdown” after 100 travellers visited was instigated by the chief constable.

Pubs, shops and restaurants closed over the weekend of 19 August following reports of rape, theft and assault. Poor information sharing led to a failure to deploy additional resources.

In a statement, the force outlined the recommendations of its review, identifying four areas of concern over leadership, the sharing of intelligence, not understanding the power of social media and police not using powers to deal with unauthorised traveller encampments.

The findings said officers had been notified by Suffolk Police that a group of travellers had left Lowestoft after being involved in a disturbance there, and was heading for the county. However, “the information and actions were not recorded on official systems” which meant it was not shared with key senior staff across the Norfolk force.

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Supporters Of IS Return To Home Countries

At least 5,600 supporters of so-called Islamic State (IS) have returned to their home countries as it loses ground in Iraq and Syria, a new report says.

The Soufan Center, a US-based think tank, says 33 states have reported arrivals in the past two years. The figure includes half of the estimated 850 people who left the UK.

The report says the returnees – most of whom are imprisoned or disappear from view – will continue to present a security challenge for years to come.

IS has lost much of the territory that once made up the “caliphate” it proclaimed in June 2014, attracting thousands of jihadists from across the world.

Last week, US-backed alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters said they had taken full control of Raqqa, the jihadists’ de facto capital. The Soufan Center’s report says the flow of foreign fighters came to a virtual standstill in late 2015, as IS began to suffer defeats and states implemented better measures to prevent travel.

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Former Brussels Policeman Makes Deathbed Confession

The apparent deathbed confession of a former policeman could end a series of unresolved murder cases which have baffled Belgian police for decades.

The “Crazy Brabant Killers”, as they were known, murdered 28 people in Brussels in a dozen robberies during the 1980s – mostly at supermarkets. They were never caught. Their ability to outwit police led to conspiracy theories of official cover-ups.

The gang’s members were dubbed the “The Giant”, “The Killer” and “The Old Man”. Their main target was the shops’ petty cash holdings, but they would also spontaneously gun down customers.

Belgian authorities confirmed they were following a new line of inquiry after a man came forward to say that his brother, a former police officer, had confessed to being “The Giant”. “In the beginning I was in denial because I really struggled with it, but today I can say formally that this is my brother,” the unnamed man told broadcaster VTM as he recalled how his brother had confided in him two years ago as he lay dying that he was the tall suspected ringleader of the gang.