US mom: Daughter held in Ireland 'lost her mind'

Before her daughter disappeared last fall, Christine Mott recalls that the 31-year-old who had been held in connection with an alleged assassination plot announced she had converted to Islam and told her family they'd go to hell if they didn't follow in her steps.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez also began talking about Jihad with her Muslim stepfather and spent most of her time online as she withdrew from her family, Mott said.

"We were enemies," Christine Mott said. "We couldn't even speak to each other."

Last year, on Sept. 11, Paulin-Ramirez left Leadville, Colo., an old silver mining town west of Denver that was Colorado's second-largest city during its heyday. She took her 6-year-old son with her, her mother said.

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saturday that Paulin-Ramirez had been detained in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had offended many Muslims.

Irish police said later Saturday that they had released without charge an American woman, who they didn't identify, and three others arrested in Ireland over an alleged plot to assassinate the cartoonist, Lars Vilks.

Paulin-Ramirez's arrest is one of four developments in the past week that have involved Americans in alleged terror plots abroad.

Al-Qaida spokesman Adam Gadahn appeared in a video, Sharif Mobley of New Jersey tried to escape his detainment in Yemen, and Colleen LaRose, who allegedly went by the name "Jihad Jane" to recruit others online to kill Vilks, was named in a federal terror indictment.

Smoking as she sat on her living room couch in Leadville, Christine Mott said she hadn't eaten in days. The 59-year-old described her daughter as a troubled single mother who had the "mentality of an abused woman" and who, in trying to escape her loneliness, may have spiraled into the depths of Islamic extremism.

Mott told The Associated Press that she learned of her daughter's arrest in the case from the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.

Denver FBI officials said Saturday they couldn't confirm that the FBI had contacted Mott about the case.

Paulin-Ramirez told her family after she left in September that she went to Ireland with her 6-year-old son and married an Algerian whom she met online, Mott said.

Before abruptly leaving Colorado, Paulin-Ramirez had been a straight-A nursing student and had worked at a clinic in Edwards, about 40 miles west of Leadville, her mother said. She moved to Leadville from Denver six years ago. Phone calls to the clinic in Edwards went unanswered Saturday.

Mott said her daughter told her family during Easter last year that she converted to Islam, and renamed her son. Mott said her daughter was teaching him to hate Christians as she grew more distant from her family.

When she discussed jihad with her stepfather, George Mott, who has been a Muslim for more than 40 years, she told him "she'd strap a bomb for the cause," Christine Mott said.

She said she believes her daughter was lonely and "got sucked in" and brainwashed by other people.

"To go blow somebody up?" said Paulin-Ramirez's mother, who is not Muslim. "That's never been Islam."

Growing up, Paulin-Ramirez was "the kid in the class everyone picked on and made fun of," Mott said. She was married three times before she left for Ireland, and her first husband used to beat her, she said.

Her second husband, the 6-year-old's father, was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and was deported years ago, Mott said.

Paulin-Ramirez liked going on fishing and camping trips but grew distant before her departure, Mott said. She spent much of her time on the computer, she said.

Qualys Launches Free Website Scanning Service

QualysGuard Malware Detection employs behavioral analysis
Qualys, a global provider of on-demand vulnerability scanning and standards compliance certification, has launched a new malware detection service aimed at webmasters. Named QualysGuard Malware Detection, the free service can identify infections in Web pages and alert website owners.
Web infections have risen up to become one of the major conduits of malware distribution on the Internet. Tens of thousands of legit Web pages are compromised each day and riddled with malicious IFrames or scripts that load exploit cocktails from remote servers.

The purpose of these attacks is generally to silently install malware onto visitors' computers, a technique known as a drive-by-download. This is done by exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated versions of popular software such as Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Reader, Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Most of the times, websites are infected through cross-site scripting weaknesses or SQL injection vulnerabilities, but other methods, such as using stolen FTP credentials, have also been observed. While the new service announced by Qualys at the RSA conference on Monday will not determine how the website was compromised, it promises to detect any suspicious behavior on websites with a low false positive rate.
QualysGuard Malware Detection uses two methods of analysis – static and behavioral. The static type involves scanning the source code for known malware patterns, while for the behavioral analysis, the Web page is loaded with a vulnerable browser in a virtual environment and observed.

The service will scan websites on a daily basis and will notify the admin of any suspicious behavior or code snippets. "We created QualysGuard Malware Detection as a way to fight against cybercrime and to make the Web a safer place for everyone. This is a comprehensive free solution that arms businesses of all sizes to monitor malware threats on their web sites and take steps to remediate vulnerabilities," commented Qualys' Chairman and CEO, Philippe Courtot.

Public Wi-Fi Connections to Be a Thing of the Past in the UK

Pro-copyright lobbyists backed by old media-content companies, meaning mostly movie studios and record labels, are trying to change copyright law all over the world in order to prop up their obsolete business models. And just because they don't get any luck on the web, they want to make sure the experience is just as miserable for the rest of us. The latest example is the attempt to outlaw public Wi-Fi's in the UK lest they become a haven for hardened criminals like p2p users.

Tucked away in the hotly disputed Digital Economy Bill (DEB), which is filled with controversial measures not the least of which is the provision to disconnect repeated illegal file-sharing offenders, the so-called 'three-strikes' rule is another measure that defies common sense, will hurt businesses and regular people alike, but has media execs rubbing their hands in joyous anticipation.

According to official advice released last week, small businesses, universities and even libraries won't be exempted from the provisions of the DEB, which basically makes ISPs responsible for what their users download or upload or at least for regulating that. This means that, if someone were to download Avatar from a BitTorrent site by using a free Wi-Fi connection offered by a local pub, a very likely thing to happen, the pub in question would be liable for the crime.

If this goes through, most cafes and other small establishments offering free Internet connections to lure in customers would have to stop, since the alternative, setting up a system that registers and tracks all the users, is not only highly impracticable, but also prohibitively expensive. So, no more free Internet.

The misguided logic behind the move is that, if these operators were allowed to offer open Wi-Fi and not be liable for any presumable infringements, it would create a loop-hole in the system, which merciless pirates would abuse to get their kicks.

Anyone with a modicum of tech literacy or just plain common sense, in fact, anyone who has ever used a free Wi-Fi connection realizes how out-of-touch these media-industry people must be if they imagine anyone is going to spend two hours at a coffee shop sharing a 2 Mbps connection with 20 other people to get the latest Lady Gaga album. They'd probably spend more on the coffee than they would buying the album from iTunes or, better yet, buying a Spotify premium account.

PCB offers Waqar Younis to coach team

SYDNEY: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) decided to appoint former Captain Waqar Younis as coach of the national team, Geo News reported Saturday.

Also, Chief Operating Officer sent the formal contract to the Waqar in this connection.

Waqar Younis, 40, served as bowling and fielding coach of Pak team in Australia tour.

The former captain confirmed the reports saying he would decide soon in this regard.

He has been offered to coach the team till 2011.

If he accedes to the PCB offer, he will be Pak team coach in third Twenty20 World Cup series being held this year in West Indies.

2 Pak players involved in match-fixing: US TV

LAHORE: The International Cricket Council (ICC) has provided match fixing proves to Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) against alleged involvement of wicket keeper Kamran Akmal and medium pacer Rana Naveed-ul-Hasan.

PCB chairman Ijaz Butt on Friday made the startling revelation that ICC had provided PCB with the concrete proves of their alleged involvement in match fixing. Despite repeated questions, Ijaz Butt had refused to name the players.

On investigation, a highly placed official in PCB exclusively told Voice of America on the condition of anonymity that “the two players were wicket keeper Kamran Akmal and medium pacer Rana Naveed-ul-Hasan”.

Wicket keeper Akmal had come under heavy fire for his repeated fumbles on the Australian tour. Its worth mentioning that both players were dropped from the T-20 series against England recently played in Dubai.

When asked if the proves were so concrete, why PCB included Akmal and Rana in the initial list of 30 players for the T-20 world cup, the source said that “both will be missing from the final list for the T-20 WC.

The source further insisted that “PCB has announced an additional wicket keeper Zulqarnain Haider along side Kamran Akmal and Sarfaraz Ahmed in 30 initial players which indicates that Akmal would not feature in the final squad for T-20 WC to be played in West Indies in April.

Massive earthquake strikes Chile, 122 dead

SANTIAGO: A huge magnitude-8.8earthquake struck Chile early on Saturday, killing at least 122 people, knocking down homes and hospitals, and triggering a tsunami that rolled menacingly across the Pacific.

TV Chile reported that a 15-storey building collapsed in the hardest-hit city of Concepcion, where buildings caught fire, major highway bridges collapsed and cracks opened up in the streets.

Cars turned upside down lay scattered across one damaged bridge.

Residents huddled in streets full of rubble of masonry and glass from destroyed homes.

Many were terrified by powerful aftershocks and desperately trying to call friends and family.

Chilean President-elect Sebastian Pinera said 122 people had been killed and the death toll could climb higher.

Tsunami warnings were posted around the Pacific, including the U.S. state of Hawaii, Japan and Russia.

Telephone and power lines were down in much of central Chile, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the damage close to the epicenter.

Chile is the world's No. 1 copper producer, and the quake halted operations at two major mines.

"Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it's like the end of the world," one man told local television from the city of Temuco, where the quake damaged homes and forced staff to evacuate the regional hospital.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake struck 70 miles (115 km) northeast of Concepcion at a depth of 22 miles (35 km) at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT).

The capital Santiago, about 200 miles (320 km) north of the epicenter, was also badly hit. The international airport wasclosed for at least 24 hours as the quake destroyed passengerwalkways and shook glass out of doors and windows.

Chile's Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, suspended operations at its El Teniente and Andina mines, but reported no major damage and said it expected the mines to be up and running in the "coming hours."

8.8-magnitude earthquake hits central Chile

SANTIAGO, Chile – A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake capable of tremendous damage struck central Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital for a minute and a half and setting off a tsunami. Buildings collapsed and phone lines and electricity were down, making the extent of the damage difficult to determine.

The quake hit 200 miles (325 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Santiago, at a depth of 22 miles (35 kilometers) at 3:34 a.m. (0634 GMT; 1:34 a.m. EST), the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The epicenter was just 70 miles (115 kilometers) from Concepcion, Chile's second-largest city, where more than 200,000 people live along the Bio Bio river, and 60 miles from the ski town of Chillan, a gateway to Andean ski resorts that was destroyed in a 1939 earthquake.

An Associated Press Television News cameraman said some buildings collapsed in Santiago and power was out in parts of the city. Phone lines were either down or busy, making confirmation of damage difficult elsewhere, especially further south toward the epicenter. The quake was felt in Argentina as well.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Chile and Peru, and a less-urgent tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica.

"Sea level readings indicate a tsunami was generated. It may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter and could also be a threat to more distant coasts," the center said.

The U.S. west coast tsunami warning center said it did not expect a tsunami along the west of the U.S. or Canada but was continuing to monitor the situation.

The largest earthquake ever recorded struck the same area of Chile on May 22, 1960. The magnitude-9.5 quake killed 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless. The tsunami that it caused killed people in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines and caused damage to the west coast of the United States.