Blog Heap of Links for the day 30 March 2009

Barack Obama defied violent protests and political wrangling ahead of today's G20 summit to celebrate America's 'special relationship' with Britain. But as Britain fell under the spell of Mr Obama and his wife Michelle last night, anarchy was unleashed in the City of London. One protester died after a mob stormed the Royal Bank of Scotland and besieged the Bank of England. Police were pelted with bottles as a medical team tried to revive the demonstrator, who had collapsed at a makeshift camp being set up near the Bank of England. The man, who was said to be in his forties, was pronounced dead from natural causes shortly after arrival at hospital.

Symantec is warning Web users that searching for information on computer viruses such as Conficker could put them at risk of unintentionally downloading the virus on to their PC. ... searching for 'conficker' in a number of the Web's most popular search engines brings up a number of hoax Websites that actually host the virus and infect any users that navigate to the site....

April 1 is reportedly D-Day for the latest variant of the global worm, but is the hype living up to reality. Dire predictions for the wave of destruction coming with Conficker.C's activation may be grossly exaggregated, but that doesn't mean solution providers shouldn't help their customers prepare for this and many other security threats.

A tenacious computer worm which has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate but not expected to wreak havoc. ... The worm is programmed to modify itself on Wednesday to become harder to stop....

if Robert Lemire had not decided on pizza for dinner or if Alex Day had not come to the apartment on Haverhill Street for Bible study... Neither might have seen the heart-stopping sight of a girl in a diaper and T-shirt dangling from an apartment window three stories above the ground, and they might not have been waiting to catch her when she finally fell. ... survived a 30-foot plummet Sunday night and probably owes her life to the two men who ran to the spot below the window and caught her, one by the legs, another above the waist, and brought her, unhurt, back to her father in the apartment upstairs. ... The toddler fell with her body tilted toward the ground. "He pretty much got the top and I got the diaper end, or the bottom half, or whatever you call it," said Lemire. "She looked at me and had a weird look on her face as if to say, 'Wow, all of a sudden I'm down here,' " Day said.

RICHMOND, Va. -- A federal official said space junk from a Russian rocket most likely caused residents across the Southeast to report "great balls of fire" in the night sky.