Bombing plot foiled.

On this side of the pond, a man was convicted to seven years in prison for activities relating to a terrorist plot:

• A jury was told that the physics graduate, who had also studied chemistry, attempted to make bombs using nitrocellulose, fertiliser, white spirit and acetone, and had made handwritten notes stipulating the design of the devices.

What? I don't know which fertillizer exactly, but Nitrocellulose and (I can only guess) ammonium nitrate are far from practical explosives by themselves, and getting the resources to detonate ammonium nitrate plasticised with nitrocellulose (which is what the acetone is for) is no simple feat!

So I read on:

• "It's true that the materials you in fact had were so inferior, so third rate, that they would not themselves have made a viable bomb.

  "But the fault was with the quality of materials and not in the concept.

  "If you had developed this concept into a working bomb, there would have been great potential for destruction, injury and death."

Not so conforting after all ...