An investigative journalist in Northern Ireland has launched High Court action against the police over alleged unlawful attempts to identify a confidential source.

The reporter, who specialises in covering serious crime and paramilitary activity, is seeking damages from the PSNI for harassment and breaches of privacy and data protection.

A judge granted anonymity to the journalist, referred to as YZL, based on concerns about the threatening environment in which they work.

Proceedings centre on efforts to obtain communications data made back in 2014. Police acted covertly and made applications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act aimed at identifying a journalistic source for a news story at the time, it is contended.

Lawyers for YZL stress that any request for material which could reveal a private contact must be justified by an overriding public interest.

Another journalist, former BBC Northern Ireland Home Affairs correspondent Vincent Kearney, has already been awarded £20,000 in damages against the PSNI and MI5 for unlawfully obtaining data from his mobile phone.

Mr Kearney, who now works for RTE, took a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London.

In September last year an independent review by Angus McCullough KC identified 21 unlawful uses of covert powers by police to try to uncover reporters’ sources.

His report related to up to eight journalists but found no basis for concerns that PSNI surveillance of journalists was widespread or systemic.

A separate lawsuit has now been brought against the Chief Constable on behalf of YZL.

Lawyers representing the reporter are seeking a declaration of illegality, an injunction and compensation for the alleged campaign of surveillance.

They also want full disclosure of any steps taken against their client.

Papers lodged at the High Court in Belfast claim a misuse of private information, along with breaches of both the Data Protection Act 2018 and Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.

During a preliminary hearing last Friday Mr Justice McAlinden granted an anonymity order after being told YZL’s work depends on being able to use confidential sources and ensure their protection.

The case was listed for a further review in early November.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

Football fans have not been allowed to drink in the stands for decades but Prime Minister Andy Burnham is in favour of changing the law

Andy Burnham has suggested he may look to remove the ban on drinking alcohol in the stands at football matches – which has stood since the 1980s.

The Prime Minister has claimed the law is “unfair” for fans, given that those who attend other sporting events are allowed to enjoy a pint from their seats. Burnham, a big Everton fan, is still a match-going supporter. He insists there is a case for ending the ban, with rugby and cricket fans all allowed to drink pints from the stands.

Burnham has long opposed the ban and said during his trip to the United States of America: “I don’t think it’s fair for football fans to be singled out in that way and I made that point. I think that legislation dates to an era where football was very different. And I do believe there is a case to remove that discrimination.

“There are different ways it could be done, perhaps on a trial basis. But I’m not going to back away from what’s been a long-held view of mine. I don’t see how it can be fair that some supporters of one sport can be treated differently.”

It was made illegal in 1985 due to concerns about hooliganism. The fan-led review of football governance in 2021 called for the ban to be re-examined and suggested piloting the sale of alcohol within sight of the pitch in lower-tier English football.

The potential change has been welcomed by the Football Supporters’ Association and the English Football League, but police suggested it would be “incredibly rash” to make changes without considering their impact on safety.

Farmers Voice 2026 will be held at Hexham Auction Mart on Wednesday, October 14, starting at 6pm.

The free event, organised by youngsRPS and The Farmer Network, will tackle the changing face of agriculture and the opportunities and challenges facing the next generation.

Harry Morshead, director and rural surveyor at youngsRPS, said: “There isn’t one route into farming, and that’s something we really want to explore at Farmers Voice.

“Taking on a family business brings its own opportunities and pressures, while for somebody trying to establish themselves independently, the challenges can be very different.

“Farmers Voice is about bringing those experiences together, asking questions and having an honest conversation about where farming goes next.”

This year’s event, themed ‘The Next Generation of Farmers’, will examine succession and routes into farming beyond the family business.

The panel will also examine lessons from farming overseas, bluetongue, emerging livestock diseases and opportunities for the next generation.

The panel will include The Sheep Game creator Cammy Wilson, Mr Morshead, Black Sheep Vets’ Kaz Strycharczyk, and farmers Will Riddington and Katie Andrews.

Adam Day, managing director of The Farmer Network, said: “Encouraging and supporting the next generation is fundamental to the future of farming.

“Whether someone is already farming, preparing to take over a family business or trying to find their own route into agriculture, we want them to come along and be part of the conversation.”

The event is open to farmers, students, new entrants and anyone interested in the industry’s future.

The audience can put questions to the panel, and supper will be provided.

Previous Farmers Voice events gave the farming community a forum to discuss issues affecting their businesses and the wider industry.

Entry is free, but places must be booked in advance.

Book tickets online at https://bit.ly/FarmersVoice26.

The following story is runner up in The Conversation Prize for writers 2026, a competition run in partnership with Faber and Curtis Brown. Read more about the competition here.

A woman is handing out paper cups of squash and flat lemonade at the back of a parochial hall in Belfast. This woman – I’ll call her Charlotte* – is there with her husband, helping out at a disco for the Catholic Church’s teenage congregants.

Her daughter is dancing inside; she’s young, probably 13 or 14. Years later, recalling this moment from her adolescence, their daughter says: “Daddy would be on the door, Mummy would be handing out minerals [soft drinks] in the back”. It’s an ordinary scene of parental duty and care, except for two details: this was the mid-70s and Charlotte was a Protestant.

Charlotte didn’t convert and didn’t attend Mass. Instead, she went to Church of Ireland services, in a different part of Belfast, with her sister. Charlotte’s husband – I’ll call him Eoin – drove Charlotte there every week. Eoin attended Vigil Mass on Saturday evenings to ensure he was free on Sunday mornings to help his wife.

After Eoin’s sudden death, Charlotte continued to contribute to the local Catholic Church’s weekly offertory by asking her neighbour to take the collections envelope with her to Mass. When Charlotte died, eleven years after her husband, both her Church of Ireland rector and the Catholic priest came to the house to pay their respects. “I thought it spoke volumes about who my parents were and about their values”, their daughter said.

Their daughter shared these fragments of memory carefully, offering an account of her parents and their love for each other through stories of everyday devotion. The tenderness with which she spoke of them made the warmth of their life together tangible. At the height of the Troubles, 20 years before any meaningful discussion about ceasefires, coexistence was happening through small, supposedly unremarkable moments like a husband driving his wife to church, or two clergymen visiting a grieving daughter.

The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.

The intimate sphere is never private alone. Domestic familiarity does not dissolve political division. Stories like Eoin’s and Charlotte’s are bruised by what is not said; heavy with uneasy compromise, asymmetrical sacrifice, emotional labour.
These are life histories marked by weddings without music (“a day to be got through”); baptisms without parents or grandparents; siblings attending different schools. Mixed marriage did not resolve the hostilities of Irish politics so much as translate them into the rhythms of daily life. Here, contradiction was negotiated through mundane ritual and strategic silence; acts of conciliation and maintenance.

Stories of forbidden love that ultimately triumphs over adversity are enduringly popular. In Ireland there is a particular local flavour to such tales of clandestine lovers, where a pair from opposite sides of the so-called divide translate national conflict into romance.

I understand the appeal of these stories. I’ve spent a large part of my life reading them, watching them, thinking about them. But the more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?

A more intimate history

Over the past several years, I’ve been leading a project to build an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland. Interviews were conducted by Ruth Duffy, a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, for the project and this collection of intimate histories allows people to share their family stories in their own words.

Mixed marriage has long been made to bear symbolic weight far beyond the lives of the couples themselves. It is invoked as proof of peace-building, assimilation, coexistence or, more darkly, betrayal. But this archive tells a much more ambivalent story: that the messiness of romantic desire, filial love, political allegiance and religious duty could never be contained within the political scripts that have dominated the Irish story.

People have shared recollections that are vibrant, unexpected and bittersweet. I anticipated encountering stories marked by bigotry, intolerance and violence. These certainly exist. Many people and their families paid an enormous cost for their choice of partner.

People changed their names and couples were burnt out of their houses. Teenagers emigrated to get married and devout congregants were threatened with excommunication. Families were ostracised; mothers were coerced into putting their babies up for adoption; children were taken from their parents and placed in orphanages run by particular religious groups. People were killed.

These are not the cliches of a Troubles thriller but the realities of many people’s lives. The nature of the Northern Ireland conflict was terrifyingly intimate. In his poem ‘Wounds’, the late Michael Longley captures some of the desecration of a war that could see a man executed in his own home:

Shot through the head
By a shivering boy who wandered in
Before they could turn the television down
Or tidy away the supper dishes.

Amid these harrowing accounts, what lingers is the vitality of small things: the supper dishes, paper cups of squash and collections envelopes.

Textures, ambiguity and awkwardness

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the number of children who wanted to share their experiences of their parents’ – or even grandparents’ – mixed marriages.

Many of them voiced a similar impulse to share so “their parents’ story could be captured”; “their history is important for people to know, in a small way”.

For a researcher, the ethical demands implicit in listening to these memories cannot be overstated: you can hear that these are narratives shaped by love and pride. These are stories told with vulnerability and shared with hope. I feel that duty of care acutely; for this reason, all the names I use here are pseudonyms.

Despite the palpable affection in these intimate histories, they are not simple exercises in nostalgia. The tellers interpret and historicise their past, even as they offer it for curation.

A woman I’ll call Sarah expressed a “special kind of sadness” about the impact mixed marriage had on her parents and her family, “and because you’re a child, you don’t really understand”. These stories make painfully clear how society asked children to bear the burden of their parents’ marriages in a context of immense political discord and trauma. Adult children of mixed marriages frequently articulate an early intuition, a childhood sense, that something was amiss. These children don’t just inherit the political consequences of mixed marriage: they inherit its textures, ambiguity and awkwardness.

Things become most troublesome for mixed marriages when family life collided with institutions. Weddings, baptisms, schooling and funerals were especially fraught. In the words of one of our interviewees, these were instances that “made religion rear its ugly head”. Occasions that ought to have been a time for celebration and unity often prised open division with startling force. Photograph albums capture weddings where family members looked strained: “the worst thing that could possibly have happened had happened”.

I wonder how different our understanding of modern Ireland would be if we turned to family histories like these, rather than politicians and paramilitaries, to understand conflict and its legacy?

Some individuals recalled not just inheriting two traditions but actively inhabiting both in ways that neither community would approve of. One woman, May, shared an astonishing story about her father.

Asked to produce his birth and baptismal certificates before he could get married, the man was bewildered to discover that he had been baptised twice. Believing himself to be a lifelong Catholic, he learnt that he was baptised first in the Church of Ireland at four weeks’ old in Belfast’s St John’s Cathedral in 1912. In 1915, as a three-year-old, he was baptised again at St Matthew’s Catholic Church in the Short Strand.

Echoing so many stories about mixed life, these official records leave more questions than they answer. Over a hundred years later, his daughter May could only speculate why and how this had happened, attempting to make sense of institutional traces that seemed inherently paradoxical.

May’s grandfather was at war, fighting on the Western Front, when his son was baptised for a second time in 1915. May suggested her Catholic grandmother might have had her three sons baptised again in the Catholic Church to curry favour with her family. Unsure whether her husband would return from war, and raising six children by herself, her grandmother would have needed all the support she could get.

The emotional and social work taken to manage a cross-community family like this must have been endless.

Sarah shared some of the most distressing stories I’ve heard. The fourth and youngest child to her parents’ mixed marriage, she was their first and only daughter. Like many mixed families in Ireland, her parents had agreed to the common compromise that any sons born to the marriage would be baptised in the Catholic church like their father, and any daughters raised in her mother’s Evangelical church.

This did not protect Sarah’s mother from humiliation and heartbreak. When Sarah’s mother took her eldest son to the Catholic Church for his baptism, she expected to be welcomed and included in the service. She was his mother, after all. Instead, she was told to hand her baby over and sent to the back of the chapel while her son received the sacrament. This happened again with her next two sons. Three times she was made to watch from the back of the church as her sons were baptised without her.

When she had her daughter, Sarah, she was adamant that this would not happen again. As a girl, according to the uneasy but widespread Irish custom, Sarah ought to have been baptised in her mother’s church. What followed reveals how familial bonds can crumple under the weight of deeply held religious convictions. Sarah recalls her mother telling her that, when Sarah was six months old, her Catholic relatives “kidnapped” her and had her baptised without her mother’s consent. This time, her mother was not even allowed inside the chapel. Her father, Sarah reveals, “bent to peer pressure and the priests”.

Despite Sarah’s Catholic baptism, her mother fought hard to ensure that Sarah was brought up Protestant; her mother also “kept to her word” and sent the boys to the Catholic chapel every week.

Sarah’s household was a divided one, with the children attending different churches and different schools. They learned to pray in different languages; they were taught different histories; they played different sports. These practical accommodations created children who learned to move between parallel worlds, carrying a keen awareness of the selves they might have been under different circumstances.

These childhoods shaped by uneven concessions were defined by what Sarah called “unspoken boundaries”: rules children were expected to follow without ever fully understanding. Sarah used to attend Sunday School at the Evangelical Church she attended with her mother and, one week, her brothers went with her. When Sarah’s mother arrived to collect her four children, she was greeted by her sons sitting outside on the steps of the church, waiting for her. “Whatever had happened”, Sarah recollected, “they wouldn’t go in”.

Whatever had happened. The vagueness is telling. After all these years, Sarah still didn’t know. The silence and heaviness of that unknown hovers over so many of these narratives, carried in the image of three small boys sitting on some steps outside the church.

I return again to Charlotte, handing out her cups of squash. I think of her six children, each inheriting the afterlives of choices made long before they could understand them. For Charlotte and Eoin’s daughter, her parents were simply a “great example of how you can be yourself while compromising within your marriage and within your family”.

These families do not need their stories to be romanticised. They need them to be recognised. What mattered was not reconciliation in the abstract but the daily work of living together through contradiction and without resolution.

In the back of a parochial hall in Belfast, Charlotte was doing something both ordinary and extraordinary. She was making a family across a line that was meant to keep them apart. That labour – quiet, repetitive, unheroic – is part of Irish history too.

*Participants’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

À lire aussi :
Emily Robinson wins The Conversation Prize for writers 2026 for her entry on the lost medieval island of Ravenser Odd

A significant proportion of user-initiated attempts to access adult-content websites through the Stormont Assembly network were linked to a single individual, the Assembly Commission has confirmed.

The individual was responsible for a substantial share of the approximately 2,926 web-filtering events, which officials had previously assessed as more likely to relate to user-initiated access.

Belfast Live understands the activity formed part of a series of attempts to access adult websites and services revealed through Freedom of Information requests.

The individual was not a directly employed member of Assembly Commission staff but was an agency worker assigned to the Assembly Commission. Their assignment was “immediately ended”, the Commission confirmed.

The revelation comes after Belfast Live reported details of the activity recorded by the Assembly’s web-filtering system, including attempts to access sex chatrooms, escort websites and adult retailers.

The records also showed searches for images of celebrities, including an attempt to search for nude photographs of Derry Girls star Jamie-Lee O’Donnell and an attempt to find images of broadcaster Emily Maitlis’s feet.

However, the Assembly Commission stressed that all relevant requests were blocked and that the data does not show any successful access to adult content.

An Assembly spokesperson said: “It is important to note the data relates to blocked web-filtering events, not successful access to adult content and that all of the relevant requests were blocked by the Assembly’s web-filtering controls.

“The data also shows that a significant proportion of the user-initiated events related to one individual. The individual was an agency worker assigned to the Assembly Commission rather than a directly employed member of Assembly Commission staff. The agency worker’s assignment was immediately ended.

“In light of the end of this assignment, and in accordance with the data protection legislation, the Assembly Commission does not propose to disclose any further information about this individual.”

The original FOI response identified 52,265 web-filtering events categorised as adult content over a rolling 12-month period. However, officials said a significant proportion of those events appeared to have been generated automatically by search engines or other system activity.

Following a review, approximately 2,926 events were assessed as more likely to relate to user-initiated access. The Commission has now confirmed that a significant proportion of that smaller figure was associated with one person. It has not disclosed the precise number of events attributed to the individual.

The Assembly also confirmed that it had reviewed the underlying web-filtering logs following the publication of the Belfast Live report.

The Commission’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits users from using Assembly information assets to create, transmit, store or display material that is “obscene” or “otherwise offensive or inappropriate”.

Asked whether the activity identified in the FOI material could constitute a potential breach of that policy, the Commission confirmed that it could. It said serious breaches of the policy may require further action under its internal procedures, with fairness and due process applying.

The Commission did not provide details of any separate disciplinary or HR process, instead referring Belfast Live to its statement about the agency worker’s assignment being ended. It also said there had been no referral to another body or authority.

The Assembly spokesperson said: “The Assembly Commission keeps its cyber-security and acceptable-use arrangements under regular review. The current web-filtering controls blocked the relevant requests, but any incident of this nature is an opportunity to consider whether controls, monitoring or escalation arrangements should be strengthened.

“Following learning points identified from this work, we have already increased our monitoring and escalation arrangements.”

The Commission said the fact that the requests were blocked demonstrated that its existing web-filtering controls were operating.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

Regardless of the mattress you have, sometimes it can feel like trying to fall asleep on concrete, as if you can’t get comfortable no matter how much you toss and turn.

By morning, however, that same bed which once seemed so inhospitable hugs every contour of your body, begging you to stay in its cosy embrace.

It’s a strange paradox experienced by many, and one that seems particularly frustrating once the alarm goes off each day.

Before you condemn your shapeshifting bed to the dump, though, it’s worth looking inwards to fix the problem.

Uncomfortable bedding can definitely be an issue that stops your brain switching off, along with external issues like noise or light.

But according to Becky Spelman, psychologist and founder of Private Therapy Clinic, the most common factor in preventing nighttime relaxation is ‘an active mind or high levels of stress.’

She adds: ‘Additionally, certain medical conditions or sleep disorders, such as insomnia, can make falling asleep challenging for some individuals.’

There aren’t borrowers coming in and turning your mattress from nails memory foam overnight either: the changes you go through in the hours you’re asleep are why you feel so different about your bed.

Becky tells Metro: ‘Our bodies have a natural sleep-wake cycle called the circadian rhythm. Towards the end of the sleep cycle, our body temperature rises, and the release of hormones like cortisol and serotonin helps us feel more awake and alert.

‘As a result, we may feel more comfortable in the morning due to these physiological changes.’

A hormone called melatonin — which is responsible for controlling the sleep-wake cycle — also plays a part to this snuggly switcheroo.

During sleep humans pump out plenty of melatonin, but as soon as we wake up this production stops.

It can take time for what’s left over to dissipate, so traces of it still coursing through your body could be why you feel like you’re cosied up in a cloud first-thing.

If you regularly find it difficult to wind down at night, it can be handy to take a look at your space and bedtime routine first — something you may see referred to as ‘sleep hygiene’.

‘Creating a comfortable sleep environment is crucial,’ says Becky. ‘Make sure your bedroom is dark, quiet, and at a comfortable temperature. Invest in a quality mattress, pillows, and bedding that suit your preferences too.’

She also recommends minimising your exposure to screens and stimulation close to bedtime, instead opting for soothing activities like ‘reading, taking a warm bath, or practicing relaxation techniques.’

Experts at UK paint brand Valspar Paint say now is the ideal time to give tired fences a fresh lick of paint, helping to protect them against the harsh winter weather ahead.

Leave it too late, however, and homeowners could be waiting until spring 2027 for suitable painting conditions.

Have you had to apply for planning permission? (Image: Getty)

Lucy Steele, senior brand manager and resident colour expert said: “Garden fences are exposed to the elements year-round, so choosing an exterior paint that can withstand unpredictable British weather is key to achieving a finish that lasts. I recommend looking for a durable exterior wood paint that offers resistance to moisture, mould and the changing UV levels, while providing a strong adhesion to wood to help minimise cracking, peeling and general wear.”

She added: “Good preparation can be the difference between a smooth, long-lasting finish and a patchy or peeling fence. Before painting, make sure the surface is clean and dry, removing any dirt, algae or loose flaking paint. Lightly sand any rough areas before applying thin, even coats, allowing the recommended drying time between each layer. This will help the paint adhere properly and give the finish the strongest possible start.

“When choosing a fence colour, I’d suggest taking inspiration from the existing palette in your garden. Warm, earthy shades from sage and olive through to terracotta can work particularly well. Soothing Sage, Rugged Olive and Ripe Peach will all help complement surrounding greenery rather than compete with it and bringing the whole outdoor space together.”

Many of the front pages focus on the Conservative party’s promise to prevent long-term jobless benefit claimants from spending their welfare payments on alcohol, cigarettes and betting. The Daily Mail’s headline is “Kemi’s ruthless crackdown on benefits street”, external. The Daily Telegraph says the Tories want to stop joblessness being what is referred to as a “lifestyle choice for those who can’t be bothered”, external.

The front page of the Daily Mirror carries a photograph of the moment two RAF pilots ejected from a jet before it crashed on Anglesey in North Wales, external. They were taking part in a training exercise when they were forced to parachute from the plane – which, the paper reports, then “plummeted nose-first into a field” and caused a “huge fireball”. The paper’s headline is “Miracle no one was killed”.

According to the Daily Telegraph, talks about the future of the Elgin marbles have collapsed, external. Greece reopened negotiations with the British Museum in 2021 as part of efforts to repatriate the ancient sculptures. But the paper says “it is understood negotiations are effectively over” as Greek representatives are frustrated by a lack of progress.

The Times says mounted cavalry might have an advantage in modern warfare, external, a century on after tanks replaced horses on the battlefield. Last year, a Ukrainian infantry company in Donetsk reported that Russian forces had started to use horses and donkeys to carry soldiers and supplies to avoid detection by drones. And the paper says the UK’s Household Mounted Cavalry regiment conducted trials over the summer, with officials saying in some situations, such as woodland, there’s a better chance of getting from A to B with a horse, than with a Challenger 2 tank.

And the boss of Timpsons says his company has seen a 680% increase in people asking for extra holes in their belts this year,, external reports the Daily Mail. He believes the demand is down to the popularity of weight loss jabs.

Bradley Curtis (Image: GMP)

BRADLEY CURTIS, 21, is wanted on recall to prison.

Julie Conway (Image: GMP)

JULIE CONWAY, 48, is wanted for failing to appear in court.

Caleb Campbell (Image: GMP)

CALEB CAMPBELL, 25, is wanted on recall to prison.

James Hilton (Image: GMP)

JAMES HILTON, 38, is wanted on recall to prison.

Cameron Wroe (Image: GMP)

CAMERON WROE, 31, is wanted on recall to prison.

A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: “Anybody found harbouring any wanted person or helping them to evade justice will be arrested themselves and face possible court action and a criminal record.”

These wanted people are not to be approached.

In the event of any sightings, please ring 999.

Anyone with any information can leave a message on the police social media pages or call independent charity Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

A former boy genius who shocked the world after discovering a massive Microsoft hack has been arrested in California for allegedly covering neighbors’ homes in antisemitic graffiti. 

Kristoffer Von Hassel, 18, was taken into custody by the San Diego Sheriff’s Office around 3am on Tuesday after several reports of vandalism were called in from residents in Imperial Beach, police said.

Deputies responded to two separate reports of swastikas and other hate symbols being displayed on homes on September 13 with black permanent marker, according to authorities. 

Another call came in on September 19, stating that one of the same homes was hit again, as well as a nearby alleyway behind the property, cops said. 

The agency then increased patrols in the area and uncovered surveillance footage that helped them locate the suspect, who was later identified as Von Hassel. 

He was located ‘in a dark alley where one of the vandalisms had occurred,’ police stated. 

Von Hassel had a ‘handheld electronic device capable of interacting with and analyzing certain wireless signals’ that could pair with garage doors, gates, and other systems, the police added. 

One of the homes that was hit belongs to Sandy and Bruan Brillhart, and they have been left horrified by the incidents. 

Kristoffer Von Hassel (pictured in 2014) has since been arrested for allegedly being behind the vandalism. He previously won the world over after discovering a Microsoft hack on his father’s Xbox 

‘I don’t feel safe at the beach anymore, and now I no longer feel safe in my house,’ Sandy told KGTV.

At first, she wasn’t too concerned – thinking that it was just typical vandalism – but then she learned what the symbols meant. 

A swastika, which is widely known as a symbol of hate that Nazis wore, was drawn on her front door, Sandy said. 

Another display had the letters ‘NS’ and ‘WP’ on it. ‘NS’ stands for ‘National Socialists’, Hitler’s political party, or the Nazi Party, and ‘WP’ means ‘white power.’ 

Sandy said the first attack took place around Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish holiday that celebrates the New Year. 

Then, about a week after, and just before Yom Kippur – another Jewish holiday – the Brillharts realized that their garage door had Sandy’s name written on it. 

‘Well, this is unfortunate that it’s happened not only in our community, but worldwide now, and we need to deal with it before it gets out of control,’ Bill said. 

Another display had the letters ‘NS’ and ‘WP’ on it. ‘NS’ stands for ‘National Socialists’, Hitler’s political party, or the Nazi Party, and ‘WP’ means ‘white power’

Meanwhile, Von Hassel’s father said this was not something his son would do, as he referred to the moment that made the now-adult famous when he was five years old. 

‘He’s never gotten in trouble like this before. Just look what he did with Microsoft when he was 5,’ his dad told The San Diego Union-Tribune. 

In 2014, Von Hassel made headlines after he figured out how to log in to his father’s Xbox account without the correct password. 

Somehow, the then-child discovered that entering the wrong password into the log-in screen would bring up a second verification screen, the BBC reported at the time. 

By doing that, he would be allowed into his father’s account, which let him play games he wasn’t supposed to play. 

His father sent the flaw to Microsoft, which led the company to address the issue. 

The vandal used permanent marker on the homes on separate occasions, police said

Von Hassel was also awarded a spot on a list of people who have discovered problems for Microsoft products. He was also gifted four free games, $50, and a year-long subscription to Xbox Live. 

He was also referred to as the ‘world’s youngest hacker’ for his achievement.  

But now he faces a new, and not so fun, reality after his arrest. 

His mother, who asked not to be named, said: ‘We’ll be fighting this case. We’re concerned how this will impact his future.’ 

As of Wednesday afternoon, Von Hassel remains in custody at San Diego Central Jail, according to jail records reviewed by the Daily Mail. His booking photo was not made available. 

He is being held on a $122,500 bail on several charges, including vandalism and damage to property, records show.