Cheating gamers face online ban

The people behind one of the biggest video games of the year are taking the unusual step of banning some of its fans from playing the online, multi-player version, reports The BBC.

Set in the American Wild West, Red Dead Redemption has sold millions of copies around the world, many of them in the UK.

But developer Rockstar Games says it has had complaints from gamers about cheats hacking their way to high scores.

Scientists are developing an identity verification system that would spot terrorists and paedophiles by scanning their skeletal features and comparing them against a database of stored images, reveals The Register.

The system could be deployed in airports, sporting events, and other settings vulnerable to criminals and ideally will be able to positively identify an individual's unique skeletal structure from 50m, the researchers, from Wright State Research Institute, said. It would analyse a variety of skeletal attributes - including shape, density joint structure and previously broken bones - to identify the individual.

Officials from the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity invited the researchers to speak about the project at a conference in Washington, DC.

A system crash at Barclays bank on Saturday left customers unable to access their bank accounts, withdraw funds or check their balances, writes Computing.co.uk.

The outage affected online and telephone banking, and ATM services. A frustrated customer, who did not wish to be named, said: "I tried five different ATMs and couldn't get any cash, or even check my balance."

A spokesperson for the bank said: "The issue lasted for around 20 minutes before systems were restored. We apologise to customers for any inconvenience."

A suspected phishing attack has stolen tens of thousands of dollars from PayPal customers around the world, says The Toronot Sun.

Users who accidentally gave away their account information found e-mails, sometimes dozens of them, invading their inbox purporting to be from the iTunes App store, racking up hundreds of dollars in expenses in something call Dragon Crystals for Castlecraft.

The solution for affected users is to change a password and report fraudulent transactions.