Woolwich Crown Court was told Salma Kabal, 23, and from Birmingham, was not involved in her husband Ashik Ali's plot and believed he was only planning attacks abroad.

BBC: Wife accused of hiding husband's plot

"The whole plot is really about an enormous estate-planning problem, " says Kenneth Brier, a lawyer in Needham, Mass.

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Retirement planning consists of a wild scatter plot of potential projections.

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Local communities make a bad situation worse by using planning laws, such as minimum plot size, to exclude low-income families. (Many ritzy suburbs will not allow a property to have a second kitchen for fear that the owner might take in tenants.) Meanwhile, many of the same communities compete to attract high-value commercial developments.

ECONOMIST: Urban planning

When a local authority grants planning permission on a piece of land, the plot's value rises in line with the market's estimate of the value of the proposed development, and the value of neighbouring properties tends to fall.

ECONOMIST: Building in Britain