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France suspends Afghan military ops after 4 soldiers die
- France is suspending military operations in Afghanistan and may accelerate its planned troop withdrawal if the security situation does not improve, President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
- If the security conditions are not clearly established then the question of an early return of French forces from Afghanistan will arise.
- It's unacceptable that our soldiers are killed by our allies. It's a difficult decision to make," he said
- More than 2,500 foreign troops have died in Afghanistan since the NATO-led war began in 2001, and the latest killings take the French toll to 82.
Megaupload.com shut down invites retaliation
- One of the world's most popular file-sharing sites was shut down, and its founder and several company officials were accused of facilitating millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content.
- Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, but some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Virginia, which gave federal authorities jurisdiction
- Megaupload was unique not only because of its massive size and the volume of downloaded content, but also because it had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers who are most often the victims of copyright infringement and piracy.
- The indictment was unsealed one day after websites including Wikipedia and Craigslist shut down in protest of two congressional proposals intended to make it easier for authorities to go after sites with pirated material, especially those with overseas headquarters and servers.
- The news of the shutdown seemed to bring retaliation from hackers who claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department's website.
