Cable fault cuts off West Africa

Large parts of West Africa are struggling to get back online following damage to an undersea cable, reports the BBC.

The fault has caused severe problems in Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

The blackout is thought to have been caused by damage to the SAT-3 cable, which runs from Portugal and Spain to SA, via West Africa.

Hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his final legal appeal to prevent him being extradited and tried in the US, says Computing.co.uk.

US authorities claim he hacked 97 military computers and caused $800 000 of damage. McKinnon admits hacking, but denies it was malicious.

Two High Court judges ruled in favour of decisions by the Home Office and director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer to send him to the US and not try him in the UK.

Michigan farmers have failed in their attempt to block the introduction of RFID tags for cattle, despite arguments about the cost and risk of upsetting an otherwise benevolent deity, reports The Register.

The case was bought by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defence Fund, representing small farmers in Michigan as well as a group of six Amish farmers. The former were concerned about the cost of the tags, while the latter were more worried about eternal damnation brought on by applying numbers to God's own cattle.

The US Department of Agriculture tried to get the case dismissed in November. It has only now managed to have the case thrown out on the basis that it is a Michigan ruling and subject to state laws, rather than part of any agenda being set by the agriculture department as part of the National Animal Identification System, against which the plaintiff's case was based.

A US student has been ordered to pay $675 000 to four record labels for breaking copyright laws after sharing music online, says the BBC.

The Boston University student, Joel Tenenbaum, had admitted in court that he had downloaded and distributed 30 songs at issue in the case.

It is the second such case to go to trial in the US.

On Friday, Firefox crossed the billion-download threshold - a notably large number for Mozilla's open source Web browser, but one that does not tell the whole story, says CNet.

Firefox fans love their statistical milestones, and Mozilla enjoys fanning the flames by providing plenty of opportunities for self-congratulation. In 2008 was the Firefox Download Day, with more than eight million downloads in 24 hours. Next came the Firefox 3.5 debut and its download tracker.

Now we have the billion-download figure on the Spread Firefox site. That includes updates people have fetched deliberately, not automatic updates, Mozilla said. To maximise the marketing potential, Mozilla is also touting the 1 000 000 000 + you site.