Gingrich wins most delegates in South Carolina (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Newt Gingrich has won the most delegates in South Carolina's Republican presidential primary, narrowing Mitt Romney's lead in the race for delegates to the party's national convention this summer.

Gingrich, the former House speaker, has won at least 15 delegates, with 10 to be awarded. These are the first delegates Gingrich has won in a primary or caucus, though the race for delegates is still in the early stages. In all, Gingrich has 17 delegates, including endorsements from Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the convention. Romney has 33 delegates.

It will take 1,144 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120122/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign_delegates

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NZ police raid file-sharing site founder's mansion (AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand ? New Zealand police raided several homes and businesses linked to the founder of Megaupload.com, a giant Internet file-sharing site shut down by U.S. authorities, on Friday and seized guns, millions of dollars, and nearly $5 million in luxury cars, officials said.

Police arrested founder Kim Dotcom and three Megaupload employees on U.S. accusations that they facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. Extradition proceedings against them could last a year or more.

With 150 million registered users, about 50 million hits daily and endorsements from music superstars, Megaupload.com was among the world's biggest file-sharing sites. According to a U.S. indictment, the site, which was shut down Thursday, earned Dotcom $42 million in 2010 alone.

Although the company is based in Hong Kong and Dotcom lives in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.

New Zealand police served 10 search warrants at several businesses and homes around the city of Auckland.

Police spokesman Grant Ogilvie said the seized cars include a Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe worth more than $400,000 as well as several Mercedes. Two short-barreled shotguns and a number of valuable artworks were also confiscated, he added.

He said police seized more than $8 million, money that was invested in various New Zealand financial institutions and which has now been placed in a trust pending the outcome of the cases.

New Zealand's Fairfax Media reported that the four defendants stood together in an Auckland courtroom in the first step of the extradition proceedings.

Dotcom's lawyer raised objections to a media request to take photographs and video, but then Dotcom spoke out from the dock, saying he didn't mind photos or video "because we have nothing to hide." The judge granted the media access, and ruled that the four would remain in custody until a second hearing Monday.

Dotcom, Megaupload's former CEO and current chief innovation officer, is a resident of Hong Kong and New Zealand and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany who had his name legally changed. The 37-year-old was previously known as Kim Schmitz and Kim Tim Jim Vestor.

Two other German citizens and one Dutch citizen also were arrested and three other defendants ? another German, a Slovakian and an Estonian ? remain at large.

Megaupload has retained Washington power attorney Bob Bennett to defend it, according to a person inside the company. Bennett is best known for representing former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The person within Megaupload spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the company's plans.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which defends free speech and digital rights online, said in a statement that the arrests set "a terrifying precedent. If the United States can seize a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, what is next?"

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.

Before Megaupload was taken down, the company posted a statement saying allegations that it facilitated massive breaches of copyright laws were "grotesquely overblown."

"The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch," the statement said.

Several sister sites were also shut down, including one dedicated to sharing pornography files.

News of the shutdown seemed to bring retaliation from hackers who claimed credit for attacking the Justice Department's website. Federal officials confirmed it was down for hours Thursday evening and that the disruption was being "treated as a malicious act."

A loose affiliation of hackers known as "Anonymous" claimed credit for the attack. Also hacked was the site for the Motion Picture Association of America, which has campaigned for a crackdown on piracy.

According to the indictment, Megaupload was estimated at one point to be the 13th most frequently visited website on the Internet. Current estimates by companies that monitor Web traffic place it in the top 100.

Megaupload is considered a "cyberlocker," in which users can upload and transfer files that are too large to send by email. Such sites can have perfectly legitimate uses. But the Motion Picture Association of America estimated that the vast majority of content being shared on Megaupload was in violation of copyright laws.

The website allowed users to download some content for free, but made money by charging subscriptions to people who wanted access to faster download speeds or extra content. The website also sold advertising.

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. Before the website was taken down, it contained endorsements from Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Kanye West, among others.

The company listed Swizz Beatz, a musician who married Keys in 2010, as its CEO. He was not named in the indictment and declined to comment through a representative.

The five-count indictment, which alleges copyright infringement as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering and racketeering, described a site designed specifically to reward users who uploaded pirated content for sharing, and turned a blind eye to requests from copyright holders to remove copyright-protected files.

For instance, users received cash bonuses if they uploaded content popular enough to generate massive numbers of downloads, according to the indictment. Such content was almost always copyright protected, the indictment said.

The Justice Department said it was illegal for anyone to download pirated content, but their investigation focused on the leaders of the company, not end users who may have downloaded a few movies for personal viewing.

A lawyer who represented the company in a lawsuit last year declined to comment Thursday. Efforts to reach an attorney representing Dotcom were unsuccessful.

Although Megaupload is based in Hong Kong, the size of its operation in the southern Chinese city was unclear. The administrative contact listed in its domain registration, Bonnie Lam, did not respond immediately for a request for comment sent to a fax number and email address listed.

The indictment was returned in the Eastern District of Virginia, which claimed jurisdiction in part because some of the alleged pirated materials were hosted on leased servers in Ashburn, Virginia. Prosecutors there have pursued multiple piracy investigations.

The Justice Department also was investigating the "significant increase in activity" that disrupted its website. It said in a statement that it was working to "investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause."

The site appeared to be working again late Thursday. A spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America said in an emailed statement that the group's site also had been hacked, but it too appeared to be working later in the evening.

"The motion picture and television industry has always been a strong supporter of free speech," the spokesman said. "We strongly condemn any attempts to silence any groups or individuals."

____

Matthew Barakat reported from McLean, Virginia. AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_hi_te/internet_piracy_indictment

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Katherine Heigl wants "Grey's Anatomy" return (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Katherine Heigl's stint on "Grey's Anatomy" certainly wasn't without its drama -- on-screen and off -- and now the actress says she wants to check back into Seattle Grace and see what her Dr. Izzie Stevens character is up to.

While promoting her new big-screen action comedy "One for the Money," Heigl told E! Online she has already let the "Grey" producers know she wants to return to the medical drama to find out if her "floundering" Dr. Izzie finally got her act together.

"I've told them I want to (return)," Heigl said. "I don't know ... being a showrunner and being a writer of a TV series like that is so complicated ... she's (series creator Shonda Rhimes) balancing about 40 different storylines, so I don't know if it fits into their sort of vision for this season or next or however many seasons it goes.

"I really, really, really want to see where (Izzie) is," Heigl continued. "I just want to know what happened to her and where she went and what she's doing now. My idea is that she actually, like, figures it out, and finds some success and does really well in a different hospital, because she was always floundering . she was always one step behind the eight ball, and I want to see that girl take some power back."

Heigl, one of the show's original cast members, won a Supporting Actress Emmy for her role on "Grey's" in 2007, and left "Grey's Anatomy" in 2010, saying she wanted to devote time to raising her daughter.

But her stint on the series included a bitter 2007 contract negotiation that became public, as reported by People magazine. Heigl also made negative -- and public -- comments to the Los Angeles Times about the show's writers and storylines when she refused to submit her name for consideration in the 2008 Emmy competition.

Reps for Heigl and ABC did not immediately reply to TheWrap's request for comment.

(Editing by Chris Michaud)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/tv_nm/us_katherineheigl

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Top Senate Republican wants Web bill shelved (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The top Senate Republican urged Democrats on Thursday to set aside a bill aimed at stopping online piracy of movies and music, dealing yet another blow to controversial legislation that has pitted Hollywood against tech companies.

The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the PROTECT IP Act on Tuesday. That measure, and a similar bill in the House of Representatives, is aimed at curbing access to overseas websites that traffic in pirated content and counterfeit products.

But support for the bills has eroded over fears that legitimate web sites could also end up in legal jeopardy.

"Rather than prematurely bringing the Protect IP Act to the Senate floor, we should first study and resolve the serious issues with this legislation," said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate. "I encourage the Senate majority to reconsider its decision to proceed to this bill."

Democrats have a majority in the Senate but bills need 60 votes to come up for debate so the legislation will need some Republican support to survive.

Earlier on Friday, a senior Senate Democratic aide acknowledged that the bill's backers did not have the votes to bring the measure to the floor to begin debate.

"The momentum now is for killing the bill," the aide said.

But, the aide said, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was working to craft a proposed compromise that could win Senate approval.

"We should be able to go ahead and try to fix the bill. There is no reason that this bill can't be fixed through the legislative process," the aide said.

Some senators who had co-sponsored the legislation dropped their support on Wednesday as protests blanketed the Internet, turning Wikipedia and other popular web sites dark. Google, Facebook, Twitter and others protested the proposed legislation but did not shut down.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/digitalmusic/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/wr_nm/us_internet_congress

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SOPA and PIPA explained (The Upshot)

If you tried to look something up on Wikipedia today, you may have been surprised to learn not about whatever obscure fact you were hunting down, but that there's a war being waged over what you can see on the Web. Two bills, Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, are seeking to limit copyright infringement online, and the web is in revolt..

On Wednesday, Wikipedia (which blacked out its site) and Google, which visibly protested the legislation on its homepage,? voicing their opposition (along with many other sites, including Yahoo!) to bills? they argue would ruin the freewheeling world of the Internet. Media companies are in favor of the legislation, arguing that they need a way to stop illegal downloading and pirating of their material.

So what are these bills exactly?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is the House bill; Protect IP Act (PIPA) is its Senate sister. Both focus on foreign websites that pirate movies, music, and other materials from the U.S. (sites that many Americans use -- an industry study has noted that 17.5% of all bandwidth in the U.S. is taken up by illegal downloads.)

That may sound sensible, but many media companies operating online think the language is too vague in terms of defining what constitutes piracy; feel the bills don't define who is responsible for making sure illegal material from foreign sites isn't showing up on U.S. sites; and think the legislation imposes sanctions that are too heavy-handed.

Here's why: If passed, the bills would allow the owner of the material to seek court orders that would block access to the alleged pirate site and require credit card companies and advertisers to stop payments to the site.

So how are law-breaking sites identified? SOPA defines a "foreign infringing site" as one that is "committing or infringing" on copyright. PIPA is more specific, describing sites that have "no significant use other than" copyright infringement. Websites would have 5 days to appeal.

Websites and media companies worry that they could be targeted for unknowingly hosting pirated material -- think of user-generated video uploaded on Facebook, Wikipedia, or Twitter.

SOPA would also make it illegal to stream unauthorized content. This has been dubbed the "Free Bieber" provision, since the baby-faced pop icon Justin Bieber got his start on YouTube performing music from other singers.

The Senate bill is losing sponsors who think the legislation goes too far. Voting on PIPA will begin on January 24.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20120118/tc_yblog_upshot/sopa-and-pipa-explained

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US military chief in Israel to discuss Iran nukes (AP)

JERUSALEM ? The top U.S. general, visiting Israel at a delicate and dangerous moment in the global standoff with Tehran, is expected to press for restraint amid fears that the Jewish state is nearing a decision to attack Iran's nuclear program.

Thursday's arrival of Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, just four months after he took office as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, underscores Washington's concern about a possible Israeli military strike.

It also spotlights key questions at the center of the global maneuvering to prevent an Iranian bomb:

? How effective are the current economic sanctions in pressuring Iran's leadership? Israel wants a far tougher regime, while the Americans seem confident the current path will suffice.

? Could aerial bombardment or missile strikes, the expected Israeli military toolkit, damage nuclear installations deep underground enough to be worth a counterstrike from Iran? Some think Israel is mainly saber-rattling to scare governments into tougher sanctions.

? Might covert activity suffice? Iranian scientists and military officials have been killed, computer viruses unleashed, a missile base blown up. Finger-pointing and denials abound; evidence about who's behind it all does not.

? Could Israel really surprise Washington, its main ally and protector, with a military move that could affect America itself, in an election year to boot? Israeli officials have not pledged to give advance warning.

In the background, rarely openly discussed, is the somewhat prickly relationship between the Obama administration and the rightist government in Israel. The antipathy, born largely of disagreements on the Palestinian front, may not be helping navigate a situation as delicate as Iran.

But the main thing for Israel is the acute sense that a Rubicon is about to be crossed ? that a nuclear-armed Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for Israel's destruction, is a direct existential threat.

Most of the West does agree with Israel that Iran, despite denials, is developing nuclear weapons technology. But the United States is clearly concerned that a military attack could backfire, fragmenting international opposition to Iran and sending oil prices skyrocketing.

Beginning Friday, Dempsey is set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and much of Israel's political and military leadership. Israeli officials involved in the preparations for the meetings said they expected Dempsey to urge restraint as the U.S. tries to rally additional global pressure on Iran. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the visit.

In a joint statement, the U.S. and Israel said the visit would focus on "cooperation between the two militaries, as well as mutual security challenges."

Israeli Cabinet Minister Dan Meridor, whose responsibilities include monitoring the Iranian nuclear program, said there was broad agreement with the Americans and the West on the need to stop the Iranians. "If the sanctions work, then all the other options will remain strictly theoretical," he said.

An air raid on Iran would require flying over potentially hostile Arab airspace and could well trigger a response from Iran, which possesses an arsenal of missiles capable of striking Israel. The Iranians could also encourage their proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to heat up Israel's northern and southern borders. American soldiers based in the Persian Gulf might come under fire. Islamist backers of Iran could target civilians all over the world.

It also remains unclear how much damage an attack could inflict. Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered throughout the country and buried deep underground. Israeli officials concede that any attack could set back, but not destroy, Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Speaking with The Associated Press, a senior military official said Thursday that the threat is real. "If you are talking about the use of power against Iran, any kind of power, and create any damage over there, yes, it can be done," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines.

Israel has attacked nuclear sites in foreign countries before. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor. In 2007, Israeli aircraft destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed to be a secretly built nuclear reactor.

While Israel is unlikely to strike without coordinating with the Americans, who maintain thousands of forces on aircraft carriers and military bases in the Gulf, Israeli officials will not make any promises to Dempsey, the officials said.

This week, Netanyahu told lawmakers that four rounds of international sanctions "have harmed the Iranians but not in a way that would stop their nuclear program." His deputy prime minister, Moshe Yaalon, expressed disappointment in a radio interview that the U.S. has delayed plans to expand sanctions, suggesting election-year considerations were to blame.

And in an interview published Thursday, the recently retired Israeli military intelligence chief claimed Iran already has all the components to build a nuclear bomb. "If the Iranians get together tonight and decide to secretly develop a bomb, then they have all the resources and components to do so," Amos Yadlin told the Maariv daily.

In a balancing message, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday that Israel was "very far" from deciding whether to strike. And Israel and the United States this week postponed a major military exercise.

Israelis generally assess that Iran is close to acquiring the expertise and know-how to build a bomb but a year or two away from being able to build and deliver an atomic weapon.

In a possible preview of Dempsey's message, a senior U.S. State Department official convened Israeli journalists on Wednesday and insisted American sanctions have been effective, Israeli newspapers reported.

The official, who was not identified, reportedly said sanctions were gradual to avoid a sudden jump in oil prices but could be ramped up to include an embargo on Iran's central bank ? and were already having a harsh effect on Iran's economy.

For more than three years, Tehran has blocked International Atomic Energy Agency attempts to follow up on U.S. and other intelligence alleging covert Iranian work on nuclear arms, dismissing the charges as baseless and insisting all its nuclear activities were peaceful. In November the IAEA issued a report saying some of Iran's alleged experiments have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said he hoped European Union foreign ministers will reach an accord at a meeting Monday in Brussels on an embargo on Iranian petroleum exports and a freeze on the assets of the Iranian Central Bank.

The U.S. last month enacted similar sanctions, though it has delayed implementing them for at least six months in fear of sending oil prices higher at a time when the global economy is struggling. Iran has threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz in response to sanctions.

At the Pentagon on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. military was "fully prepared" to deal with any Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to close the strategic waterway, the route for about one-sixth of the global oil flow, because of new U.S. sanctions.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_iran

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Real-life James Bonds used fake rock to spy on Russia (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? What would James Bond do without the ingenious Q, who provides him with all sorts of improbable gadgets for his espionage adventures?

It now seems that Britain's real-life secret agents have a Q of their own after it emerged that they used a fake rock concealing a high-tech communications device to spy on Russia.

In a television program aired on Russian state television in 2006, Russia's FSB security service accused Britain of using the gadget for top secret communications in Moscow, but London did not admit to the charge at the time.

Now Jonathan Powell, who was chief of staff to then Prime Minister Tony Blair, has confirmed the Russians were correct.

"They had us bang to rights," Powell says in a BBC documentary to be aired on Thursday.

"Clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose," he says in an excerpt played on BBC radio ahead of the broadcast.

Relations between London and Moscow were tense at the time because of disagreements over the war in Iraq, Chechnya, and a British court's refusal to extradite businessmen and Chechen leaders wanted by Russia.

"There's not much you can say. You can't really call up and say 'terribly sorry about that and it won't happen again'," Powell says.

As well as exposing the dummy rock ploy, the 2006 Russian program said Britain was covertly funding Russian pressure groups that were subject to a state crackdown. Britain said it was open in its support of Russian NGOs active on human rights and civil society issues.

Espionage scandals were a staple of British-Russian relations during the Cold War. Although they are less frequent nowadays, ties between the two countries have been strained in recent years by allegations of covert operations.

In particular, Russia enraged Britain with its refusal to extradite an ex-KGB man who is the main suspect in the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who was poisoned by radioactive polonium in London.

The Russian television program showed footage of a man struggling to pick up a rock from a snowy roadside in Moscow before walking off with it -- a real-life replay of the "dead letter drop" of spy novel fame.

The man was accused of being a British spy and the rock was described as a fake that contained a device capable of receiving information electronically and beaming it to a hand-held computer.

The FSB said four spies working undercover as diplomats at the British embassy in Moscow had made use of the device.

They would have made Q proud -- if only they hadn't got caught.

(Reporting by Avril Ormsby, writing by Estelle Shirbon)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120119/lf_nm_life/us_britain_russia_spying

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