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A co-founder of file-sharing website Pirate Bay was sentenced to two years in jail on Thursday for hacking into computers at a company that manages data for Swedish authorities and making illegal online money transfers, a court said. Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was extradited to Sweden last year from Cambodia to begin a one-year jail sentence after being convicted in 2009 of internet piracy. He was then charged by authorities as part of the separate hacking investigation.   "The hacking has been very extensive and technically advanced," the Nacka district court said in a statement. "The attacker has affected very sensitive systems." He had denied the charges. Prosecution documents say Warg, a 28-year-old Swede, managed to transfer 24,200 Danish crowns ($4,300) online, but also attempted, in several different transactions, to transfer a total of around 683,000 euros ($915,500). The investigation was into data infringement involving outsourcing firm Logica. Swedis

A fresh effort to end Afghanistan's 12-year-old war was in limbo on Thursday after a diplomatic spat about the Taliban's new Qatar office delayed preliminary discussions between the United States and the Islamist insurgents. A meeting between U.S. officials and representatives of the Taliban had been set for Thursday in Qatar but Afghan government anger at the fanfare surrounding the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf state threw preparations into confusion. The squabble may set the tone for what could be arduous negotiations to end a conflict that has torn at Afghanistan's stability since the U.S. invasion following the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets.   Asked when the talks would now take place, a source in Doha said, "There is nothing scheduled that I am aware of." But the U.S. government said it was confident the U.S.-Taliban talks would soon go forward. "We anticipate these talks happening in the coming days," said St

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has offered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas just two weeks after taking office, an official in his press office told Reuters on Thursday. It was not immediately clear whether Abbas would accept the resignation by Hamdallah, an academic and political independent whose cabinet convened for the first time last week.   The official told Reuters Hamdallah made the abrupt, unexpected move because of a "dispute over his powers". A note on Hamdallah's Facebook page said his decision came after "outside interferences in his powers and duties". His cabinet consists overwhelmingly of members of the Fatah faction led by Abbas and political commentators had immediately questioned how much leeway he would have to maneuver. Hamdallah's predecessor, American-educated economist Salam Fayyad, resigned in April after six years in power defined by tough economic challenges and rivalries with Fatah politicians eager to

Lake Powell accident , A Utah man driving a motorboat on Lake Powell was apparently distracted by his young passengers when he hit a houseboat and flipped the craft, leaving his wife dead and his daughter and his son's girlfriend missing, deputies said. Adrian Jackman , 59, of South Jordan, apparently tried to swerve when he noticed the moving houseboat but hit the front corner, authorities said. The accident about 8 a.m. Thursday killed his wife, Marilyn Jackman , 57. His daughter, Jessica Jackman , 22, and his son's girlfriend, Valerie Rae Bradshaw , 29, of Sandy, Utah, are missing in the water. Crews brought a robot equipped with a camera to search for the missing women Friday in the 400-foot-deep water near Dangling Rope Marina. But they ran into technical problems and had to call off the effort, according to Denise Shultz, spokeswoman for the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area that encompasses Lake Powell. She said the Utah Highway Patrol has been as

A Christian group that once promoted therapy to encourage gays and lesbians to overcome their sexual preferences has closed its doors and apologized to homosexuals, acknowledging its mission had been hurtful and ignorant. Exodus International billed itself as the oldest and largest Christian ministry dealing with faith and homosexuality, operating since 1976. It announced it would cease operations in a statement on its website on Wednesday.   The Irvine, California-based group's board unanimously voted to close Exodus International and begin a separate ministry, the statement said. "I am sorry for the pain and hurt that many of you have experienced," President Alan Chambers said in a statement. "I am sorry some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt when your attractions didn't change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatized parents." Chambers said he was

France and Spain led a Europe-wide push on Thursday to get U.S. Internet giant Google to change its policies on collecting user data. News that the U.S. National Security Agency under the Prism surveillance program secretly gathered user data from nine U.S. companies, including Google, to track people's movements and contacts makes the timing especially sensitive for Google. France's data protection watchdog (CNIL) said Google had broken French law and gave it three months to change its privacy policies or risk a fine of up to 150,000 euros ($200,000).   Spain's Data Protection Agency (AEPD) told Google it would be fined between 40,000 euros and 300,000 euros for each of the five violations of the law, that it had failed to be clear about what it did with data, may be processing a "disproportionate" amount and holding onto it for an "undetermined or unjustified" period of time. The CNIL, which has been leading Europe's inquiry since Google lau

Doctors at a Rome hospital battled for 40 minutes to try to save the life of James Gandolfini, best known for his Emmy-winning role as a mob boss in the TV series "The Sopranos," before pronouncing him dead, the emergency room chief said on Thursday. Gandolfini, 51, whose performance as Tony Soprano made him a household name and help usher in a new era of American television drama, was vacationing in Rome and had been scheduled to attend the closing of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily on Saturday.   He was taken from his Rome hotel to the city's Umberto I hospital late on Wednesday, according to a hospital spokesperson. The actor's 13-year-old son, Michael, had found him collapsed in the bathroom of his Rome hotel room, Gandolfini's manager, Mark Armstrong, said in an email. "The resuscitation maneuvers, including heart massage, etc., continued for 40 minutes and then, seeing no electric activity from the heart, this was interrupted and we declared