From: David Groep <info@eugridpma.org>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2008 22:00:00 +0100
Subject: Sea cable severance in Mediterranean affects CRL downloads of several authorities

Dear Users and Relying Parties of the IGTF and EUGridPMA

Following the severance of three (out of four) undersea cables in the
Mediterranean basin on December 19th, 2008, around 7.30 CET, 
your ability to retrieve Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) for
some of the IGTF accredited authorities may be limited or absent.

France Telecom, the company responsible for the maintenance of the
cables (Sea Me We3, Sea Me We4, FLAG) is working to repair these
cables and restore connectivity as soon as possible, but it
may take up to December 31st to fully recover. Please see their
press release at:
  http://www.francetelecom.com/en_EN/press/press_releases/cp081219en.html

This affects CAs located in the Middle East (in particular PK-Grid (PK)
with hash f5ead794 and IRAN-Grid (IR) with hash ce33db76), as well as MaGrid. 
Although not apparent from the press release, academic connectivity to 
Morocco (by MARWAN) is provided through the EUMedConnect hub in 
Palermo, Sicily, and also suffers from this outage. 

Connectivity to PK and IR is intermittent, whereas connectivity to MA
is completely lost since Dec 19th, 0730 CET. At this moment, we have
no better estimates than those made public by France Telecom as to when
service will be restored.

We apologize for this inconvenience.