Dzokhar Tsarnaev (AFP Photo)

 Boston Bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev has been officially charged with killing four people and using weapons of mass destruction, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Tsarnaev, 19, faces a potential death sentence over the alleged crimes.

According to the United States Attorneys’ Office, 17 of the 30 charges levied against the teenager carry a penalty of life in prison or execution.

“The defendant’s alleged conduct forever changed lives," prosecutors said in a statement.

Officials believe the former UMass Dartmouth student and his older brother Tamerlan planted homemade explosives near the finish line ahead of the April 15 race. The double explosion that went off as runners crossed the line en masse caused three deaths and 264 injuries.

The indictment says the Tsarnaev brothers used pressure cookers stuffed with low-explosive powder, ball bearings, nails, adhesive, electronic components, and other substances to manufacture their devices.

Jahar Tsarni, as prosecutors referred to him, is also charged with carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury. While fleeing the police, the brothers stopped a vehicle and ordered the driver to turn over the car and $800, according to officers.

“I thought it was just a robbery...He took out his gun, pointed it to me,” the carjacking victim told CBS. “He told that, ‘You know I am serious. Don’t be stupid.’”

Four days later, the Tsarnaev brothers allegedly killed a police officer during a firefight. Tamerlan also died in the incident.

  A wounded Dzokhar later hid inside a boat in the backyard of a Watertown, Massachusetts residence. He was arrested after a massive manhunt and placed in a medical prison facility where he has stayed ever since.

Prosecutors say Tsarnaev scribbled an anti-government message as he bled from a throat and leg wound, waiting for the police to find him.

“The US Government is killing our innocent civilians. I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished. We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all,” it read, the indictment claims. “Stop killing our innocent people, we will stop.”

One of the passages, the FBI claimed, quoted Anwar al-Awlaki, the American propagandist killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen. Previous reports indicated that Tamerlan Tsarnaev watched Awlaki’s speeches on YouTube.

“Today’s indictment is the result of the dedicated and collective efforts of law enforcement and intelligence partners, working with a sense of urgency and purpose to find those responsible for those deadly attacks,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller. “These continuing efforts reflect the pursuit of justice for those who lost their lives and the scores of individuals who were injured.”

While the indictment did not speculate on any larger conspiracy behind the attacks, prosecutors did say they found an issue of Inspire magazine - an English language Al-Qaeda publication - downloaded by Dzokhar. The literature, which was dated  summer of 2010, contained “detailed instructions for constructing IEDs using pressure cookers, explosive powder from fireworks, shrapnel, adhesive and other materials,” the indictment read.

“IEDs constructed in this manner are designed to shred flesh, shatter bone, and cause extreme pain and suffering, as well as death.”

Dzokhar was initially unable to talk, but said in a phone call released by his mother earlier this month that he is well-fed and recovering physically.

The Tsarnaev brothers are ethnic Chechens and have roots in Russia’s North Caucasus – a region that has witnessed a massive Islamist insurgency in the past and partly remains a hotbed of extremism.

AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards

 Sir Tim Berners-Lee has lashed out at Western governments, calling them hypocritical for spying on the internet while reproaching other oppressive nations for doing the same; adding that the revelations may change the way people use computers.

The British computer scientist, who invented the Web in 1989, accused the West of "insidious" online spying after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) dragnet telephone and internet surveillance programs, implicating US and UK in a wave of international criticism.

"In the Middle East, people have been given access to the internet, but they have been snooped on and then they have been jailed," Berners-Lee told The Times newspaper in an interview.

"It can be easy for people in the West to say 'Oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy.' But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the internet," he added.

Berners-Lee believes that the new revelations about Western government spying could change the way people, especially teenagers, use the internet and their computers.

"Teenagers who are unsure about their sexuality, who need to contact others, or people being abused trying to find helplines... There are things that happen on the net that are very intimate, which people are going to be loath to do if they feel there is somebody looking over their shoulder."

Another concern that Berners-Lee raises is around the safety of the already collected information.

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.(AFP Photo / Carl Court)

  The web’s inventor spoke out before accepting a US$1.5 million joint engineering prize awarded by Queen Elizabeth to five men, who are considered to be the fathers of the internet, including Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen.

Berners-Lee argues that internet freedom must be safeguarded against companies or governments trying to take over control.

"When you make something universal … it can be used for good things or nasty things … we just have to make sure it's not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control," he said at the award ceremony.

One of the award recipients, Google Vice-President Vint Cerf, suggested companies should come up with ways to go around the surveillance, such as developing encrypted web communication.

Snowden blew the whistle on an NSA program called PRISM that collects correspondence and video conversations of foreigners using internet services like Google, Skype, Yahoo and Facebook.

He also provided documents showing the intelligence agency collects data on phone calls handled by the major US telephone companies.

On top of that the whistleblower exposed British spy agency GCHQ’s access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories, and revealed that it shares this data with the NSA.

Snowden was charged with espionage by US federal prosecutors on Friday and currently remains in an airport limbo in Russia’s transit zone after he flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.

Snowden’s stopover in the transit zone could be prolonged indefinitely, as his passport, which was annulled by the US on Saturday, leaves him without the necessary documentation with which to travel, a source reportedly connected with Snowden told Interfax.

Kimberly McCarthy

Despite pleas from thousands of protesters, prison officials administered a single dose of pentobarbital and pronounced McCarthy dead at 6:37 pm local time Wednesday. McCarthy, a 52-year-old African-American, had been convicted for the 1997 robbery, beating and fatal stabbing of Dorothy Booth, her 71-year-old white neighbor.

McCarthy, a former nursing home therapist who became addicted to crack cocaine, reportedly cut off Booth’s finger in an attempt to steal the retired college professor’s wedding ring. She blamed the crime on drug dealers but was also linked by DNA to the murders of two other senior citizens.

She was first woman to be put to death in the US since 2010 and only the fifth in Texas since 1854. Texas has carried out nearly 40 per cent of America's executions, with more than 1,300 since the Supreme Court resurrected the dormant law in 1976. Governor Rick Perry alone has overseen more than 250 executions during his time in office, according to human rights-focused journalist Rhania Khalek, the most of any governor in history.

“I just wanted to say thanks to all who have supported me over the years,” McCarthy wrote in her last statement. “Thank you everybody, this is not a loss, this is a win. You know where I am going.”

Her final meal was pepper steak, mashed potatoes with gravy along with mixed vegetables and cake.

She became the eighth person to be put to death in Texas in 2013 alone, although after Wednesday 282 more inmates will remain on Texas’ death row. Seven Texan men are scheduled to die in the coming months, according to the Associated Press. McCarthy, the Death Penalty Information Center noted, is the 17th person in America to be put to death in the first six months of 2013.

McCarthy was granted a retrial in 2002 after proving that the original prosecution intentionally excluded African-American jurors. She was again convicted and returned to death row. She was granted a stay of execution in January and then April of this year.

Other states have altogether stopped administering lethal injections. Oregon has not executed a single person since 1997, and California, despite having the nation’s largest death row population at 727, has not carried out an execution since 2006.

Sixty-one per cent of all Americans responded in the affirmative when asked in a 2013 Gallup poll if they support capital punishment. A 2012 Texas Tribune poll indicated that a mere 21 per cent of Texans were opposed to the death penalty, evidence of which came during Governor Perry’s 2011 run for the presidency, when he was roundly applauded for overseeing so many executions.

“I’ve never struggled [to sleep at night] at all,” he said. “In the state of Texas when you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you are involved in another crime that killed one of our citizens – you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas.”

The nationwide decline in executions is, at least in part, attributable to unearthed evidence that has exonerated wrongfully convicted Americans across the country. Earlier this year the National Registry of Exonerations revealed that Texas – and Dallas County, in particular, where McCarthy was convicted – is the national leader in exonerations.

A probe, ordered after that study and published April 2013, revealed that at least 117 people in Texas were imprisoned over the last 25 years for crimes they did not commit.

“Texas has been showcased as the number on state in the nation for wrongful convictions,” state Rep. Ruth McClendon told the Houston Chronicle. “Each conviction of an innocent person reveals a tragic failure of the justice system.”

 Facebook says it has not provided any user data to Turkish authorities in response to protest-related requests. It comes after a Turkish minister said the social media site has been cooperative “for a long time,” and that Twitter will likely comply too.

“Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests,” the company said in a statement. “We reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child.”

Facebook has expressed concerns over a draft bill on social media which would require companies to share data with Turkish authorities. Executives plan on raising the issue during this week’s meeting with Turkish officials in the US.

Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, Binali Yildirim, said the country’s government was satisfied with Facebook’s assistance.

“Facebook has been working in coordination with the Turkish authorities for a long time. They have a unit in Turkey. We don’t have any problem with them,” Yildirim said. The statement sparked outrage among Turkish social network users.

Turkish protesters stand in Red Crescent square during a 'duranadam' (standing person) protest in Ankara (AFP Photo / AdemM Atlan)

  Yildirim added that Twitter has not shown such “positive approach” despite “necessary warnings” from Turkey. He said that the Turkish government has asked Twitter, along with other social media sites, to set up a representative office inside the country.

“We have told all social media that...if you operate in Turkey you must comply with Turkish law…When information is requested, we want to see someone in Turkey who can provide this...there needs to be an interlocutor we can put our grievance to and who can correct an error if there is one,” he said.

“Twitter will probably comply too. Otherwise, this is a situation that cannot be sustained,” Yildirim stressed. His statement was presumably referring to social media’s role in the country’s recent anti-government protests. He added that the government seeks only to “turn down the volume of the social media,” rather than restricting it.

Another ministry official told Reuters that Turkey has asked Twitter to reveal the identities of users who posted messages which were considered insulting to Prime Minister Erdogan or the Turkish government. It was not immediately clear if Twitter responded.

Prime Minister Erdogan called social networking sites a “nuisance” during the anti-government protests in June, after local media reported that dozens were arrested for “inciting unrest” via social media.

The country's interior minister previously announced that Ankara was working on new regulations that would target so-called "provocateurs" on social media. A source told Reuters that the justice ministry had proposed that any Turk wishing to open a Twitter account would have to enter his or her national identification number. This was reportedly turned down by the transport ministry for being technically infeasible.

Turkey has a long record of legislative moves which rights groups believe fall under internet censorship. Ankara banned YouTube for more than two years in 2008 after a video clip ‘insulted’ the Turkish Republic’s founder, Ataturk.

Russia’s upper house, the Federation House, has approved a bill introducing fines for propaganda of non-traditional sex relations to minors, including in the media, on the internet and via viral adverts.

Some 137 senators voted for the draft law which introduces administrative liability and fines of up to a million roubles (over US$ 30,000) for promotion of homosexuality among children. One senator abstained from voting and no one voted against the legislation.

The controversial bill – which critics fear may spark a wave of homophobia in the country – was approved by the lower house, the State Duma, on June 11. The vast majority of the population – 88 % - is also in favor of the introduction of the ban, according to a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM).

The draft law is not discriminative against LGBT people and is only aimed to protect minors, Federation Council speaker, Valentina Matvienko, emphasized on Wednesday, ahead of voting.

Unlike in the Soviet times, people with non-traditional sexual orientation are no longer prosecuted in Russia, she reminded.

“They are ordinary equal members of the society. As adults, they are entitled to decide how they want to live. But when it comes to minors [the ban on propaganda] is not someone’s whim, but a demand from the society,” Matvienko said.

Under the bill, individuals will be fined up to 5,000 roubles ($US 152) for such propaganda, officials will have to pay up to 50,000 roubles (about US$ 1,500) and companies – up to 500,000 roubles (about $US 15,000).

If law violators use the media or the internet for the promotion of non-traditional sex relations, they will face even harsher punishment. For instance, individuals will have shell out up to 100,000 roubles (about US$ 3,000), while organizations – a million roubles or face a 90-day suspension of activities.

Foreign citizens or stateless persons who violate the ban will face a fine or an arrest for up to 15 days followed by a deportation from Russia.

The law also defines what is considered the gay propaganda of non-traditional relations. It is the distribution of information aimed at forming non-traditional sexual concept in children, describing such ties as attractive, promoting the distorted understanding of social equality of traditional and non-traditional relations and also unwanted solicitation of information that could provoke interest in such relations.

The bill was slammed as “anti-gay” by gay rights activists both in Russia and abroad. The issue was raised again earlier in the week. The Russian president called on Western countries not to interfere with Russian internal affairs, speaking at a media conference during his trip to Finland.  He reiterated that the draft law is not about introducing any sort of sanctions on homosexuality and does not violate rights of sexual minorities.

“Some countries ... think that there is no need to protect children from this. We Do. We are not going to interfere,” he said. “But we are going to provide such protection the way that State Duma lawmakers have decided.”

To come into force, the bill has yet to be signed by the president.

MMM 2011 office at Rechnoy Vokzal subway station, Moscow. (RIA Novosti)

The Russian government is considering a set of amendments to the Criminal Code that establish preventive measures against Ponzi schemes, including jail terms for active participants.

The amendments have been drafted by the Finance Ministry and were submitted to the government at the end of last week, Business daily Kommersant reported, claiming its journalists received the full text of the draft.

The document suggests that the Criminal Code is amended with a separate article called “Illegal activity to obtain monetary funds”. Under this article organizers of Ponzi schemes and their active participants (those who attracted over 1.5 million roubles ($46,000)) could face up to seven years in prison. Other participants in the scam and people who promote it could be fined up to 15,000 roubles ($460).

The bill defines a Ponzi scheme (that are called “financial pyramids” in Russian) as “activities to attract monetary funds or other assets from physical persons with repayment of income from earlier attracted funds in cases when organizers are not engaged in investment or any other legal business”.  It also reads that such activity poses a great threat to social stability in the country.

So far, only Russia’s major law enforcement agency – the Investigative Committee – has voiced an objection to the bill saying that it contradicts the current Civil Code that reads that there can be no restrictions for attracting citizens’ means in the form of loans.

Usually Ponzi scheme organizers are charged with fraud, but this could only happen after the scheme crashes and the cheated investors can act as an aggrieved party in court. The new bill allows for preventive measures.

According to law enforcers over 400,000 Russians have been duped by Ponzi schemes since 2008 and the combined losses amount to over 40 billion roubles ($1.25 billion) . The situation was even more dire in the 1990s – back then just one swindler Sergey Mavrodi  managed to defraud 1.5 million people. Mavrodi was put on trial and after a period on the run was put in prison and served a four-and-a-half year term.

He attempted to get back into Ponzi schemes in 2011 and 2012 and this prompted Russian authorities to order a special law preventing such activities.

Currently Mavrodi is again on trial over large-scale fraud, and faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 1 million roubles (over $31,000).

 Edward Snowden is not booked to fly out of Moscow over the next three days, and with no valid passport, the NSA whistleblower might be stuck in airport limbo indefinitely.

The hot pursuit of Snowden has ground to a halt three days after the former CIA technician, wanted in the US on espionage charges, flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.

Washington, which wants Snowden for leaking details of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) dragnet telephone and Internet surveillance programs, charges that there is a clear legal basis for Moscow to hand him over.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who confirmed that Snowden had arrived in Moscow as a transit passenger despite speculation to the contrary, rebuffed US demands on Tuesday.

“We can only extradite any foreign citizens to such countries with which we have signed the appropriate international agreements on criminal extradition,” Putin said, adding that as Snowden had committed no crime on Russian soil, he is free to travel at will.

"Snowden is a free person. The sooner he chooses his final destination, the better it is for him and Russia," Putin continued.

However, the former NSA contractor appears to be staying put, as neither him nor his WikiLeaks-affiliated legal adviser Sarah Harrison have made travel plans over the coming days.

"They are not flying today and not over the next three days," an Aeroflot representative at the transfer desk at Sheremetyevo told Reuters.

"They are not in the system."

Snowden’s stopover in the transit zone at Sheremetyevo could be prolonged indefinitely, as his passport, which was annulled by the US on Saturday, leaves him without the necessary documentation with which to travel, a source reportedly connected with Snowden told Interfax.

“Snowden’s American passport is void and he is not in possession of any other document with which he can prove his identity. For this reason, he has to stay in Sheremetyevo’s transit zone and cannot leave Russia nor buy a ticket,” the source said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told RT that Snowden had been given special refugee documents by the Ecuadorian government which facilitated his travel to Russia. Still, the country's top Foreign Ministry official, Galo Galarza said on Wednesday that Ecuador has not granted Edward Snowden any refugee documents.

"He [Snowden] does not have a document issued by Ecuador, such as a passport or a refugee card, as speculated," said Galarza, as quoted by Ecuadorian television channel CT. So now it is unclear whether the whistleblower can continue traveling at all.

WikiLeals warned via Twitter on Wednesday that "cancelling Snowden's passport and bullying intermediary countries may keep Snowden permanently in Russia.”

#Snowden still in #Moscow airport, free to go anywhere... http://t.co/tdZ4vzmBXt #Navorski via http://t.co/Sc5lY73vVi pic.twitter.com/d87DGewJ32
— Egor Sheremet (@Sheremet_RT) June 25, 2013

Snowden, who has applied for asylum in Ecuador, was expected to make the next leg of his journey on Monday, as he had booked two tickets to Havana, Cuba. Snowden never showed for the flight, and according to RIA-Novosti, two tickets which he later booked for a Tuesday flight to the Cuban capital were returned just hours before departure. The next flight to Havana leaves on Wednesday.

If he ever makes it to Cuba, the next stop in his journey would be Caracas, Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro, who coincidentally is expected in Moscow next week for an energy summit, has said Caracas would also consider an asylum request from the whistleblower.

Although dozens of Moscow-based journalists have been staked out at the airport since Sunday, not a single image of Snowden has surfaced.

A receptionist at the Air Express Capsule Hotel in Terminal E of Sheremetyevo Airport told RIA-Novosti that Snowden had in fact spent several hours in one of the suites, “but left a long time ago.”

Several journalists attempted to make contact with Snowden during his stay at the hotel, but were unsuccessful, the hotel employee continued.

It has been speculated that Snowden, who remains at an undisclosed location within the transit zone, is purposely being held up by Russian security services for interrogation.

WikiLeaks has refuted the accusation, saying Harrison "is escorting him at all times."

A controversial voter identification law in Texas is expected to go into effect immediately, according to the state attorney general, in the wake of a Tuesday ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court.

Only moments after the high court invalidated part of the Voters Rights Act of 1965 on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said his state will begin “immediately” honoring local legislation that many say limits the ability for minorities to cast ballots.

Until this week’s SCOTUS ruling, states such as Texas have required federal preclearance to make changes to voting rules. With the invalidating of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 4, however, Texas and other locales are now in the free to enact their own rules for voters without awaiting permission from Washington.

“The section determined which states must receive clearance from the Justice Department or a federal court in Washington before they made minor changes to voting procedures, like moving a polling place, or major ones, like redrawing electoral districts,” Adam Liptak wrote for the New York Times.

In a 5-4 decision this week, however, the court canned that section of the Voters Right Act, prompting Abbott to say his state will at once begin mandating photo ID cards inside of polling places.

"With today's decision, the state's voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Abbott said Tuesday. “Photo identification will now be required when voting in elections in Texas."

“Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government,” Abbott added.

Gov. Rick Perry, who unsuccessfully vied for the GOP’s nod as presidential nominee last year, called the ruling “a clear victory for federalism and the states.”

“Texas may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power,” Perry said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Opponents of the Texas law feared that giving the state the ability to enact its own voter ID program would disenfranchise poor minority voters who would be unable to produce the documentation necessary to obtain a state sanctioned identification card. Last year a federal court said the state law imposed “strict, unforgiving burdens" on many Texas residents, but Tuesday’s ruling out of Washington will let Gov. Perry and his administration soon enforcing the ID program.

"The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws,” Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law chief counsel Jon Greenbaum told The Guardian. “Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades.”

"Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation,” he said.

President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, called the SCOTUS ruling “deeply disappointing.”

Abbott plans to make the ID program mandatory as soon as possible, but Susan Frederick, a legal expert with the National Conference for State Legislatures, told the Houston Chronicle that the attorney general may have jumped the gun.

“For any state to be able to move forward with legislative that is previously adjudicated or dealt with in state court, [officials] certainly have to go back and make sure it didn’t fly afoul of the state constitution or any other currently valid federal law,” she said.

Kim Dotcom (Reuters / Nigel Marple)

 Tech mogul Kim Dotcom announced that he plans to be involved in next New Zealand general election while lobbying against a new legislation which would give spy agencies more powers to retrieve internet users’ personal information.

"I'm going to get engaged. I'm going to help as much as I can during the next election to make sure there is a government that takes the internet more seriously," said the founder of the file-sharing service Megaupload at the "Mega Breakfast" annual meeting of the Institute of IT Professionals , the New Zealand Herald reports.

He urged the IT community to carry out a campaign to improve government policy concerning internet business and issues. At the meeting he called to lobby against a new legislation that would require internet and telecoms companies to provide backdoor government access and approval for new technology.

The new proposed  bill would allow the New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to spy on its citizens on behalf of another agency, if they have a warrant.

The GCSB carried out domestic surveillance for the Security Intelligence Service, police and other agencies until last August, when the Kim Dotcom case raised questions about its legality. It was found that the GCSB were illegally spying on the Megaupload founder, a German national with New Zealand residency, prior to his arrest in January 2012 for alleged copyright violation.

Dotcom was subsequently arrested by the authorities who were aiding a US investigation into copyright violation. In March, Dotcom was granted the right to sue the secret services agency. According to an inquiry released in April, another 88 New Zealand citizens may have been illegally spied on.

Along with his Mega founder Mathias Ortmann he told the IT colleagues at the meeting that the recent revelations of the US NSA mass surveillance program by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, including New Zealand’s GCSB, had boosted the demand for his company’s encrypted cloud storage system.

At the Breakfast meeting Dotcom dismissed  Prime Minister John Key’s  statement that the spying law had been misunderstood.

"The law says you can't spy on New Zealanders. John Key stands in front of cameras and says 'we misunderstood the law'. How stupid can you get?"

The revelation of illegal spying by government agencies had created a potential shift in responsibility for the Megaupload business, said Dotcom.

"The potential settlement or damages situation has changed quite a bit since we discovered what went on. Potentially, at some point, we could go after the New Zealand government for full damages. I've said before I don't want to be a burden to New Zealand. The majority of that (settlement) would be reinvested in submarine cables, rural broadband."

The internet tycoon announced that he is currently involved with two investor groups and is set to start work on a second submarine cable to bring faster internet to New Zealand within 12 months.

The Institute billed Dotcom and Ortmann’s addresses as a chance to engage with those behind "New Zealand's largest tech start-up this year" said the NZ Herald.

Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), is seen during a news broadcast on television at a restaurant in Hong Kong June 26, 2013. (Reuters)

Hong Kong’s Justice Secretary said the US confused Snowden’s middle name, lacked his passport number in a request for his arrest and failed to provide evidence for charges, preventing HK officials from detaining the leaker before he left the territory.

The Hong Kong government did not assist Edward Snowden, the man who revealed the top-secret NSA surveillance program PRISM, in leaving the territory, but incomplete paperwork prevented officials from issuing a provisional arrest warrant, Hong Kong Justice secretary Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said on Tuesday, according to the South China Morning Post.

The US referred to the former CIA employee and NSA contractor’s middle name as ‘James’, however the Hong Kong Immigration Department had the name ‘Joseph’, Yuen said. The application also lacked Snowden’s passport number, so there was ‘no legal basis’ to prevent him from leaving Hong Kong.

“Therefore, it was impossible and there was no legal basis under Hong Kong law for the Department of Justice to ask a Hong Kong judge to sign off on a provisional arrest warrant,” Yuen said adding  “[Thus] there then was no legal basis to restrict or ban Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.”

The US said Sunday it was “disappointed” by Hong Kong’s “troubling”  failure to detain the man responsible for the biggest leak of US intelligence in history, before he fled the territory on Saturday. The White House has insisted that the personal information in the paperwork of the leaker the US submitted to Hong Kong was correct.

The Hong Kong government on June 15 received the US request to detain Snowden, who also revealed US cyber spying on China. It named three charges including unauthorized disclosure of national defense information, unauthorized disclosure of intelligence and stealing state property.

In this file picture taken on June 13, 2013 protesters shout slogans in support of former US spy Edward Snowden as they march to the US consulate in Hong Kong. (AFP Photo)

 Yuen said that the US failed to clarify the first two charges and did not provide any evidence for the arrest, rejecting suggestions that Hong Kong had been deliberately stalling for time.

“We had not been deliberately delaying the process. All along, we have acted in full accordance with the law,” Yuen said.

According to the extradition treaty between the two countries, the HK officials had no authority to honor the USA’s extradition request due to lack of evidence under the first two charges.

The justice secretary noted that he had requested information from the US on Thursday and the US government has not responded to the request.

"Until the minute of Snowden's departure, the US government had not yet replied to our requests for clarification," he noted. "Any suggestion that we have been deliberately letting Mr Snowden go away or to do any other things to obstruct the normal operation is totally untrue."

Hong Kong had not yet received a reply from the US to this request, as of Tuesday, said the South China Morning Post.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden is reportedly in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. 

The Texas Senate was at odds over an abortion bill demanding all hospitals in the state performing the operation be shut down. Senator Wendy Davis spent most of her day staging a filibuster. Later, the governor stated the bill came too late to pass.

Davis, representing Fort Worth, staged a filibuster during the session, which denied the bill’s passage due to use of available time.

  She was wearing pink tennis shoes, prepared for an hours-long stand: the rules of a filibuster demand that the person remain standing, without leaning on a desk or taking any breaks, even for meals or to use the bathroom.

In her opening remarks, Davis said she was "rising on the floor today to humbly give voice to thousands of Texans" and called Republican efforts to pass the bill a "raw abuse of power."

Davis tried to stay comfortable by shifting her weight from hip to hip and walking around the desk. When a male bill supporter stood up in the gallery and shouted, “Abortion is genocide,” Davis carried on with her speech.

Her filibuster eventually lasted for almost 11 hours, and was dramatically ended minutes before midnight.

Republicans demanded that Davis stay on topic, a requirement they say she didn’t follow – plus, a colleague attempted to give her a back brace, which lawmakers protested.

Democrat senators chose Davis to protest against the bill as she had her first child as a teenager and graduated from Harvard Law School afterwards.

 Outside, all throughout the day, crowds of women stood in line, waiting for people in the gallery to give up their seats.

Hundreds of protesters clapped and shouted for the last 15 minutes of the special session in attempt to run out the clock, and they succeeded: according to the Texas State Senator Whitmire, "there was a vote, but it was an invalid vote because it happened after midnight.”

However, if the law is signed anytime soon, it would virtually mean the closing of every abortion clinic in Texas, the second largest state in terms of population (26 million people).

Only five out of 42 clinics will be able to remain in operation due to the law indicating that abortions should only be carried out at surgical centers. 

Thanks to the powerful voices of thousands of Texans, #SB5 is dead. An incredible victory for Texas women and those who love them.
— Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) June 26, 2013

The MI6 building, which is the SIS (The Secret Intelligence Service) headquarter, is pictured at Vauxhall Cross in central London (Reuters/Toby Melville)

 UK intelligence will receive the largest budget boost in the latest government review of public spending, reports the Telegraph. The funds increase follows civil rights uproar at UK involvement in the NSA spy scandal.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will present a review of public spending for 2015-16 on Wednesday with a view to cutting the deficit. While, funding for most government bodies will be slashed, MI6, MI5 and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will receive a bonus of up to $154 million.

The increase of 3 percent in overall funding for intelligence organizations, which already have a budget of $2.9 billion, will make them top of the UK government’s spending agenda, overtaking the health service, education and military.

The institutions that will suffer most at the hands of the $17 billion austerity cuts include the Business department, the Culture department, the Home Office and the Justice department. The Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, faces cuts of around $1.5 billion, with the reassurance that this will not stipulate a decrease in front-line troop numbers.

Recently, UK intelligence has come into the firing line after it was discovered the GCHQ has access to a massive global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories. GCHQ also shares this data with the NSA.

The extent of the spy program is such that whistleblower Edward Snowden, who originally leaked the information to the Guardian, called it “worse than the US.” Rights groups were up in arms about the sheer scope of the network able to monitor 600 million ‘telephone events’ a day.

“This appears to be dangerously close to, if not exactly, the centralized database of all our internet communications, including some content, that successive Governments have ruled out and parliament has never legislated for,” said Nick Pickles of UK privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch.

GCHQ, for its part, has defended its sweeping eavesdropping network, saying it had always been “scrupulous” in complying with the law.

In answer to the public uproar to the sweeping surveillance programs, UK Foreign Minister, William Hague spoke out in support of the spy network and data sharing with the US. He said that both the US and the UK had acted in compliance with the law and used information only “to protect citizens’ freedoms.”

 "We should have nothing but pride in the unique and indispensable intelligence-sharing relationship between Britain and the United States," Hague said in his speech at the Ronald Reagan Library on Tuesday afternoon. He went on to call the US-UK alliance a “bastion of freedom.”

Moreover, he stressed that such surveillance was “indispensable” to combat the growing threat of terrorism.

Following the brutal murder of 25-year-old soldier Drummer Lee Rigby by Islamist extremist in Woolwich in May, UK intelligence has come under increased scrutiny. There were suggestions that MI5 and MI6 could have done more to prevent the death of Rigby after it was found that one of the alleged killers, Michael Adebolajo, had already been flagged by UK intelligence as a potential threat.

Instead of devoting coverage to surveillance information revealed by Edward Snowden, the mainstream US media has slandered him. This reaction highlights the inadequacies of the American news cycle, geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser told RT.

RT: It appears Snowden is still in Russia, although he is believed to be in an international transit zone. What do you think he will do next?

Eric Draitser: I think that’s impossible to say at the moment. We hear reports about Ecuador, though we’ve seen with the case of Julian Assange that that’s no guarantee. We’re still waiting to see. But what I think is most interesting is the reaction here in the United States. Your reports have talked about what we’re seeing internationally, maybe in governments or people around the world - but in the United States, we see a concerted propaganda campaign designed to demonize and destroy the image, if not the total character, of Edward Snowden. We see this happening from the right wing and also the left wing.  This is now becoming a real story inside the United States – the way in which the controlled media is attacking Snowden and serving the interests of the surveillance state and the partisanship behind President Obama.

RT: The US government wants Moscow to go in and arrest Snowden even though he’s in an international transit zone - a limbo area which is not officially on Russian territory. Do you think this is going to sour relations between the US and Russia?

ED: I think this is going to precipitate a fight out in the open, but remember that relations have been soured long ago. Remember that the United States has been positioning missiles throughout Eastern Europe and Asia for years. Washington has also placed missiles inside Turkey and elsewhere for the purpose of menacing Russia. The United States has engaged in cyber-attacks launched at its enemies in China and Iran, and it’s likely the Russians are involved in that too. So the relationship has been under the assault of the ruling class in the United States for quite a while – and the reason is because President Putin represents opposition. He represents a counter-veiling force to US hegemony. I think that the Snowden case is really simply a microcosm of that. Moreover, we see that Putin and the government in Russia represent the interests of international law, humanitarian concerns, and basic human decency – just like with Syria. The notion of extraditing Snowden to the United States is essentially delivering him into the hands of torturers, into the hands of criminals.

RT: You just talked about these counter-veiling forces rising. One of these forces is China. A lot of reports suggest that China may have helped Snowden leave the country and assisted him along the way. Is Beijing sending Washington a big message here?

ED: Absolutely. And I think the revelations from Snowden about the hacking of computers in Hong Kong is only the tip of the iceberg. We know that the cyber-attacks that have been launched by the United States, Israel, and their partners are only what we know publicly. There’s much more happening behind the scenes and the Chinese are angry about that. They’re also angry at attempts to demonize them as if they are somehow the ones conducting an illegal operation. This is purely deflection away from the fact that the United States is the criminal violator of human rights, that the United States is the one engaged in illegal activity, and that the United States attempts to impose its will through so-called diplomacy on countries like China and Russia against their own interests and against the interests of international law. Ten years ago, this would have stood. Today, not so much.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

 A divided US Supreme Court voided a central part of the Voting Rights Act, a law put in place during the Civil Rights movement to prevent historically racist states from creating obstacles to voting, Tuesday.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion in Shelby County vs. Holder on Tuesday. The 5-4 decision, evidence of clear partisan lines in the nation’s highest court, was celebrated by Southern states and criticized by President Barack Obama for declaring federal oversight on state election changes unconstitutional. Roberts did not specify which, if any, part of the Constitution the rule violated.

Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), invalidated by Tuesday’s decision, explained the formula used by Congress to identify regions of the US subject to extra scrutiny when local lawmakers try to change election rules. Section 4 was the precursor to Section 5, which gives the federal government the power to “preclear” any state or local changes in election rules that could potentially prevent minorities from voting.

Both the Justice Department and individual voters were able to file suit if they believed a state or local municipality was instituting a law that would put undue burden on a specific demographic, a protection that saw its end on Monday.

Under the formula, Congress singled out states based on their history of past abuses. Most of the states affected by the ruling are in the South, where politicians frequently signed laws meant to silence the black population by way of making their votes count less through redistricting and other tactics. The VRA of 1965 nullified the systemic discrimination allowed by the Jim Crow laws, adopted in the century following the abolition of slavery.

States that prevented African Americans from, in addition to other infractions, registering to vote, voting of running for office were singled out by Section 4.

The Supreme Court’s majority ruled that, because the VRA was enacted decades ago, Congress must use updated criteria to determine which states are subject to the federal oversight. In a seeming contradiction, the Court cited the VRA’s success in protecting an equal voting system as a reason to void Section 4. 

Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP

  Roberts asserted that “things have changed dramatically” over time. Since 1965 voter registration, voter turnout and the number of African American political leaders have all vastly increased, Roberts claimed, “in large part because of the VRA.” Yet Roberts and four other justices called for new criteria not “based on decades-old data” and voter suppression methods, such as literacy tests, that have been rendered irrelevant by Section 4. Roberts' claims are wrong, though, some reporters pointed out on the day.

“The regions covered by the part of the Act that was struck down, Section 4, have, in recent years, been twice as likely as those not covered to have proven violations under other sections of the Act,” wrote The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson.

Without a new formula for Section 4, which most experts agree is unlikely after years of Congressional gridlock and polarization, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act cannot be implemented.

Roberts also wrote that Congress “cannot justify the considerable burdens created by Section 5,” despite overwhelming numbers in each chamber voting to reauthorize the VRA in 2006. In the seven years since that renewal, 31 discriminatory voting laws were blocked by Section 5, according to The Nation magazine, with six of the nine southern states covered by Section 4 enacting new voter suppression laws since 2010.

“Texas’ voter ID law, which was blocked under Section 5 by a federal court last year and could disenfranchise up to 800,000 registered voters without government-issued photo ID, will immediately go into effect,” wrote Ari Berman in The Nation. “The states of the Old Confederacy will return to the pre-1965 playbook, passing new voter suppression laws that can only be challenged, after years of lengthy litigation, in often-hostile Southern courts, with the burden of proof in those subject to discrimination, rather than those doing the discriminating.” 

Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP

  Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, who serves in one of the states previously covered by Section 4, announced Tuesday that the “process for implementation of Constitutional Voter Identification begins today.”

Chief Justice Roberts was joined in his opinion by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. Each of the Justices in the majority was appointed by a Republican president, while the dissenters were appointed by Democrats. 

President Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling.

“Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” Ginsburg wrote in her dissent. “Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court’s opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled … One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation’s signal piece of civil-rights legislation.”

Ginsburg, appointed by former president Bill Clinton in 1993, noted that the “racial polarization in voting” means the issue is especially pressing today. While Ginsburg delivered her remarks, though, Alito visibly rolled his eyes in dismissal, leading to gasps from several audience members.   

“His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his senior and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament, or, more accurately, judicial intemperance,” wrote Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. “Typically, justices state their differences in words – and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But Alito frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.”   

Congressional leaders pledged discussions on Section 4 over the summer, but admitted doubts over whether Republicans and Democrats would be able to agree on the issue.