The director of the CIA has outlined plans to launch a new campaign aimed at keeping the organization’s operations secret. The memo, issued by director John Brennan, was itself leaked late on Wednesday.

The ‘Honor the Oath’ campaign has the intention of reinforcing “our corporate culture of secrecy” according to the memo, which was obtained by Associated Press. The document had been labeled unclassified and for official use only.

Brennan wrote that the campaign is a result of a CIA security review conducted last summer by the organization’s former director, David Petraeus, after “several high-profile anonymous leaks and publications by former senior officers,” were identified, according to Brennan.

It also outlined the necessity to take a harsher stance on former employees who were intending to publish materials about their time in the organization.

The CIA declined to comment on the leak after AP contacted it.

The news has been seeing a decline in the availability of its sources in recent months.

The US Department of Justice seized two months’ worth of phone records belonging to journalists in May, in an act the news agency’s CEO condemned as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.”

Attorney General Eric Holder commented following the exposure that the leaking of intelligence out of the CIA and to AP was a major blow to the US and put the nation’s security at risk.

It was widely believed that phone records were obtained as part of a criminal investigation into leaked information about a CIA operation in Yemen that unraveled an Al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said earlier this month that sources have stopped speaking to the agency, and that “longtime trusted sources” were becoming anxious about conversing with AP, even on issues unrelated to national security.

 The leaking of the 'Honor the Oath' memo to AP emerges in the fallout of Snowden’s release of documents outlining the wide-scale surveillance efforts of the US government. He reportedly used a simple USB flash drive to distribute the information.

However, since the 2008 Buckshot Yankee incident, known as “the worst breach of military computers in history,” there has been a ban on flash drives in the organization. A worm named agent.btz was uploaded to the computer network, which the government took over a year to get rid of.

On Saturday, the White House granted some exceptions to the USB ban, allowing staff members who administer secure computer networks to use the USB ports, according to Reuters. The use of flash drives remains legally barred and most users have restricted profiles, with their computers not capable of recognizing either flash drives or similarly portable devices, including BlackBerrys, that may be plugged into USB ports.

Snowden leaked top-secret documents to the Washington Post and the Guardian that demonstrated the existence of the US National Security Agency’s extensive spying program called PRISM. The program was designed to collect information about digital communications allowing real-time online surveillance of US citizens. He has been charged with violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

Leaking has plagued the security agency over the past year as various officials have stepped forward to reveal pieces of information about CIA operations.

A leaked CIA memo dated April 2012 showed that George Bush knew that US torture equated to “war crime.”According to a secret memo obtained by Wired magazine, dated February 15, 2006, State Department counselor Philip Zelikow warned the White House that controversial interrogation techniques such as water boarding, stress positions and cramped confinement are prohibited under US law.

“Under American law, there is no precedent for excusing treatment that is intrinsically ‘cruel’, even if the state asserts compelling need to use it,” the memo said.

A film released last year entitled titled Zero Dark Thirty, covers last year’s raid by US commandos on the Pakistani compound where Osama Bin Laden was hiding. Hollywood filmmakers had been given information about the operation that had been previously undisclosed, sparking a senate investigation.

A US government source told Reuters last August that US President Barack Obama had signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom may be suing server hosting company Leaseweb over a “data massacre." The Dutch company says it deleted files from 630 servers due to lack of interest in them, but Dotcom has revealed letters proving otherwise.

The revelation comes a week after Dotcom accused the US government and Leaseweb of deleting millions of personal files without warning, including “petabytes of pictures, backups, personal & business property.”

Most of the permanently deleted data came from European users, with servers then re-provisioned to other customers – despite the fact that Megaupload had specifically requested that the hosting provider preserve the information.

“They deleted petabytes of data in the face of Megaupload’s data preservation notices. Our legal team asked them multiple times not to delete the data while the US court is deciding the pending cases including the rights of our users,” TorrentFreak quoted Dotcom as saying.

But Leaseweb’s senior regulatory counsel, Alex de Joode, said his company deleted the data and re-provisioned the servers “after a year of nobody showing any interest” in them.

“We did inform Megaupload about our decision to re-provision the servers,” de Joode said in a June 19 statement, thus disputing Dotcom’s accusation that the decision was made "without warning.” De Joode said that Leaseweb received no answer from the Megaupload team, so they “commenced the re-provisioning of the servers in February 2013.”

“To minimize security risks and maximize the privacy of our clients, it is a standard procedure at Leaseweb to completely clean servers before they are offered to any new customer,” he said.

To back up his accusations, Kim Dotcom has published an email which was sent from Megaupload’s legal counsel to Leaseweb in March 2012. The letter allegedly shows that Megaupload did, in fact, request preservation of the files.

"Megaupload continues to request that Leaseweb preserve any and all information, documentation and data related to Megaupload - as destruction by Leaseweb would appear to be in violation of amongst other things the applicable civil litigation data preservation rules and would interfere with evidence in a criminal matter [...]," said the letter. The email is signed by Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken and addressed to Leaseweb’s A.H. Bram de Haas van Dorsser.

The email adds that “the Mega data on the servers at Leaseweb contain private and sensitive customer data and is subject to applicable privacy and data retention laws.”

“Megaupload is negotiating with the United States to discern feasibility of consumer data access and the conditions for the same," Rothken wrote in the letter. 

 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) representing the file-sharing website in court made a similar request to Leaseweb USA in April.

“We now write to formally request that you preserve that material both for purposes of contemplated future litigation and as a matter of obligation and courtesy to the innocent individuals whose materials have unfortunately been swept up into this case,” the EFF letter reads.

According to Dotcom, Megaupload’s legal team is analyzing whether Leaseweb violated the law.

“I can tell you that we are contemplating legal action against Leaseweb,” he told TorrentFreak on Wednesday.

“We believe that Leaseweb acted inappropriately under the circumstances when they destroyed data,” Rothken told the blogging website. “Ultimately we blame the United States who exercised constructive control over Megaupload’s assets and who had the obligation, resources, and ability to preserve all relevant and exonerating evidence including the data located at Leaseweb and failed to do so,” he added.

But Leaseweb claims it done nothing wrong. In a June 26 statement, the company stressed that “the contract between Leaseweb B.V. and Megaupload was governed by Dutch law.”

“This means the termination, and subsequent data retention needs to be valid under Dutch law. As there was no claim from the Dutch authorities on the data, the data was not subject to evidence rules. Also Dutch and European Privacy legislation prohibit giving third parties (i.e. MegaUpload customers, or Instra) direct access to their data,” the statement read.

Dotcom, who made a fortune from his file-sharing service Megaupload, is currently under a federal investigation, launched by the US Department of Justice after police raided his home. He is currently free on bail in New Zealand, with an extradition trial set for August.

The US has charged the Megaupload founder with facilitating copyright fraud on a massive scale, racketeering, and money-laundering, which carries maximum sentence of 20 years in jail.

Authorities claim Megaupload has cost copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues, due to content being illegally uploaded to its servers. The Department of Justice also believes Dotcom illegally earned $175 million by selling ads and subscriptions on the site.

On the anniversary of his arrest last January, Dotcom launched a new file-hosting site called ‘Mega.’

US officials are also mounting pressure on Ecuador over its stance in the leaker debacle. Senator Robert Menendez, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, said such a move would hurt Ecuador’s international trade, which is highly dependent on export to the US. "Our government will not reward countries for bad behavior," the influential US lawmaker said, as he was warning that he would target two trade programs with Ecuador for accepting the NSA leaker. Menendez said he would lead the effort to prevent the renewal of Ecuador's duty-free access to US markets under the Generalized System of Preferences program. He also said he would block renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). Both programs expire at the end of next month.

   The major commodities of Ecuador’s export to the US are crude oil, cut flowers, fruits and vegetables, shrimp and prawns. Duty-free access to US markets is supporting roughly 400,000 jobs in the country of 14 million people.

Ecuador is the last remaining recipient of the ATPDEA, which used to include Bolivia, Colombia and Peru in the past and was not expected to be renewed for Ecuador even before Snowden came up with his revelations of the US phone and internet surveillance programs.

The country has been lobbying the Obama administration to include additional goods under the Generalized System of Preferences program to soften the blow from the cancellation.

A US hospital deported an unconscious stroke victim after noticing that the patient was an undocumented immigrant from Poland. Polish health officials are furious that the man was “dumped on their doorstep” before the transfer was approved.

“Imagine being carted around like a sack of potatoes,” Polish Consul General Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka told New York Daily News, describing the incident in which 69-year old Wladyslaw Haniszewski was unconsciously deported to his homeland.

Haniszewski, who suffers from a blood disease, lived in Perth Amboy, N.J., for 30 years. He recently lost his job, apartment, and health insurance, and was forced to move into a homeless shelter, the Daily News reports.

After the man suffered a dangerous stroke, a friend named Jerzy Jedra took him to the New Jersey hospital for treatment. When officials at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital noticed that the patient had no health insurance and lived in the US without documentation, they sent the comatose man to Poland. US hospitals are legally required to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it, but are allowed to deport stabilized undocumented immigrants.

But in order to deport someone, a US hospital must first get consent from either the patient, a family member, or a court guardian. Officials at the Polish consulate claim that no one was contacted, and that Haniszewski’s family was never informed that the man was deported.

Meanwhile, Haniszewski was left at the doorstep of a hospital in Boleslawiec, Poland. The facility is now being forced to take care of the man’s medical payments, which have cost “a few hundred dollars” a day, the hospital’s deputy director told TVN.

Junczyk-Ziomecka, who works at the Polish consulate in New York City, said she was trying to help the comatose man, only to realize last week that he was gone. Polish officials are furious about the deportation, especially since the 69-year-old patient was not in a healthy state to sign off on the transfer.

“Behind our backs they transported the unconscious man to Poland,” she told TVN, noting that she was most furious about the hospital’s decision to dump the man at the facility. “I cannot imagine such a situation that the decision about transporting an unconscious person could be made without agreement. Between the two institutions must be a contract, there must be documents. You cannot simply leave a patient at the door and drive away.”

At least 800 people have been deported from US hospitals without consent over the past six years in 15 states, the Associated Press reported in April. Medical repatriation has become increasingly common, but AP suggests that the actual number of such hospital deportations is much higher than figures show. Some health advocates are afraid that repatriations will occur more frequently after major components of Obamacare are implemented in 2014, since the US government will reduce its payments to hospitals that care for large numbers of uninsured patients.

Shena Erlington, director of the Health Justice Program, told the Daily News that although hospitals may face the burden of paying for uninsured patients, medical care providers should not have the ability to deport patients.

“It’s an incredibly disturbing case,” Lori Nessel, director of the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law, said about the Haniszewski repatriation. “This kind of action seems clearly illegal and also not ethical, but it’s hard to bring forth a legal action.”

The New Jersey hospital denies any wrongdoing and claims that the patient was informed of his discharge and care plan. The patient is awake, but unable to speak or communicate with doctors.

A television screens the image of former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden during a news bulletin at a cafe in Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport June 26, 2013. (Reuters)

Members of the Russian Presidential Council for Human rights said that it would be justified if the US whistleblower Edward Snowden received political asylum in a country of his choice, including Russia.

The head of Russia’s top official Human Rights Body, Mikhail Fedotov, told reporters on Wednesday that it would be just if some country grants Snowden political asylum. He added that the reports that the Venezuelan government was ready to look into such request were “raising good hope” and that it was his personal impression that the whistleblower “would get political asylum where he wants”.

“He must be granted protection regardless of national borders. And this does not apply only to Mr Snowden’s story – this applies to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and many other people, including journalists – Russian and foreign – who disclose secrets in order to warn the society against dangers,” the Interfax news agency quoted Fedotov as saying.

“Because of such people we become stronger and the special and diplomatic services must become smarter and understand what can be done in the modern transparent world and what cannot” Fedotov added.

Another member of the Human Rights Council, Kirill Kabanov, said Edward Snowden should not be handed over to the United States as this would violate his personal rights.

“It goes without saying that Snowden acted as a Human Rights advocate but right now the US authorities are very resolute in their intention to punish him. My opinion is that we should take a very precise position – no handover,” Kabanov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The initiative was supported by yet another member of the HR body, the head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights Aleksandr Brod. The activist said that the threat to Snowden’s life  really existed and thus, Russian authorities must openly state their position.

“The man was defending the principles on which the United States had been based  for a long time but which the current US authorities are ignoring. He is facing a life sentence or execution by a firing squad. We must help him in this very difficult situation,” stated Veronika Krasheninnikova, the head of the major Russian political think tank Institute of Foreign Policy Research and Initiatives.

These views are shared by the head of the Lower House committee for Foreign affairs Aleksey Pushkov who called Snowden, Assange and Bradley Manning “new dissidents” in his Wednesday Twitter post.

“Assange Manning and Snowden were not spies, they did not disclose classified information for money, but did so because of their beliefs. They are new dissidents, fighters against the system,” Pushkov wrote.

Also on Wednesday the Russian Upper House set up a commission that would look into Snowden’s reports and connected data to investigate possible violations of Russian citizens’ rights by US special services. Senator Ruslan Gattarov who presented the group noted in his speech that the Russian authorities had sent an official letter to the US demanding explanations, but it was simply ignored.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden caused a major international scandal after he disclosed his agency’s eavesdropping on thousands of ordinary unsuspecting citizens in the USA and in other countries. Snowden spent some time in Hong Kong, reportedly arrived to Moscow on Sunday and is still staying in an airport transit zone. It was expected that the whistleblower would fly to Ecuador that could grant him asylum but so far it apparently has not happened.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday confirmed that Snowden was in Moscow as a transit passenger and rejected the US demands of extradition.

“We can only extradite 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 said.

Anthony Weiner is looking more likely than ever to win the New York City mayoral race scheduled for later this year. According to the latest polls, the former congressman is the top contender among Democratic Party hopefuls.

Weiner, 48, announced last month that’d he be seeking the position of mayor of New York, a role which will be vacated by Michael Bloomberg when his third and final term expires at the start of 2014. Now only four weeks after officially throwing his hat in the race, Weiner is winning the support of 25 percent of registered Democrats, according to a just released poll conducted by Wall Street Journal-NBC New York-Marist.

The news puts Weiner at the top of his party’s race for the first time since he confirmed in May the long-standing rumors he’d be running for mayor, but the ex-lawmaker will likely face a battle through Election Day that’s largely uphill. Even if Weiner is winning the support of a quarter of his party, the high-profile scandal that prompted his resignation from the United States House of Representatives in 2011 is still fresh on the minds of voters.

Rep. Weiner was already eyeing the New York City two years ago when he was caught sending graphic photographs to women over Twitter. At first Weiner relentlessly denied allegations that he acted inappropriately, but after several weeks took responsibility and resigned from Congress.

When Mr. Weiner announced he’d be running for mayor last month, he said, "I made some big mistakes, and I know I let a lot of people down, but I also learned some tough lessons."

"I'm running for mayor because I've been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance,” he said.

Before Weiner confirmed he’d be running for mayor, a March 2013 poll found that less than half of the city’s Democrats would even considering voting for the disgraced congressman. According to the latest numbers, though, Weiner is now the frontrunner, grabbing 25 percent of support among Democrats to the runner up’s 20 percent. City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the party’s frontrunner up until recently, now has only one-fifth of her party’s support.

“Things are changing – the race has been scrambled by Weiner’s candidacy,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, told the Wall Street Journal. “Weiner’s candidacy has gotten more acceptable to voters since he announced, (and) Quinn’s having a difficult time reversing what has been a slow but steady decline in her numbers.”

Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year about his Democratic contenders, Weiner said, “I like them all.” In the same interview, though, Weiner took a jab at one stance in particular adopted by Quinn that doesn’t sit well with him. In 2008, Quinn supported removing a term limits law, which as a result allowed Mayor Bloomberg to successfully campaign for a third term in office.

“The term-limits thing, as an issue, was a deal breaker for me,” Weiner told the Times in April. “But, I think the polls are right: Chris Quinn is leading, and then someone will get into a runoff with her. I don’t like runoffs, and I don’t think we should have them so you don’t have these divisive primaries anymore.”

According to the latest poll, Weiner and Quinn are being trailed by Comptroller Bill Thompson with 13 percent of the party’s support, followed by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and city Comptroller John Liu. Fewer than one in five Democrats are undecided, the poll found.

“This won’t change our focus one bit,” a spokesperson for Mr. Weiner told the Journal. “Anthony is going to keep talking about the issues and how to stand up for New Yorkers who want a middle class fighter in City Hall.”

Mike Morey, a spokesman for Ms. Quinn, told the New York Times, “We fully expect the polls to fluctuate throughout the campaign, but we are confident that on Election Day, when voters have to decide who they want to lead this city, they will choose someone who has demonstrated the ability to lead and deliver.”

 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 Virginia IT company inappropriately secured $500 million worth of IRS contracts based on false statements and ties to an agency official, according to a congressional staff report released on Tuesday.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report accusing an Internal Revenue Service employee of procuring inappropriate contracts for a small business called Strong Castle, which was founded in 2011 by a man named Braulio Castillo.

In 2012, Castillo received more than $500 million in IRS awards for his technology firm and a mere $465,780 from other federal government agencies. The report accuses IRS deputy director Greg Roseman, a close friend of Castillo’s, of “influencing the selection process” to benefit his friend.

“The IRS – where Strong Castle received well over 99 percent of its 2012 revenues – employs Castillo’s long-time friend, Greg Roseman, who oversaw each and every contract awarded to Strong Castle by the IRS in 2012,” the report’s authors wrote.

The congressional committee also found that before launching the IT company, Castillo filed for “disability rating” with the Veterans Administration, claiming he suffered from a foot injury he obtained at a military prep school in 1984. The rating qualified Strong Castle as a “service-disabled, veteran-owned small business," which gave it preferential treatment in bidding competitions. But Castillo never served on active duty, and played college sports after the alleged injury.

“The case of Strong Castle and its cozy relationship with the IRS is but one example of a deeply flawed procurement process in the federal government,” the report says.

The congressional committee on Wednesday summoned Roseman to interrogate him about the IRS contracts and his relationship with Castillo.

“Mr. Roseman, when did you first become aware of a company called Strong Castle Inc.?” Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked the IRS employee.

Roseman invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and refused to answer any questions. He has been removed from his position as IRS deputy director pending the outcome of an inspector general investigation into the contracts.

Strong Castle denies any wrongdoing and claims that it obtained the contracts legally.

"Throughout our work with the IRS, we have never received any improper preferential treatment and have competed fairly for every contract that we have received,” the company told Reuters in a statement.

But the report claims Castillo and Roseman met in 2003, frequently exchanged phone calls and text messages, and formed a long-lasting friendship. Upon the launch of Strong Castle, Roseman sent Castillo a congratulatory text message which stated, “U will be fortune 500 in no time.”

Issa started a probe into the potentially-inappropriate contracting in February, and believes that there is “at least an appearance of impropriety between the two men.”

“The IRS and Strong Castle have made a mockery of fair and open competition for government contracts,” Issa said in a statement.

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

Barack Obama is a “war criminal” and a “hypocrite,” an Irish politician has said in a damning attack on the US president. The MP slammed the Irish treatment of Obama during his G8 visit as akin to ‘prostituting’ Ireland for a “pat on the head.”

Irish MP Clare Daly took no prisoners in her heated attack on the visit of the Obama family to Ireland during this year’s G8 summit, which was held in the five-star resort of Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

During a session of the Irish parliament last Tuesday, Daly slammed media coverage of the visit as tantamount to "a nation of pimps, prostituting ourselves in return for a pat on the head."

“It’s hard to know which is worse, whether it’s the outpourings of the Obamas themselves, or the sycophantic fawning over them by sections of the media and the political establishment,” said Daly, saying that the Irish nation had been subjected to “unprecedented slobbering” over the presidential family.

 Rounding on the president, she condemned his speech to children in Northern Ireland about the peace process as the “biggest irony of all.” Citing Obama’s decision to supply the Syrian opposition with arms, she asked: “Is person going for the hypocrite of the century award?”

“By any serious examination this man is a war criminal,” said Daly, accusing the Obama administration of purposely stalling the Geneva talks by increasing their backing for the Syrian opposition and undermining secularism in the region as a whole.

She called on the Irish government to take steps to “ensure no weapons go through [Dublin’s] Shannon [Airport] to Syria in breach of the international laws”

Letting rip on the on Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, she said there was speculation "whether the Taoiseach [PM] was going to deck the cabinet out in leprechaun hats decorated with a bit of stars and stripes to really mark abject humiliation."

US First Lady Michelle Obama (C) comforts her daughter Sasha (L) as Malia (R) looks on during a visit to Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains National Park in Ireland, on June 18, 2013. (AFP Photo)

 Clare Daly’s comments were condemned as “disgraceful” by Kenny, who debated with the MP following her initial speech. He said her comment were a “do-down” to Irish people living throughout the world. Addressing, Daly’s words on Syria, Kenny said that she seemed to have a very “biased” view on the “wanton slaughter of the Syrian people” by the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Daly later questioned what was so “outrageous” about her comments in a column in the Irish examiner, stressing the “unquestionable adoration of the Obamas is ludicrous.”

“Of course the Obamas, like anyone else, have a right to visit our country and enjoy the benefits we have to offer. However, we cannot afford to let a sideshow develop whereby the situation becomes completely depoliticized,” Daly wrote.

Barack Obama, his wife and two daughters touched down in Belfast for the G8 summit on June 17. While the president attended high-level meetings as part of the summit, his family toured the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. 

Michael Hastings (DC. Paul Morigi/Getty Images for The Guardian/AFP)

 A former cybersecurity advisor to President George W. Bush says a sophisticated computer hack could have been the cause of the automobile accident that claimed the life of journalist Michael Hastings last week in Los Angeles.

Richard Clarke, a State Department official-turned-special advisor to several United States presidents, said the early morning auto crash last Tuesday was "consistent with a car cyberattack,” raising new questions about the death of the award-winning journalist.

Hastings died last week when his 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe collided with a tree in Los Angeles, California on the morning of June 18. He was reportedly traveling at a high rate of speed and failed to stop at a red light moments before the single-car crash. He was only 33.

Speaking to Huffington Post this week, Clarke said that a cyberattack waged at the vehicle could have caused the fatal collision.

"What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag," Clarke told The Huffington Post. "You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it's not that hard."

"So if there were a cyberattack on the car — and I'm not saying there was," Clarke continued, "I think whoever did it would probably get away with it."

The Los Angeles Police Department said they don’t expect foul play was involved in the crash, but an investigation has been opened nonetheless.

In an email reportedly sent by Hastings hours before the crash, he told colleagues that he thought he was the target of a federal investigation.

“Hey [redacted}, the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates,’” Hastings wrote 15 hours before the crash.

“Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit,” he added. “All the best, and hope to see you all soon.”

The email was supplied to KTLA News in Los Angeles by Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who says he met Hastings while the journalist was embedded in Afghanistan in 2008. It was reportedly send to a handful of Hastings’ associates and was blind-copied to Biggs.

“I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me,” Biggs told KTLA.

Reporters at Buzzfeed where Hastings worked say they received an email from their colleague, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a statement two days after Hastings’ death to quash rumors that they had been looking into the reporter.

“At no time was Michael Hastings under investigation by the FBI,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

According to the Associated Press, however, Hastings’ fingerprints were on file with the FBI and were used by the bureau to identify his body after flames consumed much the auto wreckage last week.

"I believe the FBI when they say they weren't investigating him," Clarke told the Huffington Post. "That was very unusual, and I'm sure they checked very carefully before they said that."

"I'm not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I've spent most of my life knocking down conspiracy theories," he said. "But my rule has always been you don't knock down a conspiracy theory until you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyberattack. And the problem with that is you can't prove it."

Clarke, 62, spent nearly two decades at the Pentagon before relocating to the White House where he served under President Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush. He served as special advisor to President George W. Bush on cybersecurity until leaving the administration in 2003 and is currently the chairman and CEO of Good Harbor Security Risk Management, LLC.

Irish officials has promised a state investigation into the 'arrogant' actions of Anglo Irish Bank, in which executives allegedly covered up their losses in order to secure large bail-outs from the government in the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

The Irish public must learn the full truth of how Anglo Irish Bank deceived government officials and nearly led Ireland to bankruptcy, Prime Minister Kenny told lawmakers Tuesday. "Believe you me, I understand the rage and the anger of so many people who have been affected by all of this," said Kenny.

The Prime Minister’s terse words follow a scandal that broke out after a leaked recording capturing a 2008 conversation of two senior Anglo managers was published by The Independent on Monday in which their plot to conspire to conceal the bank's true scale of losses was revealed. 

The internally recorded phone calls reveal how bank bosses misled the Central Bank of Ireland that Anglo bank required 7 billion euros to prevent its collapse. Anglo's losses reached 30 billion euros, nearly half of a total bank-bailout bill that forced Ireland to seek IMF bailout money.  

"I mean the degree of arrogance, the degree of hubris, the degree of couldn't-care-less-about-the-taxpayer, about the Irish people, that seemed to be part and parcel of the culture of that bank," deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore said.

Gilmore said the tapped phone recordings could 'complicate' Dublin's negotiations in receiving crisis-relief funds.

“It makes it more difficult, of course it does, but we’re going to continue to work to get the best possible outcome for the Irish taxpayer,” Mr Gilmore said.

The parliamant's plan at present is to use €500 billion of the bailout money to recapitalize the country's banks, but the recent scandal may derail this vision.

The recordings contained lewd language in which two executives at the Anglo Irish Bank were recorded as they joked about their ability to convince lawmakers to invest in a bank they knew was failing, citing figures they had 'picked out of my arse' - with no plans on paying back the government. John Bowe, the head of capital markets for Anglo Irish, was recorded laughing as he explained to Peter Fitzgerald, the former head of banking, how Anglo Irish had fleeced the Irish government into providing billions of euro to keep the bank solvent.

The government will launch an investigation into the disastrous bailout of Anglo Irish Bank, which was the first bank to receive a government bail out which cost Irish taxpayers nearly $40 billion. Ireland has yet to fully recover from the financial crisis, and has been hit especially hard by austerity measures.

Mr Drumm and Mr Bowe joked with one another about the bank's strategy to attract deposits from overseas, in rather explicit language:
“So f***in’ what. Just take it anyway . . . stick the fingers up.”

Even though he knew their business wasn't solvent, Drumm encourage Bowe to seek deposits for a bank he knew was going to fail:
“Correct and right. So OK, so just keep nursing along . . . jack the [interest] rates up. That’s what I really meant, get the f***in’ money in, get it in,” he said.

The revelation that one of its national banks intentionally may have worsened the Irish economy in a time of national crisis, has shocked many. 

A wave of outraged comments have swept the German media after it was revealed Monday that British secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) wiretapped the dataflow of Germany’s major transatlantic cable.

The northern German public broadcaster NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported late on Monday that Germany’s external intelligence service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) has been in the dark about GCHQ wiretapping Transatlantic Telephone Cable No. 14 (TAT-14) connecting Germany with the US via UK, in the framework of its Tempora data collection project.

The TAT-14 fiber optic cables entered service in 2001. It is operated by private consortium German Telekom and used by around 50 international communication companies for phone calls, internet connection, data transfer etc.

Countries like Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the UK itself also use this cable for internet connection to North America.

The capacity of the 15,000km TAT-14 is enormous; it transfers hundreds of gigabytes of data per second in both directions. The report claimed British GCHQ has already had access to 21,600 terabytes of private and business German data transferred through the cable.

The initial reaction from official Berlin concerning Edward Snowden’s revelations about British intelligence straddling Germany’s major fiber optics cables without Berlin’s knowledge was rather moderate.

Senior German Interior Ministry official Ulrich Weinbrenner admitted to the Bundestag committee that it was known “in general form” that foreign tapping programs - like American PRISM and British Tempora - existed.

Having met American President Barack Obama last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautiously commented that collecting information needs ‘proportionality’ and that “the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe.”

However, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert announced that Berlin wanted explanations from NATO allies “on what legal basis and to which extent” surveillance had been conducted. 

 The head of the Free Democratic Party parliamentary group, Rainer Brüderle, demanded an investigation.

"A comprehensive monitoring of citizens in the network cannot and will not be accepted ," he told Passau Neue Presse.

"We need to step back here and say clearly: mass surveillance is not what we want," said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green member in charge of a planned overhaul of the European Union's data protection laws.

"We urge the Federal Government and the EU Commission to  initiate an infringement proceedings against the UK government," which would have to deal with the matter, Albrecht said to Berliner Zeitung.

"The Federal Government and the Commission must take the issue of protecting fundamental rights seriously," the rapporteur added in the Judiciary Committee.

Albrecht’ thoughts were echoed by CSU MEP Manfred Weber who told Berliner Zeitung that "If European law has been broken, such as in relation to the retention, the Commission must act." The harshest comment came from German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who dubbed the total eavesdropping from a NATO ally a “Hollywood nightmare.”

Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar called on the federal government to proceed on an international level against data espionage from abroad.

"The federal government must insist that our emails will not be penetrated by foreign intelligence services," he demanded according to Bild newspaper.

The methods used by the American NSA and British GCHQ agencies are “secret, but lawful” and “subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards,” stated UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.

But such statements have produced little effect on the public or within expert communities. “How much and which data of German citizens and companies had been secretly accessed by the Anglo-American intelligence services NSA and GCHQ, for example by tapping glass fiber cables?” questioned Greens party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Ströbele, as quoted by Deutsche Welle (DW).

“The shoulder-shrugging explanation by Washington and London that they have operated within the law is absurd. They are not our laws. We didn't make them. We shouldn't be subject to them,” Spiegel online columnist Jakob Augstein. “We have not asked the NSA and GCHQ to ‘protect’ us,” he said.
Gisela Pilz, a data protection expert with the parliamentary group of the liberal FDP, the junior partner in the governing coalition, agrees.

"We observe with a great deal of concern and dismay the amount of data that has been collected and stored," she told DW.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government was caught in the crossfire of criticism for not ensuring national digital security.

It is the responsibility of the German government to see that foreign agencies no longer process the data of German citizens and companies, Augstein stressed, because “a government that cannot make that assurance is failing in one of its fundamental obligations: to protect its own citizens from the grasp of foreign powers,” he concluded. “Germans should closely observe how Angela Merkel now behaves.”

The head of the Bundestag's intelligence supervisory committee, opposition Social Democrats deputy Thomas Oppermann, called to speed up the elaboration of data privacy legislation currently being drafted in the EU.