Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Facing a global uproar over the programs that track phone and Internet messages around the world, the Justice Department continued to investigate whether the disclosures of Edward Snowden, 29, an employee of government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, were criminal.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament planned to debate the spy programs Tuesday and whether they have violated local privacy protections. EU officials in Brussels pledged to seek answers from U.S. diplomats at a trans-Atlantic ministerial meeting in Dublin later this week.

The global scrutiny comes after revelations from Snowden, who has chosen to reveal his identity. Snowden has fled to Hong Kong in hopes of escaping criminal charges as lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California accuse him of committing an “act of treason” that should be prosecuted.

Officials in Germany and the European Union issued calm but firm complaints Monday over two National Security Agency programs that target suspicious foreign messages — potentially including phone numbers, email, images, video and other online communications transmitted through U.S. providers. The chief British diplomat felt it necessary to try to assure Parliament that the spy programs do not encroach on U.K. privacy laws.

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Columnist Glenn Greenwald makes no secret of feelings on phone records case

NEW YORK (AP) — The man who claimed to leak state secrets on U.S. government eavesdropping sought to break the story through a columnist for a UK-based publication who has made no secret of his distaste for intrusions on privacy.

Edward Snowden brought his information first to Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian, illustrating the passion an opinion-driven journalist can bring to a breaking news story at the same time it raises questions about fairness.

Greenwald, author of three books in which he argues the government has trampled on personal rights in the name of protecting national security, wrote the original stories exposing the extent of the government’s data collection. Over the weekend, he identified intelligence contractor Snowden as his source at Snowden’s request, and said more stories are coming.

“What we disclosed was of great public interest, of great importance in a democracy, that the U.S. government is building this massive spying apparatus aimed at its own population,” Greenwald said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Greenwald also told The Associated Press that he’s been contacted by “countless people” over the last 24 hours offering to create legal defense funds for Snowden.

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Police move past barricades into Istanbul’s Taksim Square, protesters remain in park

ISTANBUL (AP) — Hundreds of police in riot gear pushed past improvised barricades early Tuesday to reach Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to scatter protesters who have occupied the area for more than a week.

Many of the demonstrators fled into the square’s Gezi Park, where hundreds have been camping as part of the occupation aimed at stopping a development project in the park. Bulldozers immediately began dismantling some of the barricades and makeshift shelters set up on the square, although they insisted they would not move into the park.

The police clampdown on Taksim Square came on the 12th day of nationwide protests which grew from a peaceful demonstration against a redevelopment of Gezi Park into a test of the authority of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The unrest was inspired in part by some see as his increasingly authoritarian style of governing and his perceived attempts to impose a religious and conservative lifestyle in the country with secular laws.

Erdogan, a devout Muslim, says he is committed to Turkey’s secular laws and denies charges of autocracy.

Three people have died — two protesters and a policeman — and more than 5,000 have been treated for injuries or the effects of gas during the protests. The government says 600 police officers have also been injured.

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Obama reverses course on morning-after pill; critic sees him ‘caving to political pressure’

NEW YORK (AP) — After setting off a storm of criticism from abortion rights groups, upset that a Democratic president had sided with social conservatives, the Obama administration said it will comply with a judge’s order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.

But in doing so at least one opponent of easy access to the contraception thinks the president is buckling to political pressure, rather than making the health of girls a priority.

The Justice Department on Monday notified U.S. District Judge Edward Korman it will submit a plan for compliance. If he approves it, the department will drop its appeal of his April ruling.

According to the department’s letter to the judge, the Food and Drug Administration has told the maker of the pills to submit a new drug application with proposed labeling that would permit it to be sold “without a prescription and without age or point-of-sale prescriptions.” The FDA said that once it receives the application it “intends to approve it promptly.”

Advocates for girls’ and women’s rights said Monday the federal government’s decision to comply with the judge’s ruling could be a move forward for “reproductive justice” if the FDA acts quickly and puts emergency contraception over the counter without restriction.

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Critical tests loom for immigration bill as full Senate prepares to cast first votes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators are preparing to cast the first votes in the full Senate on a landmark bill that offers the best chance in decades to remake the nation’s immigration system and offer eventual citizenship to millions.

Ahead of Tuesday afternoon’s procedural votes to officially allow debate to move forward, senators were readying amendments on contentious issues including border security, back taxes and health care coverage. Some Republicans said they were seeking to strengthen enforcement provisions so that they could be comfortable voting for the bill. Other GOP measures were already being dismissed by Democrats as attempts to kill the bill by striking at the fragile compromises at its core.

The bill’s supporters were working to determine which measures they could accept to lock down more “yes” votes from the GOP side without losing Democratic backing. They are aiming for a resounding show of support from the Democratic-led Senate that could pressure the Republican-led House to act.

President Barack Obama, who’s made overhauling immigration laws a top second-term priority, was to speak at a midmorning event with advocates at the White House to praise the Senate’s efforts and renew his calls for reform.

The two votes scheduled for Tuesday afternoon were on procedural measures to officially allow debate to move forward on the far-reaching bill. Both votes were expected to succeed by comfortable margins, because even some senators with deep misgivings about the immigration bill said the issue deserved a Senate debate.

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Lung transplant vote aims for medical and legal balance on life and death issues

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Faced with a federal judge’s order in the heart-wrenching cases of two terminally ill children who are seeking lung transplants, a national review board sought a balance that will keep such decisions in the hands of doctors, not lawyers or judges.

The executive committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network held an emergency teleconference Monday evening and resisted making rule changes for children under 12 seeking lung transplants, but created a special appeal and review system to hear such cases.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, said the vote showed that the medical profession doesn’t believe that they should be pressured into making hasty changes to the entire national transplant system based on a single case.

The meeting was prompted by the cases of 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan of Newtown Square, Pa., and 11-year-old Javier Acosta of New York City, two terminally ill children who are awaiting transplants at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Last week, federal Judge Michael Baylson ruled that they should be eligible for adult lungs after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declined to intervene in such cases. Both children have end-stage cystic fibrosis, and Javier’s brother died two years ago while on the waiting list.

Their families have challenged existing transplant policy that made children under 12 wait for pediatric lungs to become available or be offered lungs donated by adults after adolescents and adults on the waiting list had been considered. They say pediatric lungs are rarely donated.

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Suicide bombs hit heart of Syrian capital, at least 14 killed

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Two suicide bombers hit a central Damascus square Tuesday, killing at least 14 people, activists and the state media reported. Activists said one of the explosions took place inside the police station there and that many among the dead were policemen.

Syrian state TV quoted a security official as saying 14 people died in explosions caused by two “terrorist” suicide bombers near a police station in the bustling Marjeh Square in the heart of the capital. The official said another 31 were wounded.

The state-TV Ikhbariya TV station showed footage of broken shop facades and mangled cars in the central square as ambulance workers were seen carrying the wounded on stretchers.

Marjeh Square was scene to previous attacks earlier this year.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said 15 were killed in the explosions, one of which caused by a man who blew himself up inside the police station in Marjeh square. The Observatory said the other explosion occurred outside the police station. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the two accounts.

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Search for 1st Web page by European physicists is as elusive as mysteries of the universe

For the European physicists who created the World Wide Web, preserving its history is as elusive as unlocking the mysteries of how the universe began.

The scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, are searching for the first Web page. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1990 as an unsanctioned project, using a NeXT computer that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs designed in the late 80s during his 12-year exile from the company.

Dan Noyes oversees CERN’s website and has taken on the project to uncover the world’s first Web page. He says that no matter how much data they sort through, researchers may never make a clear-cut discovery of the original web page because of the nature of how data is shared.

“The concept of the earliest Web page is kind of strange,” Noyes said. “It’s not like a book. A book exists through time. Data gets overwritten and looped around. To some extent, it is futile.”

In April, CERN restored a 1992 copy of the first-ever website that Berners-Lee created to arrange CERN-related information. It was the earliest copy CERN could find at the time, and Noyes promised then to keep looking.

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Senate passes half-trillion dollar farm bill, moving debate to House on food stamp cost

WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time Congress passed a farm bill, Democrats had control of the House and the food stamp program was about half the size it is today.

That was five years ago.

Conservatives calling for an overhaul of the domestic food aid program will try to trim the nation’s nearly $80 billion grocery bill when the House weighs in on farm legislation in a few weeks. The Senate overwhelmingly voted Monday to expand farm subsidies and make small cuts to food stamps in a five-year, half-trillion dollar measure. But passage in the House isn’t expected to be so easy — or so bipartisan.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Monday that his chamber will take up its version of the farm bill later this month. He made clear his own dislike for generous farm subsidies included in the bill, saying his “concerns about our country’s farm programs are well-known.” But Boehner acknowledged that the rest of the chamber might not agree with him.

“If you have ideas on how to make the bill better, bring them forward,” Boehner said in a statement directed to his colleagues. “Let’s have the debate, and let’s vote on them.”

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Russia to deploy vast security force to protect Sochi Olympics, but threats remain

SOCHI, Russia (AP) — Drones hovering overhead, robotic vehicles roaming Olympic venues to search for explosives, high-speed patrol boats sweeping the Black Sea coast — Russian officials say they will be using cutting-edge technology to make sure the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi will be “the safest Olympics in history.”

But intelligence analysts and regional experts say an Islamic insurgency raging across the North Caucasus mountains that tower over the seaside resort of Sochi presents daunting threats. Despite the deployment of tens of thousands of Russian troops, police officers and private guards equipped with high-tech gadgetry, the simmering unrest in the Caucasus could put President Vladimir Putin’s pet project at risk.

The Sochi games are the first Olympics in history that are almost on the doorstep of an active insurgency whose members could potentially try to “upstage the games with some kind of attack, which would provide a kind of bad PR for the Russian government,” said Matthew Henman, a senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London.

Potential assailants could disrupt the games even with scarce resources, he said, pointing at the recent Boston Marathon explosions, where two shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs killed three people and injured more than 260 in April.

“You don’t need an awful lot of expertise to create primitive but largely effective explosive devices,” Henman said.