PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Automatic federal spending cuts that kicked in March 1 have seriously hurt city and local governments, hampering their ability to deliver essential services to citizens, Mayor Michael Nutter said Tuesday in a blunt message to Washington.
The federal sequester has transferred costs onto local governments, said Nutter, the immediate past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In Philadelphia, he said, deep cuts to a program that helps homeowners avert foreclosure will potentially result in more blight, while the school district is facing an existential budget crisis that has forced it to lay off 3,800 employees and eliminate sports, music, art and all after-school programs.
"This is not a sustainable model for cities. The federal government cannot balance its budget on the backs of cities and local governments," Nutter said.
The second-term Democrat spoke at a meeting of the State Budget Crisis Task Force at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The event was designed to bring attention to the eroding financial condition of state governments, but Nutter spoke on behalf of cities.
"We've already been to the fiscal cliff. We've made our cuts. We've cut back on services and we've raised people's taxes at the same time," Nutter said. "We're now trying to come back. Please don't stand in the way."
A top Treasury Department official said the federal government, after running trillion-dollar deficits as it tried to stabilize financial markets and stimulate the economy, has to begin getting its own fiscal house in order.
Having sent more than $280 billion to state and local governments between 2009 and 2012, largely to be spent on education, infrastructure and health care, "we need to begin pulling back the federal safety net," said Mary John Miller, Treasury's undersecretary for domestic finance, who was taking part in a panel discussion.
"As we see unemployment coming down, as we see the housing market beginning to recover, as we see the economy growing ... we see that we need to now turn our attention to reducing our federal deficits," she said.
Former President Bill Clinton was due to give the keynote address later Tuesday.
The nonpartisan State Budget Crisis Task Force ? led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch ? issued a report last year that said U.S. states are grappling with long-term budget problems that threaten their ability to pay for basic services such as law enforcement, local schools and transportation. The group cites rising Medicaid and pension costs, reduced federal aid and eroding tax revenues as a few of the challenges facing the states.
Addiction relapse might be thwarted by turning off brain triggerPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF study points to potential strategy for erasing memory of addiction
A new study by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco offers encouraging findings that researchers hope may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions.
In the study, conducted in rats, the UCSF researchers were able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to the memories that cause cravings for alcohol, thus preventing the animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse.
"One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by the memory by certain cues - like going into a bar, or the smell or taste of alcohol," said lead author Segev Barak, PhD, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of co-senior author Dorit Ron, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology.
"We learned that when rats were exposed to the smell or taste of alcohol there was a small window of opportunity to target the area of the brain that reconsolidates the memory of the craving for alcohol and to weaken or even erase the memory, and thus the craving" he said.
The study, also supervised by co-senior author Patricia H. Janak, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology, will be published online on June 23, 2013 in Nature Neuroscience.
In the first phase of the study, rats had the choice to freely drink water or alcohol over the course of seven weeks, and during this time developed a high preference for alcohol. In the next phase, they had the opportunity to access alcohol for one hour a day, which they learned to do by pressing a lever. They were then put through a 10-day period of abstinence from alcohol.
Following this period, the animals were exposed for 5 minutes to just the smell and taste of alcohol, which cued them to remember how much they liked drinking it. The researchers then scanned the animals' brains, and identified the neural mechanism responsible for the reactivation of the memory of the alcohol - a molecular pathway mediated by an enzyme known as mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1).
They found that just a small drop of alcohol presented to the rats turned on the mTORC1 pathway specifically in a select region of the amygdala, a structure linked to emotional reactions and withdrawal from alcohol, and cortical regions involved in memory processing.
They further showed that once mTORC1 was activated, the alcohol-memory stabilized (reconsolidated) and the rats relapsed on the following days, meaning in this case, that they started again to push the lever to dispense more alcohol.
"The smell and taste of alcohol were such strong cues that we could target the memory specifically without impacting other memories, such as a craving for sugar," said Barak, who added that the Ron research group has been doing brain studies for many years and has never seen such a robust and specific activation in the brain.
In the next part of the study, the researchers set out to see if they could prevent the reconsolidation of the memory of alcohol by inhibiting mTORC1, thus preventing relapse. When mTORC1 was inactivated using a drug called rapamycin, administered immediately after the exposure to the cue (smell, taste), there was no relapse to alcohol-seeking the next day. Strikingly, drinking remained suppressed for up to 14 days, the end point of the study. These results suggest that rapamycin erased the memory of alcohol for a long period, said Ron.
The authors said the study is an important first step, but that more research is needed to determine how mTORC1 contributes to alcohol memory reconsolidation and whether turning off mTORC1 with rapamycin would prevent relapse for more than two weeks.
The authors also said it would be interesting to test if rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug currently used to prevent organ rejection after transplantation, or other mTORC1 inhibitors that are currently being developed in pharmaceutical companies, would prevent relapse in human alcoholics.
"One of the main problems in alcohol abuse disorders is relapse, and current treatment options are very limited." Barak said. "Even after detoxification and a period of rehabilitation, 70 to 80 percent of patients will relapse in the first several years. It is really thrilling that we were able to completely erase the memory of alcohol and prevent relapse in these animals. This could be a revolution in treatment approaches for addiction, in terms of erasing unwanted memories and thereby manipulating the brain triggers that are so problematic for people with addictions."
###
The other co-authors of the paper are Feng Liu, PhD, Sami Ben Hamida, PhD, Quinn V. Yowell BS, Jeremie Neasta, PhD, and Viktor Kharazia, PhD, all of the Gallo Center and UCSF Department of Neurology.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and funds from the State of California for Medical Research on Alcohol and Substance Abuse administered through UC San Francisco.
The UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center is one of the world's preeminent academic centers for the study of the biological basis of alcohol and substance use disorders. Gallo Center discoveries of potential molecular targets for the development of therapeutic medications are extended through preclinical and proof-of-concept clinical studies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Addiction relapse might be thwarted by turning off brain triggerPublic release date: 24-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jeffrey Norris jeff.norris@ucsf.edu 415-502-6397 University of California - San Francisco
UCSF study points to potential strategy for erasing memory of addiction
A new study by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco offers encouraging findings that researchers hope may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions.
In the study, conducted in rats, the UCSF researchers were able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to the memories that cause cravings for alcohol, thus preventing the animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse.
"One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by the memory by certain cues - like going into a bar, or the smell or taste of alcohol," said lead author Segev Barak, PhD, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of co-senior author Dorit Ron, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology.
"We learned that when rats were exposed to the smell or taste of alcohol there was a small window of opportunity to target the area of the brain that reconsolidates the memory of the craving for alcohol and to weaken or even erase the memory, and thus the craving" he said.
The study, also supervised by co-senior author Patricia H. Janak, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology, will be published online on June 23, 2013 in Nature Neuroscience.
In the first phase of the study, rats had the choice to freely drink water or alcohol over the course of seven weeks, and during this time developed a high preference for alcohol. In the next phase, they had the opportunity to access alcohol for one hour a day, which they learned to do by pressing a lever. They were then put through a 10-day period of abstinence from alcohol.
Following this period, the animals were exposed for 5 minutes to just the smell and taste of alcohol, which cued them to remember how much they liked drinking it. The researchers then scanned the animals' brains, and identified the neural mechanism responsible for the reactivation of the memory of the alcohol - a molecular pathway mediated by an enzyme known as mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1).
They found that just a small drop of alcohol presented to the rats turned on the mTORC1 pathway specifically in a select region of the amygdala, a structure linked to emotional reactions and withdrawal from alcohol, and cortical regions involved in memory processing.
They further showed that once mTORC1 was activated, the alcohol-memory stabilized (reconsolidated) and the rats relapsed on the following days, meaning in this case, that they started again to push the lever to dispense more alcohol.
"The smell and taste of alcohol were such strong cues that we could target the memory specifically without impacting other memories, such as a craving for sugar," said Barak, who added that the Ron research group has been doing brain studies for many years and has never seen such a robust and specific activation in the brain.
In the next part of the study, the researchers set out to see if they could prevent the reconsolidation of the memory of alcohol by inhibiting mTORC1, thus preventing relapse. When mTORC1 was inactivated using a drug called rapamycin, administered immediately after the exposure to the cue (smell, taste), there was no relapse to alcohol-seeking the next day. Strikingly, drinking remained suppressed for up to 14 days, the end point of the study. These results suggest that rapamycin erased the memory of alcohol for a long period, said Ron.
The authors said the study is an important first step, but that more research is needed to determine how mTORC1 contributes to alcohol memory reconsolidation and whether turning off mTORC1 with rapamycin would prevent relapse for more than two weeks.
The authors also said it would be interesting to test if rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug currently used to prevent organ rejection after transplantation, or other mTORC1 inhibitors that are currently being developed in pharmaceutical companies, would prevent relapse in human alcoholics.
"One of the main problems in alcohol abuse disorders is relapse, and current treatment options are very limited." Barak said. "Even after detoxification and a period of rehabilitation, 70 to 80 percent of patients will relapse in the first several years. It is really thrilling that we were able to completely erase the memory of alcohol and prevent relapse in these animals. This could be a revolution in treatment approaches for addiction, in terms of erasing unwanted memories and thereby manipulating the brain triggers that are so problematic for people with addictions."
###
The other co-authors of the paper are Feng Liu, PhD, Sami Ben Hamida, PhD, Quinn V. Yowell BS, Jeremie Neasta, PhD, and Viktor Kharazia, PhD, all of the Gallo Center and UCSF Department of Neurology.
The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and funds from the State of California for Medical Research on Alcohol and Substance Abuse administered through UC San Francisco.
The UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center is one of the world's preeminent academic centers for the study of the biological basis of alcohol and substance use disorders. Gallo Center discoveries of potential molecular targets for the development of therapeutic medications are extended through preclinical and proof-of-concept clinical studies.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
International software company, Axe Finance, has described Nigeria as Africa?s leading IT innovative country in the banking sector with modern infrastructure and a robust customer base.
In a chat with Vanguard? at a workshop organised for financial institutions in Lagos, Senior Manager, Axe Finance, Mr. Dhafer Berrachid, however, stressed that there was need to continue to improve on the infrastructure for global competitiveness.
He said: ?Nigeria is a leading country in the banking sector in Africa. The banks are very mature in terms of IT equipment and there is a strong will to continue to improve the infrastructure and the process for the international market.?
Berrachid explained that the workshop was to present his company?s integrated solution, which according to him, supports financial institutions all over the world through an innovative approach by automating their credit and risk management processes.
The IT expert said: ?Basically, we are in Nigeria to present our company, our partners, our solution and to have a testimonial and return on experience of our current customers.
?We have a lot of banks looking at our solutions and we want to bring everybody together to exchange views and have live reactions about the solution.?
He further explained that the solution was designed to help financial institutions improve their revenues, streamline and automate their processes and enable them to better assess the risk and improve efficiency of their operations.
He said: ?Axe Credit Portal is the solution to more effectively manage your credit life cycle, to optimise firm-wide credit and risk processes and to enable better informed credit origination and risk management decisions.?
International software company, Axe Finance, has described Nigeria as Africa?s leading IT innovative country in the banking sector with modern infrastructure and a robust customer base.
Speaking at a workshop organised for financial institutions in Lagos, Senior Manager, Axe Finance, Mr. Dhafer Berrachid, however, stressed that there was need to continue to improve on the infrastructure for global competitiveness.
He said: ?Nigeria is a leading country in the banking sector in Africa. The banks are very mature in terms of IT equipment and there is a strong will to continue to improve the infrastructure and the process for the international market.?
Berrachid explained that the workshop was to present his company?s integrated solution, which according to him, supports financial institutions all over the world through an innovative approach by automating their credit and risk management processes.
The IT expert said: ?Basically, we are in Nigeria to present our company, our partners, our solution and to have a testimonial and return on experience of our current customers.
?We have a lot of banks looking at our solutions and we want to bring everybody together to exchange views and have live reactions about the solution.?
He further explained that the solution was designed to help financial institutions improve their revenues, streamline and automate their processes and enable them to better assess the risk and improve efficiency of their operations.
He said: ?Axe Credit Portalis the solution to more effectively manage your credit life cycle, to optimise firm-wide credit and risk processes and to enable better informed credit origination and risk management decisions.?
Comments are moderated. Please keep them clean and brief.
* U.S. official sees good case for extradition under treaty
* U.S. hacked Chinese mobile phone companies -report
* Snowden sought representation from rights lawyers -sources (Adds details, background)
By Steve Holland and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The United States said on Saturday it wants Hong Kong to extradite Edward Snowden and urged it to act quickly, paving the way for what could be a lengthy legal battle to prosecute the former National Security Agency contractor on espionage charges.
Legal sources say Snowden, who is believed to be hiding in Hong Kong, has sought legal representation from human rights lawyers since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance activities to news media.
"If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law," a senior Obama administration official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a "good case" to bring Snowden back to America to face trial and expected Hong Kong to comply with its extradition treaty.
"We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of Snowden back to the United States," Donilon said.
He added that U.S. law enforcement officials were in a "conversation" with Hong Kong authorities about the issue.
A senior U.S. law enforcement source said extradition "can, of course, be a lengthy legal process" but expressed optimism that Snowden would be sent back to the United States.
The South China Morning Post reported that Snowden was not detained or in police protection - as reported elsewhere - and instead he was in a "safe place" somewhere in Hong Kong.
The paper also quoted Snowden offering new details about America's spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone companies and targeting China's top Tsinghua University.
"The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS (texting) data," Snowden was quoted by the newspaper as saying in a June 12 interview.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.
On Friday, the Guardian newspaper, citing documents shared by Snowden, said Britain's spy agency GCHQ had tapped fiber-optic cables that carry international phone and internet traffic and is sharing vast quantities of personal information with the NSA.
ESPIONAGE CHARGES
The United States charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, according to the June 14 criminal complaint made public on Friday.
The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
Scores of Americans have been sent back home from Hong Kong to face trial under the extradition treaty. But the process can take years, lawyers say, and Snowden's case could be particularly complex.
America's use of the Espionage Act against Snowden has fueled debate among legal experts about whether that could complicate his extradition, since the treaty includes an exception for political offenses and Hong Kong courts may choose to shield him from prosecution.
Snowden says he leaked the details of the classified U.S. surveillance to expose abusive and illegal programs that trampled on citizens' privacy rights.
President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.
Stephen Vladeck, a professor at American University's Washington College of Law who studies national security issues, said there is no clear definition of what constitutes a political offense under the treaty.
"My intuition says it'll be easier for Snowden to argue espionage is a political offense than (the U.S. charge of) theft of government property," Vladeck said.
Should he return to the United States, Snowden would face trial in a federal court in Virginia that has a long track record of hearing cases related to national security and also to cyber crime.
In the past 20 years, the U.S. government has racked up remarkable success rates in winning convictions or guilty pleas from people brought before the federal court in Virginia who were accused of espionage or terrorism. Because of its speed, the court is considered a "rocket docket." (Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in Hong Kong, Diane Bartz in Washington and Nate Raymond in New York.; Writing by Phil Stewart.; Editing by Eric Beech and Christopher Wilson)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows smoke rises in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows smoke rises in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
This image made from amateur video released by Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows a Syrian rebel firing his weapon in Damascus, Syria, Friday, June 21, 2013. The commander of Syria's rebels confirms they have received new weapons, giving his forces more power in battles against government troops and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. Gen. Salim Idris refused to say in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV Friday where the weapons came from. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)
BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian government forces stepped up their attack against rebel strongholds north of the capital Damascus on Saturday, while opposition fighters declared their own offensive in the country's largest city Aleppo.
Both sides intensified operations as an 11-nation group that includes the U.S., dubbed the Friends of Syria, began meeting in Qatar to discuss how to coordinate military and other aid to the rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on an extensive network of activists in Syria, said the shelling of the district of Qaboun has killed three children, including two from the same family, since Friday.
Activists reported heavy shelling on many fronts on districts north of Damascus, apparently an attempt to cut links between rebel-held districts that have served as launching pads for operations against the capital.
The Lebanese TV station Al-Mayadeen, which had a reporter embedded with Syrian government forces in the offensive, quoted a military official as saying that the operation aims to cut rebel supply lines, separate one group from another, and secure the northern entrances to the capital. The regime's forces have struggled for months to regain control of these suburbs.
The Observatory said the neighborhood was being attacked from several different sides, while the shelling has caused structural damage and started fires. Activists from Qaboun posted on Facebook that government forces had brought up new tanks to reinforce its positions outside the neighborhood, and the bombardment had brought buildings down.
The Observatory said rebels targeted a police academy in the nearby Barzeh area Saturday, pushing back against a government attempt to storm the neighborhood. One rebel was killed in overnight fighting, it said.
A recent declaration by the U.S. that it had conclusive evidence that President Bashar Assad's regime used chemical weapons on a small scale against opposition forces prompted Washington to authorize the arming of rebels, a major shift in policy. The decision also followed advances by the government forces aided by fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Rebels say they have already received new weapons from allied countries? but not the U.S. ? that they claim will help them to shift the balance of power on the ground. Experts and activists said the new weapons include anti-tank missiles and small quantities of anti-aircraft missiles.
It was not clear if any of the new weapons have made it to the Damascus area. A spokesman for one of the main groups fighting outside of Damascus, the al-Islam brigade, said his group had none of the new weapons. The unnamed spokesman spoke to The Associated Press through Skype.
He said government forces were shelling Barzeh from Qasioun mountain overlooking Damascus. Syria's main Western-backed opposition group said Thursday that 40,000 civilians in the two northern districts of Damascus are suffering from shortages of food and medical supplies.
Rebels and government also clashed in and around the northern city of Aleppo, where government forces announced an offensive earlier this month. Activists said troops clashed in the southern neighborhoods of Rashideen and Hamdaniya and in the western suburbs.
The Observatory said rebels pounded a military academy in the area, causing a fire in the compound. There were no immediate reports of casualties. In Rashideen, rebel forces have pushed government forces out from parts of the neighborhood, according to the local Aleppo Media Center network and posts on Facebook.
A statement by a coalition of rebel groups, posted on the Center's page, declared that the fighters are launching a new operation to seize control of the western neighborhoods of Aleppo. Amateur showed what appeared to be intense government shelling of villages in the area.
On Saturday, a dozen shells from Syrian forces landed in a northern Lebanese border town, some landing near homes, causing a panic among residents, the Lebanese news agency reported.
Syria's official news agency said government troops were targeting a group of infiltrators across the border. It gave no further details.
Rockets from Syria fall regularly into towns and villages near the border. On Friday, a rocket slammed into a suburb of Beirut, bringing the war closer to Lebanon's bustling capital, the second in less than a month. No one claimed responsibility for that attack, but rebels in Syria have vowed to retaliate against Hezbollah's Beirut strongholds for its increasingly active role assisting Assad.
Syria's 2-year civil war has killed nearly 93,000 people. It increasingly pits Sunni against Shiite Muslims and threatening the stability of Syria's neighbors.
HONG KONG/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador on Sunday after Hong Kong allowed his departure for Russia in a slap to Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.
In a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama, an aircraft thought to have carried Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."
Earlier, Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: "The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden."
It was a blow to Obama's foreign policy goals of resetting ties with Russia and building a partnership with China. The leaders of both countries were willing to snub the American president in a month when each had held talks with Obama.
The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned Western Hemisphere nations that Snowden "should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States," a State Department official said.
U.S. Senator Charles Schumer charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely knew and approved of Snowden's flight to Russia and predicted "serious consequences" for a U.S.-Russian relationship already strained over Syria and human rights.
"Putin always seems almost eager to stick a finger in the eye of the United States - whether it is Syria, Iran and now of course with Snowden," Schumer, a New York Democrat, told CNN's "State of the Union" program. He also saw "the hand of Beijing" in Hong Kong's decision to let Snowden leave the Chinese territory despite the U.S. extradition request.
ECUADOR ROLE
Ecuador, which has been sheltering WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange at its London embassy for the past year, once again took center stage in an international diplomatic saga over U.S. data secrecy.
Ecuador's ambassador to Russia, Patricio Alberto Chavez Zavala, told reporters at a Moscow airport hotel he would hold talks with Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative.
Hours later, shortly after midnight (2000 GMT Sunday), the ambassador emerged from a business-class lounge near the hotel and refused to say whether he had met Snowden or make any other comment. Shortly before he appeared, a cart with three plates of salmon and a Starbucks bag were rolled into the lounge.
Snowden, who had worked at a U.S. National Security Agency facility in Hawaii, had been hiding in Hong Kong, the former British colony that returned to China in 1997, since leaking details about secret U.S. surveillance programs to news media.
U.S. authorities had said on Saturday they were optimistic Hong Kong would cooperate over Snowden.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of federal government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
A source at Russian airline Aeroflot said on Sunday that Snowden was booked on a flight scheduled to depart for Havana on Monday at 2:05 p.m. (1005 GMT) from the same Moscow airport where the flight from Hong Kong arrived, Sheremetyevo.
The chief of Cuba's International Press Center, Gustavo Machin, said he had no such information though pro-government bloggers heaped praise on Snowden and condemned U.S. spying activity.
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
HONG KONG VIEW
In their statement announcing Snowden's departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.
The Obama administration has previously painted the United States as a victim of Chinese government computer hacking.
At a summit this month, Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by "cyber-enabled espionage" against the United States and to investigate the problem. Obama also met Putin in Northern Ireland last week.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden - considered a whistleblower by his supporters and a criminal or even a traitor by his critics - as the U.S. request for his arrest did not comply with the law.
However, a U.S. Justice Department official said at no point in discussions through Friday did Hong Kong raise issues about the sufficiency of the U.S. arrest request.
"In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling," the official said.
U.S. sources familiar with the issue said Washington had revoked Snowden's U.S. passport. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said revoking the passport of someone under a felony arrest warrant was routine and does not affect citizenship status.
"It's a shocker," Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University said. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
The issue has been a major problem for Obama, who has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that U.S. surveillance practices violate privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained that the measures have been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States.
The White House had no comment on Sunday's developments.
WikiLeaks said Snowden was accompanied by diplomats and that Harrison, a British legal researcher working for WikiLeaks, was "accompanying Mr Snowden in his passage to safety."
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for Assange, said in a statement.
"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."
WIKILEAKS CASE
Assange, an Australian, said last week he would not leave the sanctuary of Ecuador's London embassy even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
The latest drama coincides with the court-martial of Bradley Manning, a U.S. soldier accused of providing reams of classified documents to WikiLeaks, which Assange began releasing on the Internet in 2010, and, according to some critics, put national security and people's lives at risk.
A spokesman for WikiLeaks said the decision on Ecuador was made by Snowden and that "various governments were approached."
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about U.S. surveillance activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone firms and targeting of China's Tsinghua University.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Snowden needed to be brought back for trial. "He could have a lot, lot more that may really put people in jeopardy," she told CBS's "Face the Nation."
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
The head of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, said he did not know why it failed to prevent Snowden leaving Hawaii for Hong Kong with the secrets.
"We are now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators, what they're doing, what they're taking, a two-man rule," he told ABC's "This Week." "We've changed the passwords. But at the end of the day, we have to trust that our people are going to do the right thing."
(Additional reporting by Fayen Wong in Shanghai; Nishant Kumar in Hong Kong; Andrew Cawthorne, Mario Naranjo and Daniel Wallis in Caracas; Alexandra Valencia in Quito; Alexei Anishchuk and Steve Gutterman in Moscow, and Mark Felsenthal, Paul Eckert and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Writing by David Stamp and David Brunnstrom and Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Jackie Frank and Doina Chiacu)
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Public release date: 24-Jun-2013
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