Supreme Court justice denies bid to stop California gay marriages

By Casey Sullivan

(Reuters) - A U.S. Supreme Court justice on Sunday rejected a long-shot bid to halt same-sex marriages in California, days after the high court let stand a trial judge's order declaring the ban unconstitutional.

Justice Anthony Kennedy denied the application verbally, spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told Reuters.

Supporters of the gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8, which California voters approved in 2008, asked the high court on Saturday to overrule a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order that lifted an injunction barring same-sex unions.

"I think it's time for proponents of Prop 8 to stop trying to stop people from getting married and turn their attention to something else," said Ted Boutrous, a lawyer for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which sponsored the federal court challenge to Prop 8.

Marriage ceremonies of gay and lesbian couples went ahead since a panel of the appeals court in San Francisco removed its stay on Proposition 8 on Friday.

The stay had been in force while the decision striking down the so-called Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2008, was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Political supporters of the measure were left to appeal the case because state elected officials declined to defend it.

But the justices on Wednesday ruled Prop 8 proponents lacked legal standing to defend the ban, a decision that left the trial judge's ruling intact and cleared the way for gay marriage in the state to resume.

The Supreme Court had said its ruling would not go into effect for at least 25 days, the amount of time normally given the losing party, in this case, Prop 8 backers, to seek a rehearing of the matter.

But California Attorney General Kamala Harris publicly urged the appeals court to lift its stay sooner than that, and on Friday the 9th Circuit did so in a surprise move that prompted a flurry of hastily arranged same-sex weddings up and down the state.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-justice-denies-bid-stop-california-gay-170036934.html

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Obama calls on neighbors to stop fuelling Congo conflict

By Drazen Jorgic and Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday called on states around the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern region to stop fuelling conflict there and implement a peace deal.

After 11 nations signed the peace agreement, the United Nations started deploying an intervention force, MONUSCO, to neutralize armed groups in the mineral-rich area that has been racked by conflict for years and is desperately underdeveloped.

But a U.N. experts report seen by Reuters last week said military officers from Rwanda and Congo were fuelling violence in the region by supporting rival groups, despite the U.N.-brokered deal signed in February.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied meddling. Earlier accusations that it was backing rebels prompted a halt in some Western aid.

"The countries surrounding the Congo, they've got to make a commitment to stop funding armed groups that are encroaching on territorial integrity and sovereignty of Congo," Obama told a news conference in Tanzania, the last leg of an Africa tour.

"They've signed on a piece of paper, now the question is whether they follow through," he said. "Countries surrounding Congo should recognize that if the Congo stabilizes, that will improve the prospects for their goals and their prosperity."

The U.N. report said the M23 rebels continued to recruit fighters in Rwanda, helped by sympathetic Rwandan officers.

It said elements of Congo's military had cooperated with a Rwandan Hutu rebel group against the M23, a Tutsi-dominated rebellion of former Congolese soldiers that has demanded political concessions from President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa.

Obama said he had discussed with President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, which has contributed to the U.N. intervention force, "how we can encourage all the parties concerned to follow through on commitments they've made".

"That means, for example, President Kabila inside Congo, he has to do more and better when it comes to dealing with the DRC's capacity on security issues and delivery of services," the U.S. president said at the joint news conference with Kikwete.

"We are prepared to work with the United Nations, regional organizations and others to help him build capacity," he said, adding that ultimately it was in the "self-interest" of regional countries to act to end the conflict.

"We can't force a solution on to the region. The people's of the region have to stand up and say that enough, it's time to move forward in a different way," Obama added.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by George Obulutsa and Alison Williams)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-neighbors-stop-fuelling-congo-conflict-180822273.html

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Report: U.S. taps 500M German phone, Internet links in month

BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China, according to secret U.S. documents quoted by a German newsmagazine.

The revelations of alleged U.S. surveillance programs based on documents taken by fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have raised a political furor in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.

Exposing the latest details in a string of reputed spying programs, Der Spiegel quoted from an internal NSA document which it said its reporters had seen.

The document Spiegel cited showed that the United States categorized Germany as a "third-class" partner and that surveillance there was stronger than in any other EU country, similar in extent to China, Iraq or Saudi-Arabia.

"We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do it too," Der Spiegel quoted a passage in the NSA document as saying.

It said the document showed that the NSA monitored phone calls, text messages, emails and internet chat contributions and has saved the metadata - that is, the connections, not the content - at its headquarters.

On an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million internet data sets, rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days, the report said.

While it had been known from disclosures by Snowden that the United States tapped data in Germany, the extent was previously unclear.

News of the U.S. cyber-espionage program Prism and the British equivalent Tempora have outraged Germans, who are highly sensitive to government monitoring having lived through the Stasi secret police in the former communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo of Hitler's Nazi regime.

A Spiegel report on Saturday that the NSA had spied on European Union offices caused outrage among EU policymakers, with some even calling for a suspension to talks for a free trade agreement between Washington and the EU.

In France, Der Spiegel reported, the United States taps about 2 million connection data a day. Only Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand were explicitly exempted from spy attacks.

Snowden, a U.S. citizen, fled the United States to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before the publication in the Guardian and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance of internet and phone traffic.

He has been holed up in a Moscow airport transit area for a week after U.S. authorities revoked his passport. The leftist government of Ecuador is reviewing his request for asylum.

(Reporting by Annika Breidthardt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-taps-half-billion-german-phone-internet-links-093938180.html

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