Lawyer: Snowden gets passport, takes oath to be a Russian citizen
MOSCOW — Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who fled prosecution after revealing highly classified surveillance programs, received a Russian passport and took the citizenship oath, Russian news agencies quoted his lawyer as saying Friday.
Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena was reported as saying that Snowden got his passport and took the oath on Thursday, about three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted him citizenship.
The reports did not specify whether Snowden has renounced his U.S. citizenship. The United States revoked his passport in 2013, leading to Snowden being stranded in a Moscow airport for weeks after arriving from Hong Kong, aiming to reach Ecuador.
Russia eventually granted him permanent residency.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Friday that the U.S. was aware of reports Snowden had finalized his Russian citizenship but could not confirm them, and referred questions about his status to the Russian government. However, Price said the Biden administration would not be surprised if the reports were correct.
“Mr. Snowden has long signaled his allegiance to Russia. This step would only formalize that,” Price said.
Snowden leaked documents on the National Security Agency’s collection of data passing through the infrastructure of U.S. phone and internet companies. He also released details about the classified U.S. intelligence budget and the extent of American surveillance on foreign officials, including the leaders of U.S.-allied countries.
Snowden says he made the disclosures because he believed the U.S. intelligence community infringed on civil liberties.
Slain rapper: Police have arrested a man on a murder charge in the fatal shooting of rapper Takeoff, who they said was an “innocent bystander” to gunfire last month outside a bowling alley in Houston.
Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, was taken into custody Thursday night, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said Friday. Clark’s arrest came one day after another man was charged in connection with the shooting that wounded two other people.
Clark was being held in jail Friday awaiting a bond hearing. Court records do not list an attorney who could speak for him.
Born Kirsnick Khari Ball, Takeoff was the youngest member of Migos, the Grammy-nominated rap trio from suburban Atlanta that also featured his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset.
The 28-year-old musician was one of three people police said were shot outside the downtown bowling alley around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, when a dispute erupted as about 40 people were leaving a private party there.
Police Sgt. Michael Burrow said Friday that the shooting followed a dispute over a dice game, but that Takeoff was not involved and was “an innocent bystander.”
Mideast tensions: Israel’s paramilitary border police said an officer killed a Palestinian assailant in the occupied West Bank on Friday after they wrestled over a weapon.
Amateur video captured the moments the officer fired the fatal shots. The video, widely shared on
social media, was a rare documentation of one of the increasingly common violent incidents involving Israeli security forces and Palestinians, including assailants.
Rising Israeli-Palestinian tensions have made 2022 the deadliest year in the long-running conflict since 2006.
Friday’s violence took place in Hawara. Police said the assailant carried a knife and tried to break into the car of an Israeli couple before the driver — an Israeli soldier on leave — shot and wounded him.
The assailant moved toward nearby border policemen, stabbing one, police said. The commander of the unit tried to arrest the assailant. Video shows the commander putting the Palestinian man in a chokehold as two other Palestinians try to pull him away. The video shows the Palestinian man grabbing the officer’s assault rifle, which then drops to the ground.
The officer pulls a pistol from a holster and fires four shots. The man falls to the ground and is later pronounced dead.
Colorado recount: The Colorado Secretary of State has ordered a recount in the congressional race where Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert led Democrat Adam Frisch by 550 votes in an unexpectedly tight race.
The recount, which was expected, was formally announced Wednesday.
The race garnered national attention because Boebert was largely considered a lock for reelection after redistricting made the sprawling 3rd Congressional District that covers much of western Colorado more Republican.
Over a week after the polls closed, Boebert claimed victory and Frisch conceded. Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, acknowledged a recount is unlikely to change the results.
In Colorado, an automatic
recount is triggered when the margin of votes between the top two candidates is at or below 0.5% of the leading candidate’s vote total.
TikTok warning: FBI Director Chris Wray is raising national security concerns about TikTok, warning Friday that control of the popular video sharing app is in the hands of a Chinese government “that doesn’t share our values.”
Wray said the FBI was concerned that the Chinese had the ability to control the app’s recommendation algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.”
He also asserted that China could use the app to collect data on its users that could be used for traditional espionage operations.
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. A TikTok statement Friday said ByteDance is a private company and that “TikTok Inc., which offers the
TikTok service in the United States, is a U.S. company bound by U.S. laws.”
Arizona election: A rural Arizona county certified its midterm election results on Thursday, following the orders of a judge who ruled that Republican supervisors broke the law when they refused to sign off on the vote count by this week’s deadline.
Two Republicans on Cochise County’s threemember board of supervisors balked for weeks about certifying the election, even as Monday’s deadline passed.
They did not cite problems with the results, but they weren’t satisfied that the machines used to tabulate ballots were properly certified for use in elections, though state and federal election officials have said they were.
The vote allows the statewide certification to go forward as scheduled on Monday.