Texas voter ID law reinstated in victory for Republican-backed measures

US Justice Department has criticised Texas law as being the states latest tool to suppress minority voters in elections

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated Texas tough voter ID law for the November election, which the US Justice Department had condemned as the states latest means of suppressing minority voter turnout.

The ruling by the New Orleans-base fifth circuit court of appeals temporarily blocks last weeks ruling by US district judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos in Corpus Christi, who determined the law unconstitutional and similar to a poll tax designed to dissuade minorities from voting.

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US will not seek death penalty for Edward Snowden, Holder tells Russia

Reports this week claimed Snowden had applied for asylum in Russia because he feared torture if he was returned to US

The US has told the Russian government that it will not seek the death penalty for Edward Snowden should he be extradited, in an attempt to prevent Moscow from granting asylum to the former National Security Agency contractor.

In a letter sent this week, US attorney general Eric Holder told his Russian counterpart that the charges faced by Snowden do not carry the death penalty. Holder added that the US "would not seek the death penalty even if Mr Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes".

Holder said he had sent the letter, addressed to Alexander Vladimirovich, Russia's minister of justice, in response to reports that Snowden had applied for temporary asylum in Russia "on the grounds that if he were returned to the United States, he would be tortured and would face the death penalty".

"These claims are entirely without merit," Holder said. In addition to his assurance that Snowden would not face capital punishment, the attorney general wrote: "Torture is unlawful in the United States."

In the letter, released by the US Department of Justice on Friday, Holder added: "We believe that these assurances eliminate these asserted grounds for Mr Snowden's claim that he should be treated as a refugee or granted asylum, temporary or otherwise."

The US has been seeking Snowden's extradition to face felony charges for leaking details of NSA surveillance programmes. There were authoritative reports on Wednesday that authorities in Moscow had granted Snowden permission to stay in Russia temporarily, but when Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, arrived to meet his client at Sheremetyevo airport, he said the papers were not yet ready.

Kucherena, who has close links to the Kremlin, said Snowden would stay in the airport's transit zone, where he has been in limbo since arriving from Hong Kong on 23 June, for the near future.

The letter from Holder, and the apparent glitch in Snowden's asylum application, suggest that Snowden's fate is far from secure.

But a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin insisted Russia has not budged from its refusal to extradite Snowden. Asked by a reporter on Friday whether the government's position had changed, Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that "Russia has never extradited anyone and never will." Putin has previously insisted Russia will not extradite Snowden to the US. There is no US-Russia extradition treaty.

Putin's statement still leaves the Russian authorities room for manoeuvre, however, as Snowden is not technically on Russian soil.

Peskov said that Putin is not involved in reviewing Snowden's application or involved in discussions about the whistleblower's future with the US, though he said the Russian security service, the FSB, had been in touch with the FBI.

Speaking on Wednesday, Snowden's lawyer said he was hoped to settle in Russia. "[Snowden] wants to find work in Russia, travel and somehow create a life for himself," Kucherena told the television station Rossiya 24. He said Snowden had already begun learning Russian.

There is support among some Russian politicians for Snowden to be allowed to stay in the country. The speaker of the Russian parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, has said Snowden should be granted asylum to protect him from the death penalty.

The letter from Holder was designed to allay those fears and negate the grounds for which Snowden as allegedly applied for asylum in Russia. The attorney general said that if Snowden returned to the US he would "promptly be brought before a civilian court" and would receive "all the protections that United States law provides".

"Any questioning of Mr Snowden could be conducted only with his consent: his participation would be entirely voluntary, and his legal counsel would be present should he wish it," Holder said.

He added that despite Snowden's passport being revoked he "remains a US citizen" and said the US would facilitate a direct return to the country.

Germany's president, who helped expose the workings of East Germany's Stasi secret police, waded into the row on Friday. President Joachim Gauck, whose role is largely symbolic, said whistleblowers such as Snowden deserved respect for defending freedom.

"The fear that our telephones or mails are recorded and stored by foreign intelligence services is a constraint on the feeling of freedom and then the danger grows that freedom itself is damaged," Gauck said.

New York City soda ban struck down by judge in eleventh-hour ruling

Court dismisses plan to outlaw large sugary drinks as 'arbitrary and capricious' just hours before it was set to take effect

A state judge has halted New York City's ban on large sugary drinks just hours before it was due to go into effect, calling it "arbitrary and capricious".

The ruling is a blow to the mayor of New York, Mike Bloomberg, who has personally promoted the ban and who earlier in the day said it would help those in poverty who "don't have the ability to take care of themselves as well".

In his ruling, New York supreme court judge Milton Tingling said the regulations, which would have banned the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16oz, were "fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences".

Tingling said in a 37-page ruling that the city is "enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations".

The Bloomberg administration is likely to appeal the ruling.

The law banned the sale of containers larger than 16oz of sugary drinks and soda at restaurants, bowling alleys and cinemas. But convenience stores and grocery stores, which are beyond the authority of the city's health department, would still be allowed to sell large containers.

Tingling said this would have led to a patchwork of enforcement. "It is arbitrary and capricious because it applies to some but not all food establishments in the city, it excludes other beverages that have significantly higher concentrations of sugar sweeteners and/or calories and on suspect grounds, and the loopholes inherent in the rule, including but not limited to no limitations of refills, defeats and/or serve to gut the purpose of the rule."

He went on: "The simple reading of the rule leads to the earlier acknowledged uneven enforcement even within a particular city block, much less the city as a whole ... the loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the stated purpose of the rule."

Michael Cardozo, counsel for New York City's law department, issued a statement saying the mayor's office would appeal, "and we are confident the Board of Health's decision will ultimately be upheld".

"This measure is part of the city's multi-pronged effort to combat the growing obesity epidemic, which takes the lives of more than 5,000 New Yorkers every year, and we believe the board of health has the legal authority - and responsibility - to tackle its leading causes."

The American Beverage Association, one of seven petitioners against the sugary drinks ban, said the ruling "provides a sigh of relief to New Yorkers and thousands of small businesses in New York City that would have been harmed by this arbitrary and unpopular ban".

"With this ruling behind us, we look forward to collaborating with city leaders on solutions that will have a meaningful and lasting impact on the people of New York City."

Bloomberg was due to make a statement at 5.30pm on Monday.

Germany Passes New Internet Copyright Law After Watering It Down To Spare Google From Having To Pay

The German Bundestag passed an addendum to the country’s copyright laws earlier today, the so-called “Leistungsschutzrecht,” that allows publishers to charge aggregators and search engines for the content they index and re-publish on their sites and in their apps.

An earlier version of the ancillary copyright law would have meant that Google, Google News and other aggregators and search engines would have had to pay, even if they just displayed “single words or very small text excerpts” from copyrighted text. Before passing the law, however, the Bundestag watered it down considerably and now allows for the use of snippets.

Sadly, though, as Der Spiegel reports today, it’s unclear how the law actually defines the word “snippet”; the current assumption is that everything up to about 160 characters would still be okay.

A number of German publishers lobbied their government to push the stronger version of the law, but the government decided to at least make the law compatible with the way Google currently indexes and displays snippets. Thanks to this, Google will likely not have to pay for uses of text up to about 160 characters. Startups and aggregators like Flipboard and others will likely have to reconsider how they use texts in Germany or start paying a license fee (content older than one year is excluded from the law).

A Google spokesperson told Der Spiegel that the company thinks the new law is “neither necessary nor useful” and that it will only “hurt German Internet users and the country’s economy.”

The organization of German publishers, of course, is rather happy about the new law (though given that they do seem to be a bit behind the times, they would have probably preferred linking to their texts to be made illegal) and argues that it provides publishers with a framework for licensing their content to aggregators.

While the German newspaper industry is still in relatively good shape compared to the U.S., most of the publishers also know that the age of the printed paper can’t last. Just like most of their counterparts in the rest of the world, though, they struggle with finding new ways to monetize their online content. While they had originally hoped that Google could subsidize their operations through licensing fees for a while, chances are they will now have to sue aggregators and startups instead.

There is a very small chance that the Bundesrat (the upper house of the German Parliament) could still kill the bill. Most pundits, however, currently think that this is very unlikely.

Disclaimer: I built a small German tech aggregator that could’ve been affected by the original version of the law.

Image credit: Digitale Gesellschaft

Somali woman is jailed for a year after claiming she was raped

Human rights groups attack 'terrible miscarriage of justice' as woman and journalist who interviewed her are sentenced

A Somali woman who said she was raped by state security forces, and a journalist who interviewed her, were each sentenced on Tuesday to a year in jail in a trial that human rights advocates called "a terrible miscarriage of justice".

The 27-year-old woman was accused of insulting a government body and making false claims. The court in the capital, Mogadishu, said it based its decision on medical evidence that she was not raped, but the judge deferred her sentence until she has weaned her child.

The freelance reporter Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, who interviewed the woman in early January but never filed a story, was also charged with insulting state institutions. The two defendants are expected to appeal.

"The court's decision to convict an alleged rape victim and the journalist who interviewed her is a terrible miscarriage of justice, and sends a chilling signal to victims of sexual assault in Somalia," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

"The case was built on groundless charges and serious due-process violations, and should have been thrown out. The government should swiftly move to exonerate and release the defendants."

The US state department has said the case is "a litmus test" for the future of Somalia. Human Rights Watch said last week that the case was politically motivated and designed to silence those who report on the pervasive problem of sexual violence by state security forces.

The international outcry surrounding the case is an embarrassment for the Somali president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, whose election last year was described by the international community as the start of a new era for Somalia after decades of instability and conflict.

The trial started as the Mohamud toured Europe to garner international support to rebuild Somalia.

He was in Britain on Monday where he met the international development secretary, Justine Greening.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said he had discussed the case with Mohamud. He tweeted: "Raised current rape case of concern in Somalia with the President, including the importance of victims feeling able to speak out."

The judge in the case, Ahmed Aden Farah, said on Tuesday that the woman was sentenced for offending state institutions by claiming she was raped, the AFP news agency reported.

"She will spend one year in prison after finishing the breastfeeding of her baby," the agency quoted him as saying. The woman's husband and two others who were also detained over the case have been released.

The woman was arrested on 10 January, two days after she was interviewed by Abdinur Ibrahim and told him she had been raped by government forces last year. Police interrogated her over two days without legal counsel and released after saying she had retracted her story.

There have been some signs of official discomfort over the progress of the case. On Sunday, Somalia's prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid, said authorities would do more to protect rape victims, and he promised to reform the armed forces and judiciary once the trial had concluded.

"We recognise the concerns of our international partners and we are only too aware of the enormous challenges our nation faces," he said in a statement.

The international community, especially Britain and the US, have enthusiastically backed Somalia's new government, which emerged last September after a UN-backed peace process to replace a corrupt and inefficient transitional authority. International donors have pledged millions of dollars to rebuild the country, including money destined for the security forces.

Somalia has been enjoying a period of relative stability since African Union forces pushed the Islamic militants of al-Shabaab out of most of their urban strongholds, including the capital. The rebels still control some rural areas and carry out sporadic bomb attacks in Mogadishu