Snowden

A documentary tracing an artist's campaign against the family behind the U.S. opioid drug epidemic scooped the Golden Lion, the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, on Sept. 10.

Cate Blanchett won her second Venice acting award for her performance as a predatory classical music conductor in "Tar," having won in 2008 for her unexpected turn as Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There."

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, living in Russia since leaking a trove of classified documents showing the scope of post-9/11 US government surveillance, wants to claim asylum in France, AFP reported.

He said he had applied for asylum in France in 2013, during the presidency of Francois Hollande, but told Inter Radio that he hoped President Emmanuel Macron would approve his request.

In this Feb. 14, 2015, file photo, Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu.

Vladimir Putin told Oliver Stone that while he agrees that the NSA has gone too far in its snooping practices, and that the public sharing of data can't be called treason, he disapproves of Edward Snowden's decision to leak troves of confidential files.

Russia could return Edward Snowden to the US as a “gift” to President Donald Trump, according to two US intelligence sources cited by NBC News on Friday. One unnamed official, who NBC said gleaned information from “a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports,” said such a move could be an attempt to “curry favor” with the Trump administration.

Steven Erlanger, the New York Times bureau chief for London (left), and Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, converse with Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the CIA who leaked US government documents, who joined an Athens Democracy Conference discussion via live video link on Friday.

Edward Snowden, in exile in Moscow after leaking US National Security Agency documents, said Friday he intends to vote in the US presidential election, but did not say which candidate he favors.

Former US intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden joined Twitter Sept. 29, picking up more than a quarter of a million followers on the social network in just over two hours.

Britain has been forced to remove some of its spies after Russia and China accessed the top-secret raft of documents taken by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, British media reported.
 

Germany's chief prosecutor has dropped a probe into the alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone by US intelligence agencies, his office said on June 12.