Many of the voters were not on the outdated registration lists but were allowed to vote after showing identification documents.

There also seemed to be no system in place to prevent one person from voting at multiple polling stations.

There was also a report of video showing three men arrested near Slovyansk with boxes of "yes" ballots in their car.

At his joint press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Obama addressed concerns that intellectual property provisions in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will lead to “higher costs of medical supplies.” His response was that people who raise concerns about TPP intellectual property provisions and access to medicines have a “lack of knowledge” about what is happening in (secret) negotiations, and are therefore prone to “rumors” and “conspiracy theories.”

In a letter to members of a parliamentary committee obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung, government officials say a personal invitation for the US whistleblower would "run counter to the political interests of the Federal Republic", and "put a grave and permanent strain" on US-German relations.

"Merkel is displaying cowardice towards our ally America," she said. "We owe the Americans nothing in this respect. The government must at least make a serious effort to safely bring Snowden to Germany and let him give evidence here. But Merkel doesn't want that."

North Korea has launched a vitriolic attack on the South Korean president, comparing her to "crafty prostitute" in thrall to her "pimp" Barack Obama.

"What Park did before Obama this time reminds one of an indiscreet girl who earnestly begs a gangster to beat someone or a capricious whore who asks her fancy man [pimp] to do harm to other person while providing sex to him," North Korea's CPRK said.

Snowden asked: "Does Russia intercept or store or analyse the communication of millions of individuals?" He went on to ask whether increasing the effectiveness of internal security systems could ever justify such actions.

He said Russia did not have a comparable programme, stating: "Our agents are controlled by law. You have to get court permission to put an individual under surveillance. We don't have mass permission, and our law makes it impossible for that kind of mass permission to exist."

The facial recognition database is part of the bureau's Next Generation Identification (NGI) programme which is a large biometric database being developed to replace the current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS).

"This means that even if you have never been arrested for a crime, if your employer requires you to submit a photo as part of your background check, your face image could be searched - and you could be implicated as a criminal suspect, just by virtue of having that image in the non-criminal file," said the EFF.

As chief executive, Obama has the power to reform the NSA on his own with the stroke of a pen. By not putting this initiative into an executive order, he punted to Congress on an issue that affects the civil liberties of most anybody who picks up a phone. Every day Congress waits on the issue is another day Americans' calling records are being collected by the government without suspicion that any crime was committed.

The president won't scrap the phone metadata surveillance altogether; it's unrealistic in today’s climate of paranoia. But Obama could turn his words into immediate reality with a stroke of his pen.

Coviello outlined a number of principles that he'd like to see all nations to adopt. At the top of his list, he wants all nations to renounce the use of cyber-weapons. He also wants all nations to ensure that economic activity on the Internet can proceed unfettered. Finally, all nations should respect and ensure the privacy of all individuals.

President Obama (after first claiming he had no idea it was happening) promised Merkel that the NSA would stop spying on her phone calls, by January, those plans for a big "bilateral no-spy deal" were basically dead.

This shouldn't be that surprising. This is what the NSA is going to do, after all. But what amazes me about this story is the fact that it's already leaked out, and that despite all the talk of cracking down on future leaks out of the NSA, the NSA already has another leaker releasing information that is clearly politically sensitive.

At one point during the January 25 call, Nuland colorfully rejected recent overtures from European Union leaders by telling her colleague: "Fuck the EU."

The leak has strained other diplomatic relations, with Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Nuland's comment was "absolutely unacceptable." Nuland has since apologized for the remark.