JERUSALEM (AP) ? One of Israel's two chief rabbis has suspended himself over a police probe into an alleged money laundering scheme.
Yona Metzger's lawyers said Sunday he decided to refrain from carrying out any official roles during the police inquiry. Metzger was questioned last week over fraud and bribery allegations. Police raided his home and office following a months-long undercover investigation into his financial dealings. He denies the allegations.
Metzger is only weeks away from ending his 10-year term as the country's chief rabbi for Israel's Ashkenazi, or European-descended, Jews. Along with a second chief rabbi from the Sephardic, or Middle Eastern lineage, Metzger has led the country's supreme body for overseeing Jewish services.
In 2005, Metzger was also questioned over fraud allegations. No charges were filed.
Edward Snowden is reportedly seeking political asylum in Ecuador after arriving to Moscow today. The US has revoked his passport. The former NSA contractor has been on the run since he first revealed details of Verizon's participation in a telecommunications industry program to store information on all telephone calls, and then broke news of the NSA/Silicon Valley PRISM system that watches over the whole Interent. Developing...
Monday, June 24, 2013 10:26AM?Snowden had a ticket to Havana, but he didn't use it. It was a trick to fool reporters.
Snowden's final destination may not be Havana, however. The current speculation is that he may go to Caracas after landing in Havana. Other rumors point to Iceland. Wikileaks claims his final destination is Ecuador. Julian Assange and his organization claim they are helping him.
And it's not just data that flows between the California technology giants and the NSA. Facebook's former security chief, Max Kelly, left the social network to take a similar jobwith the National Security Agency.
Tuesday, June 18, 10:45 PM?The surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet activity is "transparent," President Barack Obama said on television Monday night. The names of these secret programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden are turning up on job sites all over the Internet.
The NSA and FBI has had access to private accounts on Facebook, Microsoft,Google and Apple during the last six months, and appears to be expanding and extending online surveillance that first began with the controversial Patriot Act programs launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Monday, June 17, 10:45PM?Edward Snowden?the NSA contractor employee who revealed the secret US government spy program Prism on June 6?now says that more details are coming.
11:23 AM?Answering The Guardian readers' questions, Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that more details are coming no matter what happens to him: "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
10:42 AM?Today, Apple has admitted that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on "robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer?s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide." The company also claims it doesn't chat messages or videoconferences and that "it doesn't store Maps, location, or Siri data in any way that could identify you."
Saturday, June 15, 2013 3:00 PM?The Associate Press has numerous sources detailing that Prism's collaboration with tech companies is just the tip of the iceberg?the NSA actually captures every single bit of data that comes in and out the United States, storing it for analysis:
...larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
Thursday, June 13, 2013 1:55 PM?The Silicon Valley giants are telling a very different story than the NSA, which explained in top secret Power Point presentations exactly how the data comes from the biggest Internet companies to the government's massive spying operations.
Patriot Or Traitor: Edward Snowden and the NSA Prism Surveillance Web
Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 7:25 PM?More Americans see Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden as a patriot than as a traitor, according to a new opinion poll. But the 29-year-old former intelligence contractor who leaked the details of the NSA's massive data mining operation is still unknown to most Americans?46% have no opinion on his motivations.
1:40 PM?Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden has resurfaced in Hong Kong, telling the South China Morning Post that he's "revealing criminality" and has no other motives. He plans to stay in Hong Kong and has more secrets to reveal.
Since the shocking revelations were revealed a week ago, Snowden has been vilified as a defector but also hailed by supporters such as WikiLeaks? Julian Assange.
?I?m neither traitor nor hero. I?m an American,? he said, adding that he was proud to be an American. ?I believe in freedom of expression. I acted in good faith but it is only right that the public form its own opinion.?
Snowden tells the Hong Kong paper, ?I will never feel safe."
Ron Paul Fears Edward Snowden Will Be Assassinated
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 11:39 PM?Congressman Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who first became a hero to young computer technicians in 2007, said today that he fears that the United States government will assassinate Edward Snowden using either a "cruise missile or a drone missile."
Google, Microsoft and Facebook released open letters today asking the U.S. government to get the tech firms off the hook for cooperating with widespread electronic spying on Americans by the biggest tech firms as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In Maryland, the father of Snowden's girlfriend described Snowden as a man of "strong convictions of right and wrong." But because Snowden is generally "shy and reserved," Jonathan Mills said he was shocked by the revelations.
Lindsay Mills, the 29-year-old girlfriend of Snowden, reportedly texted her father but did not reveal her whereabouts. Snowden disappeared from his Hong Kong hotel at least a day ago, and has yet to surface.
6:40 PM?While the world's attention turned to Edward Snowden's pole-dancing ballerina girlfriend today, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a legal backlash against the NSA and FBI's widespread domestic spying as Google and Apple sought permission from the U.S. government to disclose at least some of what's going on.
The ACLU lawsuit is the first challenge to the widespread phone company spying revealed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old American who has single-handedly brought the nation's attention back to the long forgotten issue of constant surveillance.
2:31 PM?The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald wrote the shocking stories based on Snowden's leaks, but Greenwald knows firsthand that surveillance dragnets allegedy created to target foreign terrorists are just as easily?and clumsily?turned on U.S. citizens critical of an overreaching government that increasingly seems to exist only to protect itself from the nation it ostensibly serves. The Nation's Lee Fang describes what was revealed just two years ago:
Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations. The plans ? one concocted in concert with lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to "combat" WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America ? fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cyber tools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups.
The episode also shows that Greenwald, who helped Snowden expose massive spying efforts in the U.S., had been targetted by spy agency contractors in the past for supporting whistleblowers and WikiLeaks.
Majority of Americans Support NSA Spying
Monday, June 10, 2013 5:42 PM?NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has left his Hong Kong hotel as Republican members of Congress call for his extradition and the White House. The 29-year-old contractor for U.S. intelligence services provided details of Washington's decade-long spree of data collection on the phone calls and Internet use of all Americans, and now fears for his life.
Nearly 19,000 people have signed the "Pardon Edward Snowden" petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Daniel Ellsberg, whose life was upended by his decision to leak the Pentagon's bleak assessment of its war in Vietnam, today is praising Snowden's "conscience and patriotism."
Meanwhile, a solid majority of Americans surveyed by Pew Research Center say they're just fine with the constant surveillance of telephone calls and Internet use?56% of Americans support the illegal domestic spying, but only 27% of Americans claim to be closely following the scandal.
3:04 PM?Palantir, the Silicon Valley startup named for an evil all-seeing rock from Lord of the Rings reportedly behind the NSA's Prism program to spy on all Internet activity, takes the hobbit life very seriously. A company director explained in 2010 that a surveillance program called "Save the Shire" saw America's perceived enemies as orcs and dark wizards.
Sunday, June 9, 10:00PM?Edward Snowden: This is the man who told the world about PRISM, the NSA spy network capable of grabbing all your personal data?including private messages, photos and videos?with the help of America's top tech companies.
According to the Guardian, Snowden worked for the last four years at the National Security Agency. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Snowden told The Guardian. ?I don?t want public attention because I don?t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.?
Following the revelation of his identity, Edward Snowden was hiding in a Hong Kong hotel.
Despite Denials, Tech Companies Collaborated With NSA
Saturday, June 8, 3:30 PM?The Guardian has revealed the existence of a second NSA surveillance network. Its name is Boundless Informant and, unlike PRISM, it covers the entire planet. Unlike PRISM, however, this network doesn't capture the data but merely organizes it, indexing countries by the metadata obtained from local phone and computer networks.
3:10 AM?The New York Times says that Facebook, Google and Apple are collaborating with the NSA, rebutting the companies' carefully worded statements. According to their sources, companies like Facebook built specific systems so the government could easily request and access their data.
This information contradicts Zuckerberg's denial, posted on his Facebook page Friday afternoon, which has the vague sound of many, many lawyers parsing their own language:
Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government?or any other government?direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a ?back door? to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
According to the Times, the key words here are direct access. The government didn't have a backdoor to access the data, but these companies built a system for them:
[C]ompanies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
Obama Says PRISM Exists To "Keep Us Safe"
Friday, June 7, 3:31 PM?A mysterious Facebook-connected startup called Palantir?a Lord of the Rings reference to a magical method of surveillance?appears to be the entity that runs the NSA's PRISM program just revealed to be spying on all Americans at all times, with Barack Obama's approval. Obama was in Silicon Valley this morning shaking down the tech billionaires for campaign money:
1:36 PM?Obama claimed the massive, unprecedented national surveillance system involves only "modest encroachments on privacy." As for any political fallout in Congress, Obama also made it clear that "your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing."
12:41 AM?Barack Obama, speaking live in Silicon Valley right now, said the electronic snooping "helps protect us from terrorism" and insists all the eavesdropping of every mobile call, email, instant message and file attachment is completely legal. Obama is in San Jose raising campaign money from the Internet billionaires who allow the NSA to spy on all Americans.
Newly exposed proof that all the major telecommunication companies in America continue to hand over all phone data to the National Security Agency means that the White House's illegal mass wiretapping of people suspected of no crime has continued for a dozen years.
Along with monitoring of web traffic, email and searches through the major telecom carriers, all phone calls been wiretapped with full cooperation of the communications companies since at least 2001. That the practice is illegal hasn't stopped the White House or NSA from continuing the wholesale surveillance. Congress reliably moves to make illegal spying legal whenever there's a scandal like the current Verizon outrage.
White House Says Spying On Millions of Verizon Calls a "Critical Tool"
Wednesday, June 6, 2013 9:03 AM?America's spy agencies have had full access to US cellphone call data to and from Verizon customers since April, the Guardian reports. The Obama Administration is defending the National Security Agency phone spying as a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States."
The secret order was obtained by the British newspaper and reported Wednesday night.
The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack. Read...
The White House on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats." Read...
[T]he extent of the NSA?s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitlyexcluded those outside the United States. Read...
A senior Obama administration official [...] stressed that the information acquired by the purported order "does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." Read...
Data from all incoming and outgoing calls is provided to the NSA under the top secret order, which the Washington Post describes as a "routine renewal of a similar order first issued in 2006." The White House did not specifically address the Verizon order this morning, but referred to at least one telecommunications company.
Past revelations of major U.S. telecommunications companies spying on Americans suspected of no crimes has shown that the other carriers have consistently opened their lines and data banks to America's spy agencies since 2001.
[Photos by the Associated Press and Getty Images. Illustrations by Front]
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The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade speaks during the post game news conference following Game 7 of the NBA basketball championship game San Antonio Spurs, Friday, June 21, 2013, in Miami. The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 95-88 to win their second straight NBA championship. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade speaks during the post game news conference following Game 7 of the NBA basketball championship game San Antonio Spurs, Friday, June 21, 2013, in Miami. The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 95-88 to win their second straight NBA championship. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Miami Heat basketball player Dwyane Wade holds the NBA Championship trophy as he smiles with head coach Erik Spoelestra, right, after the Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 95-88 to win Game 7 of the basketball series in Miami, early Friday, June 21, 2013. Over Wade's left shoulder is assistant coach Bob McAdo. Over Wade's right shoulder is assistant coach David Fizdale. (AP Photo/El Nuevo Herald, David Santiago)
Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade (3) dunks the ball during the second half in Game 7 of the NBA basketball championships, Friday, June 21, 2013, in Miami. The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 95-88 to win their second straight NBA championship.(AP Photo/Mike Segar, Pool)
The Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade celebrated with his girlfriend Gabrielle Union after Game 7 of the NBA basketball championship against the San Antonio Spurs, Friday, June 21, 2013, in Miami. The Miami Heat defeated the San Antonio Spurs 95-88 to win their second straight NBA championship. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
MIAMI (AP) ? Dwyane Wade's knee problems were more troublesome during the playoffs than he ever acknowledged.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Wade revealed Saturday that his right knee pained him so much that he contemplated asking to play limited minutes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, and that his left knee was drained and required about eight hours of game-day therapy just so he could play in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
"I went through a lot," said Wade, who's now a three-time NBA champion. "But I'm at peace now."
Wade also received platelet-rich plasma therapy late in the regular season to combat three bone bruises around his right knee, which was his biggest source of frustration and pain during the playoffs. Wade said two of the bruises healed, but a third ? directly under the kneecap ? remained a big problem, especially since that area was also affected by tendinitis.
Wade underwent an MRI to rule out additional problems during the East finals against Indiana, and said he was driving into a meeting with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra before Game 7 of that series ? not long after saying in the immediate aftermath of the Game 6 loss to the Pacers that he needed the ball more ? to tell him that he felt he should only play short minutes because his ineffectiveness was hurting the team.
Spoelstra had other ideas, and Wade decided to scrap his plan.
"I felt like if I was going to be playing the way I was playing, and hurting the way I was hurting, I wasn't going to be able to help us move on to the next round," Wade said. "I was going to say play me short minutes only, and give Mike Miller and guys other opportunities. But I came into the meeting, and all Spo was about was giving me more opportunities and getting me ways to be more successful. So I was like, 'Well, changed my mind.'"
Following the MRI that was done late in the Indiana series, Wade said the team's athletic trainers amended his treatment plan slightly, and he started seeing immediate improvement. He scored 21 points in the East-clincher against the Pacers, then scored a total of 57 points ? by far his best two-game stretch of the playoffs ? in Games 4 and 5 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs.
But early in Game 6 of the title series, Wade's collided with the Spurs' Manu Ginobili. Before long, Wade's surgically repaired left knee, which kept him out of last summer's London Olympics, had swollen up "like a coconut."
He needed treatment during the game, even missing the start of the second half. Wade got a large amount of fluid drained from the knee on Wednesday, then got more than three hours of treatment at the arena Thursday morning and about 4? more hours of work done in the afternoon, going almost all the way up to the moment the Heat took the floor to warm up for Game 7.
Wade played 39 minutes in the finale, scoring 23 points on 11 for 21 shooting.
"We know what he was dealing with," Spoelstra said after Game 7. "Really, he should be commended for being out there and doing whatever it takes, putting himself out there for criticism, possible criticism, because he wasn't 100 percent. And he just helped us win. That was the bottom line. It was a selfless effort for two months. And some players probably wouldn't have played."
Wade said the right knee pain was at times the second-worst thing he's dealt with, injury-wise, in his 10-year career, behind only the shoulder he dislocated in 2007 in an awkward collision with then-Houston forward and current Heat teammate Shane Battier.
The late-season knee problems took some shine off a year where Wade averaged 21.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 5.1 assists on a career-best 52 percent shooting, yet still had his skills often questioned. Only Heat teammate LeBron James, Oklahoma City's Russell Westbrook and the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant averaged as much in all three of those categories this season as Wade did.
"The toughest part of it is, you work all season to get healthy coming off of knee surgery," Wade said. "And when I finally got the way, everybody saw in my play that I was playing great, some of the best basketball in the role I have on this team. Then I get the bone bruises, and something I worked hard for was getting taken away, and I dealt with it for three months. It was disappointing, frustrating. It hurt. I was able to mask it some nights. Some nights, not."
In the end, it was all worthwhile. Wade will soon be getting his third ring ? "3 for No. 3," as the shirts many of his friends wore amid the Heat celebration pointed out.
"Selfishly, I'm going to say we won this one for me," Wade said. "Because of the way my career has gone and the things I've dealt with personally, I wanted this third one. In my mind, it validates the player I've become in this league. When you change your position, going from being talked about as one of the three best players in this game to people questioning your ability, I needed this one to validate that what I did was the right thing. I can be at peace with anything going forward."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has filed espionage charges against Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who admitted revealing secret surveillance programs to media outlets, according to a court document made public on Friday.
The charges are the government's first step in what could be a long legal battle to return Snowden from Hong Kong, where he is believed to be in hiding, and try him in a U.S. court. A Hong Kong newspaper said he was under police protection, but the territory's authorities declined to comment.
Snowden was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, said the criminal complaint, which was dated June 14.
The latter two offenses fall under the U.S. Espionage Act and carry penalties of fines and up to 10 years in prison.
A single page of the complaint was unsealed on Friday. An accompanying affidavit remained under seal.
Two U.S. sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was preparing to seek Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong, which is part of China but has wide-ranging autonomy, including an independent judiciary.
The Washington Post, which first reported the criminal complaint earlier on Friday, said the United States had asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.
Hong Kong's Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted police sources as saying that anti-terrorism officers had contacted Snowden, arranged a safe house for him and provided protection. However, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said Snowden was not in police protection but was in a "safe place" in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang declined to comment other than to say Hong Kong would deal with the case in accordance with the law.
Snowden earlier this month admitted leaking secrets about classified U.S. surveillance programs, creating a public uproar. Supporters say he is a whistleblower, while critics call him a criminal and perhaps even a traitor.
He disclosed documents detailing U.S. telephone and Internet surveillance efforts to the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper.
On Saturday, Hong Kong's SCMP said Snowden had divulged information to the newspaper showing how computers in Hong Kong and China had been targeted.
The SCMP said documents and statements by Snowden show the NSA program had hacked major Chinese telecoms companies to access text messages, attacked China's top Tsinghua University, and hacked the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which has an extensive fiber optic submarine network.
The criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located.
That judicial district has seen a number of high-profile prosecutions, including the spy case against former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and the case of al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui. Both were convicted.
'ACTIVE EXTRADITION RELATIONSHIP'
Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
They also showed that the government had worked through the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to gather so-called metadata - such as the time, duration and telephone numbers called - on all calls carried by service providers such as Verizon.
President Barack Obama and his intelligence chiefs have vigorously defended the programs, saying they are regulated by law and that Congress was notified. They say the programs have been used to thwart militant plots and do not target Americans' personal lives.
U.S. federal prosecutors, by filing a criminal complaint, lay claim to a legal basis to make an extradition request of the authorities in Hong Kong, the Post reported. The prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment and can then take steps to secure Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong for a criminal trial in the United States, the newspaper reported.
The United States and Hong Kong have "excellent cooperation" and as a result of agreements, "there is an active extradition relationship between Hong Kong and the United States," a U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters.
Since the United States and Hong Kong signed an extradition treaty in 1998, scores of Americans have been sent back home to face trial. However, the process can take years, lawyers say.
Under Hong Kong's extradition process, a request would first go to Hong Kong's chief executive. A magistrate would issue a formal warrant for Snowden's arrest if the chief executive agrees the case should proceed.
Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the first charge of theft against Snowden might find an equivalent charge in Hong Kong, needed to allow extradition proceedings to move forward, but the unauthorized communication and willful communication charges may be sticking points that lead to litigation and dispute in the courts.
What ever the Hong Kong courts decide could be vetoed by the territory's leader or Beijing on foreign affairs or defense grounds.
An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland's government would grant asylum.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.
(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, Venus Wu and Grace Li in HONG KONG; Editing by Warren Strobel, Peter Cooney and Neil Fullick)
In this Feb. 9, 2012 file photo, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 waits to take off at Chicago's Midway Airport as another lands. A spokesman for Southwest Airlines says all departing flights have been grounded due to a system-wide computer problem, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
In this Feb. 9, 2012 file photo, a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 waits to take off at Chicago's Midway Airport as another lands. A spokesman for Southwest Airlines says all departing flights have been grounded due to a system-wide computer problem, Saturday, June 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
CHICAGO (AP) ? A system-wide computer failure forced Southwest Airlines to ground its entire fleet of airplanes preparing for departures late Friday, and at least 57 flights had to be canceled even after service was fully restored hours later, a company spokeswoman said.
Michelle Agnew told The Associated Press that 43 of the cancellations were flights scheduled for late Friday night departures in the western half of the country. The other 14 were Saturday morning flights scattered across the U.S. because crews were not able to get to airports in time to make the scheduled takeoffs.
An estimated 250 flights ? most of them on the West Coast ? were grounded at least temporarily Friday night. The glitch impaired the airline's ability to do such things as conduct check-ins, print boarding passes and monitor the weight of each aircraft.
Some flights were on the taxiway and diverted back to the terminal after the problem was detected around 8 p.m. PDT Friday, Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said. Flights already in the air were unaffected.
Shortly after 11 p.m. PDT, Southwest posted on its Twitter page that "systems are operating and we will begin work to get customers where they need to be. Thanks for your patience tonight."
Agnew said the computer system was "running at full capacity" by early Saturday. Before that, though, officials used a backup system that was much more sluggish.
"Backup systems are in place, not the main system, so it's slower," Hawkins said after service resumed. "But we are able to start launching these flights."
He said cancellations were inevitable because the airline doesn't do redeye flights and by the time the problem was fixed, it was near "the end of our operational day."
The late hour of the disruption meant the computer problem affected far more flights on the West Coast, but Hawkins said at least a few on the East Coast were grounded as well. Southwest, based in Dallas, conducts, on average, 3,400 flights a day.
A spokesman for Los Angeles International Airport said of about 25 inbound and outbound flights remaining Friday, only five departing flights were experiencing delays, of 30 to 80 minutes. At LA/Ontario International Airport (ONT), a total of three flights ? all departures ? were affected.
Four Southwest flights were temporarily held in Seattle, said Christina Faine, a Seattle-Tacoma International Airport spokeswoman.
One flight to Oakland, Calif., had been due to leave at 9:20 p.m. and departed before 11 p.m. Faine said late Friday night that an airport duty manager, Anthony Barnes, told her the others were expected to depart shortly.
Steve Johnson, a spokesman for Portland, Ore., International Airport, said he was not aware of any planes held up there.
___
Associated Press writers Kathy McCarthy in Seattle, Robert Seavey in Phoenix and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Supermoon peaked Sunday morning, but good viewing will continue for the next few days. The unusual relationship between Earth and the moon makes supermoon a particularly good show.
By Mark Sappenfield,?Staff writer / June 23, 2013
Supermoon rises behind the Home Place clock tower in Prattville, Ala., Saturday.
Dave Martin/AP
Enlarge
"Supermoon" officially arrived at about 7 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time Sunday morning, with the moon making its closest swing by Earth this year. About a half hour later, the moon reached full status, making it appear 12 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than a regular full moon.
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Don't worry if you missed it. The effect should still linger for a few nights, meaning Sunday, Monday, and even Tuesday should give a good sense of this year's supermoon.
And social media was alight with the event, with pictures of Saturday night's supermoon making an appearance from Facebook to Instagram.
The show is the product of a cosmic quirk. Since planets and moons orbit in ellipses, not circles, there are times when they are closer to what they're orbiting and times when they're farther away. For moons, the point when they're closest to their planet is called perigee, the point farthest away is called apogee.
For Earth and the moon, perigee and apogee happen once each month, since the moon orbits the Earth once every 27 days. But because of small inconsistencies in the orbits, the moon's closest approach and its farthest distance are always slightly different.
The moon hit its monthly perigee Sunday morning, but what makes it worthy of the name "supermoon" was that it was the closest perigee of 2013. Moreover, since it coincided almost perfectly with a full moon, the effect was enhanced.
The moon's farthest apogee this year has already happened and is set to repeat itself next year during the Jan. 15, 2014, full moon. To see the visual difference in size between a perigee and apogee moon, click here.?
But what makes the moon so special? If everything in the solar system orbits in an ellipsis, shouldn't we have a "supersun," too.
In fact, we do. Since we orbit the sun once a year, supersuns only happen once a year. Our closest swing to the sun, called perihelion, also already happened this year, and will happen again on Jan. 4, 2014. (An "un-supersun," when the sun seems smallest at aphelion, is just around the corner: July 5.)
But will there be this much buzz next January with sungazers filling Twitter with pictures of a gigantic sun? Don't count on it.
The reason? the sun is obviously much farther away from Earth than is the moon, so the effect is not so noticeable. For Earth, the distance between aphelion and perihelion is about 3 million miles. But even at perihelion, the Earth is still 91 million miles from the sun.?
In addition, Earth's orbit around the sun is more nearly circular than is the moon's orbit around us, with only Venus and Neptune having more circular orbits than Earth. Mercury has the most eccentric orbit ? ranging from a perihelion of 29 million miles to an aphelion of 43 million miles ? meaning it has a truly dramatic supersun (if you can stand the 800 degree Fahrenheit temperatures on the sun-side surface).
By contrast, the moon's orbit around Earth is the most elliptical orbit of any major moon in the solar system. Combine that with the fact that the moon is comparatively close to Earth, so it looks large in our skies, and supermoon earns its name.
