The undertaking took meticulous coordination: Snowden, a former NSA contractor, chatted with Guardian reporters Glenn Greenwald and documentary maker Laura Poitras over encrypted email exchanges. Their first meeting hinged on code words and a secret signal involving a Rubik's cube. But when the first article revealing hush-hush surveillance programs went live in June 2013 while he was in a Hong Kong hotel room, that's as far as Snowden had thought it out.

"I admit it. I did not have a plan beyond that point, beyond getting the story out there," Snowden said during a question-and-answer session Thursday, appearing at Comic-Con in San Diego over a live internet feed from Russia. "I planned to ask the world for justice and see what happened."

As any reader of spy novels could tell you, danger might have quickly descended on Snowden.

"I never thought I would be saved," he said, adding that he didn't even expect to make it out of Hawaii, where he was living at the time before going to Hong Kong to meet the journalists. "But I thought the stories might be able to still get out there."

It's been three years since Snowden leaked information about NSA programs like Prism, which gave the government access to people's emails, video chats, photos and documents through some of the world's biggest tech companies. The disclosures put pressure on Silicon Valley companies including Apple, Google and Yahoo to step up their efforts in encryption and privacy and galvanized the companies to push back against the government on issues of spying and user data.

Apple, for example, was embroiled in a heated standoff with the FBI earlier this year over information on an iPhone tied to a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shooting in December. Neither side backed down, and in the end the federal government found a way inside the phone without Apple's help.

But Snowden still managed to take a jab at Silicon Valley on Thursday. "The FBI actually gets a copy of this talk, because we're going through Google Hangouts," he said, to laughs from the crowd. "Anybody basically who asks nicely gets a judge to sign off on it."

The Comic-Con Q&A took place after the first public screening of the biopic "Snowden," in front of a small audience of about a hundred people. The panel also featured director Oliver Stone; Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Snowden (and who sported an American flag t-shirt on Thursday); and Shailene Woodley, who plays his longtime girlfriend, Lindsay.

"If he gives it, I will not accept it," Trump said at a news conference in Cleveland at the close of the Republican National Convention. "I don't want his endorsement," he added. "Just, Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself." Trump, speaking the end of a week dedicated to unifying the party, once again revived the conspiracy theory published in the National Enquirer that linked Cruz's father to John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald -- an accusation that has no evidence behind it. "I don't know his father. I met him once," Trump said. "I think he's a lovely guy, a lovely guy. All I did was point out the fact that on the cover of the National Enquirer, there was a picture of him and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast. Now Ted never denied that it was his father." Trump first suggested that Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of Kennedy the morning of the Indiana primary, citing the tabloid story. Cruz allies have since repeatedly pointed to that low blow from Trump as a reason for refusing to support the Republican nominee. And on Thursday, Cruz referenced the incident, as he drew an angry reaction from members of his state's own GOP delegation. "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," Cruz said. Trump devoted a significant portion of Friday's event, billed as a thank you to convention staff and organizers, to attacking his former primary rival. Speaking at the RNC on Wednesday, Cruz had declined to endorse Trump, instead urging delegates to vote their "conscience." Cruz said that the Trump campaign had seen the speech beforehand, and that he told Trump personally that he would not make an endorsement. But Trump appeared to dispute that on Friday morning, saying Cruz went off-script at the convention.

"So Ted Cruz took his speech that was done, was on the Teleprompter, said hello, then made a statement that wasn't on the speech, then went back to his speech," Trump said. "See, to me, that's dishonorable." Trump likewise said it was "dishonorable" of Cruz to abandon his pledge to support the Republican nominee. But Trump said that Cruz's camp started it with an ad that ran in Utah showing racy photos of his wife, Melania Trump. The ad was put out by a PAC with no official ties to the Cruz campaign, but Trump said Friday that he doesn't buy that. "Folks, a lot of us are political people," Trump said. "We're not babies. His people are on the PAC." At one point in his remarks, Trump even suggested forming his own PAC to oppose Cruz if the senator runs again in four years.

11 a.m.

The Republican Party of Louisiana is condemning former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who says he will run for the U.S. Senate.

Chairman Roger Villere says in a statement issued Friday that the party vehemently opposes Duke’s candidacy, calling him “a convicted felon and a hate-filled fraud who does not embody the values of the Republican Party.”

Duke is a registered Republican seeking an open seat being vacated by Republican David Vitter. Nearly two dozen candidates have signed up for the Senate race.

The white supremacist served one term as a state representative representing suburban New Orleans more than two decades ago.

He also is a convicted felon, pleading guilty in 2002 to bilking his supporters and cheating on his taxes. He spent a year in federal prison.

___

10:30 a.m.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says he plans to run for U.S. Senate in Louisiana.

Duke’s announcement came Friday on his website.

A registered Republican, he would be seeking an open seat vacated by Republican David Vitter.

Duke’s announcement comes as Louisiana is grappling with deep racial tensions after the shooting death of a black man by white police officers and the killing of three law enforcement officers by a black man.

A white supremacist, Duke served one term as a state representative representing suburban New Orleans more than two decades ago. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1991 against Democrat Edwin Edwards.

Duke is a convicted felon, pleading guilty in 2002 to bilking his supporters and cheating on his taxes. He spent a year in federal prison.

In the small town of Hugo, Colo., the water coursing through public pipes, officials say, has been tainted by THC. THC, as you may know, is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

On Thursday afternoon, authorities notified the town of about 800 people that the water should not be drunk, used to cook with or even to bathe. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment later downgraded the warning - it was safe to shower, brush teeth and do laundry with the tap water. Ingestion remained inadvisable.

There have not been reports of health issues linked to Hugo's water, according to an AP report. Nor did every Colorado local seem terribly distraught by the idea of a cool glass of THC.

"I might have to go drink some water," Patsie Smith, the former mayor of Hugo, quipped to the Denver Post.

But investigators view the situation differently. The incident is being handled with "an abundance of caution," as Capt. Michael Yowell of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said in a news conference Thursday. The THC was first identified in a vial of tap water meant to serve as a negative result in a drug test.

"However, when that water was tested, a positive indicator for THC was detected," Yowell said, via KDVR. The sheriff's office had tweeted earlier that the tests "began after complaints." The office did not respond to a phone call from The Washington Post late Thursday seeking clarification.

Perplexed by the discovery of THC, officials began examining Hugo's wells. Town employees, local Fox outlet KDVR reported, discovered that one of the well houses showed signs of a forced entry. Subsequent field tests detected THC in a handful of locations, though the health department does not currently have "reliable information" on the THC concentrations.

Officials sealed the well in question. It will take 48 hours to flush all of that well's water through the system, Yowell said. In the meantime, the county provided bottled water to residents.

Hovering over the town like a hazy cloud is the mystery of why the tests found THC - or who might have broken into the water supply.

It is legal to possess small amounts of marijuana in Colorado. But unlike Denver and other Colorado municipalities, Hugo does not allow the sale of marijuana. Nor are there any legal marijuana grow operations nearby. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI have joined the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office in an attempt to trace the THC taint to the source.

Some chemists, however, are skeptical that there is a psychoactive compound floating through Hugo's water system.

As with the GTX 1080 and 1070, I tested the slightly more expensive ($299) Founders Edition of the GTX 1060. While the previous two cards looked practically identical -- they're both beefy 10.5-inch-long dual-slot GPUs -- the GTX 1060 is a bit shorter at 9.8 inches. They all share the same elaborate metallic case and fan design, though, along with a premium-feeling build quality. On the back, there are three DisplayPort slots, an HDMI port and a DVI connection.

The GeForce GTX 1060 features clock speeds between 1.5GHz and 1.7GHz (in boost mode), just like the GTX 1070, and there's also 6GB of GDDR5 RAM. Because of its slightly shorter frame, and the fact that it only needs a 6-pin power connector, the GTX 1060 might be a useful upgrade for people with tight cases and less capable power supplies. If you're really in that spot, though, maybe just hold out until you can revamp your entire system.

Now on to those benchmarks: The GTX 1060 performed pretty much as I expected on my system (which consists of a 4GHz Core i7-4790K CPU, 16GB of 2400Mz DDR3 RAM and a 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD on an ASUS Z97-A motherboard). It's noticeably slower than the 1070, and slightly faster than the AMD RX 480 with 8GB of RAM. Unfortunately, I didn't have a GTX 980 that I could use to directly test NVIDIA's claims about the 1060 being faster, but 3DMark comparisons against similarly specced systems showed that the cards were about as fast.

On Thursday, the Florida Department of Health said it was investigating a non travel-related case of Zika in Broward County, marking the second such case. Florida has asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assist in its investigation that must also rule out sexual transmission. So far, 400 pregnant women in the continental United States have evidence of Zika infection, up from 346 from a week ago, the CDC reported on Thursday. All of those were related to travel or sex with an infected person who had travelled. Three more babies have been born in the United States with birth defects linked to Zika infections in their mothers, bringing the total to 12, CDC said. Zika has been proven to cause microcephaly, a severe birth defect marked by small head size and undersized brains that requires a complex network of care providers and social workers to treat and provide support to parents.

But microcephaly is just the tip of the iceberg, according to experts speaking at a CDC-sponsored workshop on Thursday. They said many babies exposed in utero who appear normal at birth may have developmental problems down the road, including hearing and vision problems. For example, babies born without a functional sucking reflex may never develop the ability to swallow and will need to be fed through a feeding tube. These infants will have a higher risk of pneumonia, said Dr. Edwin Trevathan, a pediatrician and child neurologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Less obvious damage to structures on only one side of the brain may cause seizure disorders that do not appear until adolescence, Trevathan said. Pediatric experts at the workshop are reviewing the potential consequences of Zika infection and plan to make recommendations on ways to treat Zika-exposed infants.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,600 cases of microcephaly that it considers related to Zika infections in the mothers.

But last November, as he eyed a $US58,000 ($78,000) Toyota Mirai at the dealership near his home in Santa Ana, he had to think more than twice.

This was not just any electric car. Its electricity comes from fuel cells powered by hydrogen, which means the only tailpipe emissions are water vapour. That would be good for the climate, but a logistical challenge for the consumer.

In Manning's case the nearest hydrogen filling station was seven miles from his house. And the technology was still so new that there were fewer than a dozen others in the entire state.

"Is this really practical?" he asked himself. In the end, he took a leap of faith, agreeing to lease a silver Mirai for $US499 a month. "I said, 'If it sucks, it sucks,'" he recalled in a recent telephone interview.

He has no regrets. Because of a big push by the state of California to invest in a growing network of filling stations, he has never run out of fuel. Driving a hydrogen-powered car has proved a pleasant surprise to Manning and others in California's small but growing cadre of owners of fuel-cell cars.

Like other electrics, the Mirai does not have a transmission and accelerates quickly from a stop. "I can burn rubber," said Glenn Rambach, a retired engineer who bought one last fall.

For years, automakers, environmentalists and scientists have promoted hydrogen fuel cells as a breakthrough technology that will eventually enable people to travel without puffing pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Fuel cells operate by setting off a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen in the air. When they bond, an electric charge and a small amount of water are created. A few hundred cells stacked together generate enough electricity to power a car motor.

And compared with other types of electric cars, which must be recharged by drawing power from some sort of electricity, hydrogen fuel-cell cars do not need recharging and have a longer cruising range. (Not that hydrogen, which is sold as a highly compressed gas provided by industrial suppliers, is easy for any home chemist to produce in sufficient, useful quantities.)

But the hydrogen future has been slow to arrive because of a frustrating predicament: Automakers had little incentive to produce fuel-cell vehicles as long as there were no hydrogen stations to fill them up; energy companies saw no sense in opening stations if there were no cars on the market.

Corning has been making a more resistant version of Gorilla Glass nearly every two years since its inception in 2007, and this year's version is taking the glass to new heights -- literally.

"We wanted to go higher than the meter drop," said John Bayne, Vice President and General Manager at Corning.

The previous version of the glass could survive a drop at about pocket level or below on a rough surface, but with 63 percent of drops occurring between waist and shoulder height, according to Corning, the goal was to increase the total fall distance that a Gorilla Glass-topped phone could withstand.

Gorilla Glass 5 promises to brush off drops of up to 1.6 meters (5 feet, 2 inches) based on Corning's tests, making it almost four times more resistant than regular, unstrengthened glass, the company says.

About 4.5 billion of the world's phones use Gorilla Glass on their displays, and you'll find the topper expanding beyond these pocket-size devices. This year, Ford announced that the 2016 GT model will have Gorilla Glass windshields. Some ATMs will even sport an antimicrobial version of Gorilla Glass on their displays.

On Wednesday, in what many experts are calling a milestone in neuroscience, researchers published a spectacular new map of the brain, detailing nearly 100 previously unknown regions — an unprecedented glimpse into the machinery of the human mind.

Scientists will rely on this guide as they attempt to understand virtually every aspect of the brain, from how it develops in children and ages over decades, to how it can be corrupted by diseases like Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

“It’s a step towards understanding why we’re we,” said David Kleinfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the research.

Scientists created the map with advanced scanners and computers running artificial intelligence programs that “learned” to identify the brain’s hidden regions from vast amounts of data collected from hundreds of test subjects, a far more sophisticated and broader effort than had been previously attempted.

While an important advance, the new atlas is hardly the final word on the brain’s workings. It may take decades for scientists to figure out what each region is doing, and more will be discovered in coming decades.

“This map you should think of as version 1.0,” said Matthew F. Glasser, a neuroscientist at Washington University School of Medicine and lead author of the new research. “There may be a version 2.0 as the data get better and more eyes look at the data. We hope the map can evolve as the science progresses.”

The first hints of the brain’s hidden geography emerged more than 150 years ago. In the 1860s, the physician Pierre Paul Broca was intrigued by two of his patients who were unable to speak.

After they died, Broca examined their brains. On the outer layer, called the cortex, he found that both had suffered damage to the same patch of tissue.

That region came to be known as Broca’s area. In recent decades, scientists have found that it becomes active when people speak and when they try to understand the speech of other people.

This trusty little machine packs a whole bunch of features into its tiny frame, which at first glance, seems to be just another one of those cute geeky toys. Do not be fooled by its appearance, though, because Cozmo was manufactured to utilize the latest innovations in machine learning to accomplish a myriad of tasks: motor functions, dynamic personalities and even facial recognition, among others.

On top of all that, the company has announced that consumers can get to program additional functions to its standard preset as well, making the robot just about capable of doing anything its creator dictates. Cozmo can be programmed to do user-specified tasks like dimming the lights to set the mood for a romantic evening or automatically launch Netflix when it notices people are gathering in the living room. The possibilities are endless! (Well, maybe not world domination... yet.)

Of course, programming isn't exactly the easiest of tasks to undertake — people do take years to study and understand the field — but Anki promises to deliver a more coding-friendly approach to this system once the product launches this October. A handy software development kit (SDK) will ship alongside Cozmo, featuring prebuilt user-programmable code functions that carry four years of love and dedication from the team — thousands of coding, to be exact.

Basically, users do not have to build the codes from the ground up to make Cozmo do something as simple as moving in a straight line to something more complex like recognizing a familiar face.

Once its handy app on iOS and Android devices are plugged into a computer, users may simply call a dedicated function for these tasks and Cozmo will do the rest. To name a few are NumFaces, a preset that enables Cozmo to automatically register faces in its field of view; LookAround, a preset that makes the robot move around curiously and identify objects; and RollBlock, a preset where Cozmo will knock down its included blocks on command.

Anki notes that the SDK will undergo three phases before it becomes fully functional, with the goal of contributing to an academic environment. The first phase will roll out the SDK for seasoned programmers, the second phase will wrap the functions in ready-to-use graphical interfaces and lastly, the third phase will pave the way for self-produced third-party apps integrated with the device.

An image of what appears to be a woman's peaceful resistance to police is garnering plenty of attention online. Shot by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters, the photograph shows a black woman in profile, standing in the middle of the street as two police officers in riot gear seem to be preparing to arrest her in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "Everyone was given proper instructions and a certain amount of time to clear the roadway. If they did not, then they were arrested," said L'Jean McKnelely, spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department.

Weekend of unrest A weekend of intense, sometimes violent nationwide protests culminated in the arrest of hundreds of demonstrators, angry at the latest killings of black men by police officers. Despite pleas for calm from all sides, at least 312 people have been arrested at protests from New York to Chicago, and in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where two black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, were shot to death by police. Many of the protests against police violence have been peaceful. In Dallas -- before a gunman killed five police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally last week -- officers were even posing for photos with demonstrators.

Black Lives Matter protesters condemned the Dallas killings, calling the attack on law enforcement a tragedy not just for those affected but also for the nation. "Black activists have raised the call for an end to violence, not an escalation of it. (Thursday's) attack was the result of the actions of a lone gunman," the group said. "To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible. We continue our efforts to bring about a better world for all of us."

Protest symbol The symbolism of a single person's nonviolent resistance against a large, heavily armed opposition is reminiscent of a handful of other famous photographs, including Marc Riboud's shot of a Vietnam war protester holding a flower in front of armed police, or the image of the lone protester confronting a tank in Tiananmen Square. More recently, the Bachman shot calls to mind a photograph of activist Maria-Teresa "Tess" Asplund standing alone and confronting several hundred neo-Nazi marchers in Sweden, her fist firmly raised in protest.

The announcement by Cameron came just hours after May’s only rival in the race — Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom — unexpectedly abandoned her campaign, saying the country could not afford a drawn-out political contest and needed to launch quickly into the complicated bargaining with the European Union over the split.

Cameron said he would step down on Wednesday, opening the way for May to take the keys to 10 Downing St.

“I’m delighted that Theresa May will be the next prime minister. She is strong, she is competent, she is more than able to provide the leadership that our country is going to need in the years ahead, and she will have my full support,” Cameron said.

The race to succeed Cameron was supposed to last through the summer. But Leadsom’s campaign got off to a rocky start after she touted her motherhood as an advantage in a match-up with the childless May.

The domino-style spectacle Monday was just the latest twist to a British political season that has been marked by constant surprise and upheaval.

As May takes over, she will be under pressure to trigger the country's withdrawal from the 28-nation European Union.

The 59-year-old May will take office having never been voted into the job by anyone beyond lawmakers in the ruling Conservative Party. She will be the first female prime minister in Britain since Margaret Thatcher stepped down in 1990.

Cameron said he will chair his last cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and that on Wednesday he would attend Prime Minister’s Questions.

“After that I expect to go to the palace and offer my resignation so we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening,” he said.

Leadsom's sudden withdrawal appeared to have caught May's campaign team — and the rest of British politics — off guard.

Leadsom, a relative unknown, had advocated for a British exit from the European Union. She came under intense criticism over the weekend after suggesting to the Times of London that motherhood would make her a better fit for prime minister, and later told the Daily Telegraph that the pressure had been "shattering." But she did not mention the controversy in her remarks Monday.

May, the country’s home affairs secretary, had campaigned for Britain to stay in the European Union. But the no-nonsense May had repeated that Britain cannot ignore the referendum outcome.

The free-to-play game allows players to capture and train virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world. Following a successful capture, the user is rewarded with not only the virtual creature, but one of two types of in-game currency needed for progression, which are also available as in-app purchases.

Overwhelming demand for the title prompted Niantic and Nintendo to announce last week that the planned launch in Europe was "paused," as the companies work to address server problems.

Shares of Nintendo climbed 8 percent last week, adding $7.5 billion in value, as investors are encouraged by the success of the Japanese game maker's expansion onto smartphones. So far, it's estimated that Pokémon Go is bringing in between $3.9 million and $4.8 million per day based on in-app sales, according to CNBC.

Wireless companies may be seeing an impact from the game as well, as Pokémon Go data usage ranges from 2 to 8 megabytes an hour. AppleInsider has learned that Washington DC-area AT&T cell towers has seen a noticeable increase, with 8.2 percent more data transmitted daily to mobile users since the game's launch last week.

Developer Niantic was an internal startup at Google. The development house is also responsible for augmented reality title Ingress, and was spun off from Google in October 2015 during the Alphabet restructuring.

While the game is encouraging users to get outside, and outside their comfort zones, there are some downsides as well. The "beacon" feature in the app was used in O'Fallon, Missouri to lure users to a location. Upon arrival, they were greeted by four of armed teens, and robbed. The quartet was arrested, and were responsible for 11 thefts using the strategy.

Public safety officials are also warning users to be mindful of their surroundings. There have been many reports of injuries from distraction by the title, leading to accidental injury. While there has not been any widespread reports of distracted driving accidents being directly caused by the app, the potential clearly exists.