LONDON -- British spies intercepted the phone calls of foreign politicians and delegates at the G-20 summit in 2009, according to documents provided to The Guardian by self-declared NSA leaker Edward Snowden, the newspaper reported Monday.

U.K. intelligence agency GCHQ also monitored the computers of delegates at the London conference and tried to capture their passwords, the newspaper said.

Among the foreign politicians targeted were then-President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, and Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, the newspaper said.

The report came hours before President Barack Obama and other world leaders from the G-8 countries - all of which are in the G-20 – were due to attend a two-day summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

Although espionage at international conferences has often been rumored, it is rare for evidence to be uncovered, The Guardian said.

It said the evidence was contained in classified documents shown to its reporters by Snowden, a U.S. citizen who worked for a private defense contractor and now faces a federal investigation into a string of embarrassing leaks about the National Security Agency and the PRISM surveillance program.

Snowden is reportedly in Hong Kong, where he told The Guardian that he was hoping to fight the U.S. government in the courts.

A spokesman for Britain’s foreign ministry declined to comment on the report. A spokesman for GCHQ said the agency never commented on intelligence matters.

Related:

• Edward Snowden, professed NSA leaker, may have few safe havens
• What we know about NSA leaker Edward Snowden
• Girlfriend of self-professed NSA leaker blogged that she felt 'lost at sea'

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:29 AM EDT

Grant Falvey / Zuma Press

The fire broke out early Sunday at the Darul Uloom Islamic boarding school in Southeast London, UK.

LONDON -- British police arrested four teenagers late Sunday on suspicion of setting fire to an Islamic school amid fears of anti-Muslim attacks in retribution for the brutal killing of a soldier last month.

The Metropolitan Police said four males, two aged 18 and two aged 17, were being held at a South London police station. Police presence was being increased "around locations that might be at risk," police said.

The fire occurred late Saturday night at the Darul Uloom Islamic High School & College in Southeast London and was quickly extinguished, police said. There were minor damages to the building, which was briefly evacuated.

The incident follows another suspected arson attack at an Islamic center in North London on Wednesday. In that attack, the letters "EDL" -- the far-right group English Defence League -- were found written on the building, but the organization said it was not involved in the fire.

"We should not allow the murder of Lee Rigby to come between Londoners," Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said in a statement. "The unified response we have seen to his death across all communities will triumph over those who seek to divide us." 

Rigby, 25, was killed in broad daylight outside an army barracks in South London on May 22. His death is is being treated as a terror attack because eyewitness accounts and video evidence suggest it was carried out in protest of Western military involvement in Muslim countries.

The gory murder has raised fears of reprisal attacks against Muslims.

Related stories:

• Slain London soldier was 'loving father' who served in Afghanistan

Lefteris Pitarakis / AP

Former Murdoch executive Rebekah Brooks leaves a court in London, Wednesday.

LONDON - Rebekah Brooks, a former executive to Rupert Murdoch and a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron, pleaded not guilty in a London court on Wednesday to charges related to phone hacking during her time running two national tabloids. 

Brooks denied the charges as she stood in the dock at a packed Southwark Crown Court alongside her husband and other senior journalists from the now-defunct News of the World Sunday tabloid.

She is due to stand trial in September.

Brooks pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to hack phones and two counts of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office. Wearing a black jacket and trousers and speaking loudly and clearly, the 45-year-old also pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Other senior staff, including the tabloid's former managing editor Stuart Kuttner and former assistant news editor James Weatherup, also pleaded not guilty to charges related to phone hacking, while her husband and her personal assistant pleaded not guilty to perverting the course of justice.

The former editor of the News of the World and the Sun who went on to run the whole of Murdoch's British newspaper arm, Brooks was arrested in July 2011 along with other members of staff over charges related to the unlawful interception of mobile phone messages to generate front-page news stories.

The scandal, which prompted the closure of the mass-selling News of the World and a year-long public inquiry, sent shockwaves through the British establishment as it revealed the close ties between the country's media, police and politicians. 

Related: Ex-Murdoch editor Brooks, five others, charged over phone-hacking scandal

Luke MacGregor / Reuters

English Defence League demonstrators protest near a government building after the recent killing of British soldier Lee Rigby in London, May 27.

LONDON -- Counterterrorism specialists are investigating whether a fire at a London community center used by Islamic groups was linked to anti-Muslim protesters, police said Wednesday - two weeks after the murder of a soldier.

The letters “EDL” – the initials of far-right organization, English Defence League – were found daubed on the burned building, police said. The blaze is being treated as "suspicious" by detectives.

The EDL, which describes itself as a “struggle against Islamic intolerance,” staged a number of public demonstrations in the wake of the death of Lee Rigby, 25, who was slain as he walked near a military barracks in Woolwich, southeast London.

The May 22 killing is being treated as a terror attack because eyewitness accounts and video evidence suggest it was carried out in protest of Western military involvement in Muslim countries.

Masked EDL members were involved in clashes with police on the night of Rigby’s killing.

The community center, which was being used by groups including the Somali Bravanese Welfare Association, was extensively damaged by the blaze in the early hours of Wednesday.

One woman was treated for injuries, police said.

Abubakar Ali, spokesman for one of the Somali community groups that used the center, said: “The Somali community is living in fear. We are appalled and deeply saddened by this foolish and horrific act against a peaceful community. 

“We urge everyone to remain calm and let the police and firefighters do their job.

"We condemn all violence, just as we condemned the murder of Lee Rigby. We sent our condolences to the soldier’s family.”

London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, described the fire as “cowardly.”

“There is no place in an open, tolerant and diverse city like London for hate, for prejudice, for violence,” he said, according to ITV News.

"London is a city built on the strength of its communities. Londoners will see this for what it is -- cowardly, pathetic and utterly pointless."

Officers searched the surrounding area for forensic clues Wednesday, ITV News reported.

“Police have started consulting and will work closely with the Somali and Islamic communities to provide support and reassurance,” London’s Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement.

“Specialist officers from the Met’s Counter-Terrorism Command are leading the investigation,” it said.

Added Johnson: "I would urge people to give the police the time and space to investigate this incident fully. I have no doubt the Met will bring those responsible to justice."

Tommy Robinson, leader of the EDL, did not comment on any link to the fire but posted on Twitter that he was “skeptical.” He also told the U.K.’s Sky News that previous attacks linked to the EDL had later been found to be carried out by others.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 5, 2013 12:04 PM EDT

Wael Hamzeh / EPA, file

A wounded man awaits medical attention after two rockets allegedly launched by Syrian rebels hit houses and cars in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon on May 26, 2013.

News Analysis

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Syria’s civil war is beginning to spill over to its neighbors – beyond the flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the crisis.

In a rise in sectarian violence, Sunni rebels from Syria have begun to clash with Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah fighters inside Lebanon. And the rebels have threatened more cross-border attacks unless Hezbollah ceases to defend the Alawite regime of President Bashar Assad, itself an offshoot of Shiite Islam. 

But that very border is just one of many drawn 97 years ago by a finger passing over a map ... and a line in the sand.

Now, there’s an almost amusing irony in the fact that Britain and France are the countries leading the charge to take on Assad and clean up Syria’s mess – since one could strongly argue that they are the very same colonial powers who made the mess in the first place.

“They created the contemporary Arab world,” explained Dr. Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. “They played God and produced mutilated entities that almost a century later are coming apart.”

A line in the sand
Like so many other Middle Eastern conflicts, Syria’s war has its roots in the colonial era and dates back to World War I. By 1916 it looked doubtful that Turkey, the head of the Ottoman Empire, which was fighting with Germany and Austria, would end up on the winning side of World War I.

U.K. National Archives

A map of the Middle East with annotations showing proposed administration, including British (B) and French (A) spheres of influence, independent Arab States, and the 'Sykes-Picot Line'. Signed: Sir Mark Sykes and Fr[ançois] Georges-Picot, 8 May 1916.

So a young, keen British politician named Sir Mark Sykes was tasked by the war council to devise a secret plan that would effectively divvy up the Ottoman lands in the Middle East between Britain and France. Sykes, along with his equally driven French counterpart, the former consul in Beirut, Francois George-Picot, came up with perhaps the most fateful diagonal line ever drawn on a map. 

According to the Sykes-Picot plan, Britain got Jordan, parts of Palestine and Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). 

Sykes clearly wanted to keep this simple. As James Barr recounts in his recent book, “Line in the Sand,” when Skyes was asked by then-British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour, “What do you mean to give [the French] exactly?” Sykes “sliced his finger across the map that lay before them on the table. ‘I should like to draw a line from the ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk,’ he said.”

In other words, France would get part of Turkey, Syria and what became modern-day Lebanon.

Keystone-france / Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

French soldiers entering Beirut, Lebanon, in 1919. Just after the First World War the Ottoman Empire, allies of the Germans, was dissolved. Following the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, Lebanon was placed under French mandate by the League of Nations in 1920.

Several years later, the League of Nations – precursor to the United Nations – cemented the new boundaries drawn up by Sykes and Picot. Boundaries which, as journalist and author Sam Roberts has written in the New York Times, “paid little attention to the ancient tribal, ethnic, and religious differences that are at the root of much of the bloodshed in the region.”

A deliberate hodge-podge 
Both colonial Britain and France, according to Roberts, were more interested in access to Middle East oil, and keeping emerging nations like Iraq and Syria divided and as weak as possible, so as not to pose a threat.

Lebanon, for instance, was carved out of Syria’s coastal region. Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Druze were separated by geography and from their own sects in neighboring countries. Kurds found themselves spread across four countries -- Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The map of Iraq looked more like a layer cake, stacking up three former Ottoman provinces: mostly Sunni Baghdad, Shiite Basra and Kurdish Mosul.

To rule over such a hodge-podge, secular and Western-friendly kings were put onto invented thrones. Faisal bin Hussein, who fought alongside the legendary T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) against the Turks in WWI was named king of the new Iraq; his brother, Abdullah bin Hussein, the king of the new Jordan. They both came from Saudi Arabia. Rump Syria became a French protectorate.

It was a formula, though, which seemed to work ... until post-colonial times, in the 1930s and ‘40s, when both Britain and France – having locked up their riches – granted independence to their Middle Eastern colonies. Republics replaced kings, and soon a string of military coups followed. So did dictators – some supported by the U.S. – along with ethnic cleansing and sectarian repression.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

/

A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

And that leads to the mess we have today, where a conflict inside one Middle Eastern country (Syria) seems to suck in another (Lebanon, Iraq). Still, Gerges, the academic, is optimistic.

“What we’ve witnessed in the past two years are birth pangs. It’ll take time and pain for a new world to replace the colonial constructed map. But it will be born.”

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London currently on assignment in Beirut. He has covered the Middle East since the 1980’s.

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LONDON -- One of two men charged with murdering a British soldier on a busy London street appeared in court for the first time on Monday, blowing kisses to a supporter in the public gallery and clutching what appeared to be a Quran.

Michael Adebolajo, 28, was remanded in custody until a hearing within the next 48 hours to decide whether he can be released on bail.

Adebolajo, who was shot by police along with another man at the scene of the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court with his left arm wrapped in bandages.

Flanked by three guards behind glass panels in the dock, Adebolajo asked to be identified by a different name, Mujahid Abu Hamza. His defense lawyer David Gottlieb and deputy chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot referred to him as Abu Hamza during the hearing.

Adebolajo repeatedly interrupted proceedings, asking why he had to stand up and questioning the charges after they were read to him.

"May I respond, may I respond?" he asked several times during the five-minute hearing. He did not enter a plea and the magistrate said a further hearing would take place at the Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey, on June 28.

Adebolajo, wearing a white T-shirt and white trousers, gave a thumbs-up sign to his defense lawyer and blew kisses to a man in the public gallery, appearing to mouth the words "I love you." The man declined to comment outside court.

At the end of the hearing, Adebolajo stretched out his arms, pointed them to the sky and then kissed the book he was holding.

"I would like to alleviate the pain if I may," he told the court before being led from the dock.

The British-born son of Nigerian parents is charged with murder, the attempted murder of two police officers and possession of a firearm with intent.

A second suspect, Michael Adebowale, 22, was also remanded in custody to June 28 when he appeared by videolink at the Old Bailey for a bail hearing. He is also charged with murder and possession of a firearm with intent.

Rigby, 25, died at the scene of the attack, which took place in broad daylight near an army barracks on May 22. A post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as "multiple incised wounds."

In a statement to parliament on Rigby's death, Prime Minister David Cameron said lessons would be learned from Woolwich and that more should be done to discourage radicalization over the Internet, in universities and prisons.

"It is as if, for some young people, there is a conveyor belt to radicalization that has poisoned their minds with sick and perverted ideas. We need to dismantle this process at every stage," he said after chairing the first meeting of a new panel of senior ministers aiming to tackle extremism.

Related:

• Second suspect charged in death of UK soldier
• Man in court accused of murdering UK soldier

Andy Rain / EPA

A police van carrying Michael Adebowale arrives at the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Thursday.

LONDON - A man appeared in court Thursday, accused of the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby on a street last week.

Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich was charged late Wednesday with the May 22 murder.

Adebowale spoke only to confirm his identity as he appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, according to NBC News’ British partner ITV News.

He was limping as he was led into court, and was allowed to sit by the magistrate, ITV News said.

The case was sent for trial at the Old Bailey - England's highest criminal court - by chief magistrate Howard Riddle. However, Adebowale will appear in court again on Monday for a bail hearing.

A second suspect in the case remains in hospital.

Lee Rigby, 25, a drummer in the 2^nd Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was murdered as he walked near a military barracks in Woolwich, southeast London, last week.

He left behind a wife and a 2-year-old son. He was a native of Manchester, UK, who joined the military in 2006.

The UK Ministry of Defense said Rigby had served in Afghanistan in 2009 and had helped guard UK royal palaces. It described him as “a loving father” and “an extremely popular and witty soldier.”

Three more men were arrested Saturday in the investigation into the killing of a British soldier in London, police said.

Lee Rigby, 25, known as “Riggers” to his friends, was walking near an army barracks in Woolwich, South London, when he was killed on Wednesday. Eyewitnesses said two attackers were later shot by officers. Those two men were taken to a hospital where they were later arrested.

The three men arrested Saturday are in custody on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, police said.

Two men, aged 24 and 28 were arrested at a residential address in southeast London, the police statement read. A 21-year-old man was arrested in the street.

A 29-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on Thursday has been released on bail to return pending further inquiries, police said.

Rigby was killed by knife-wielding assailants. A bloodstained suspect at the scene holding a meat cleaver was captured on video telling passers-by: "We swear by the almighty Allah."

Police are also executing search warrants at four residential addresses in southeast London, the statement released Saturday read.

Related:

• UK mom calms man with blood-soaked knife after suspected deadly terror attack
• PhotoBlog: Britons react with horror and anger to London attack
• 'Leave our lands': Man knifed to death in suspected London terror attack

A British zoo worker who was injured in a tiger attack at an animal park near Dalton-in-Furness has died, police said Friday.

Sarah McClay, 24, from the Barrow area, was attacked by a tiger within its enclosure Friday afternoon, Cumbria police said. The woman was taken by air ambulance to Royal Preston Hospital after the attack at the South Lakes Wild Animal Park, but she did not survive.

McClay had suffered head and neck injuries, the BBC reported.

Police are still investigating the circumstances that led to the attack.

"Sarah's family are very shocked and distressed and request that they have privacy as they try to come to terms with their loss," the police statement read.

The public was not at risk during the attack, officials said. The wildlife park, which, according to the BBC, opened in 1994 and has both Siberian and Sumatran tigers, closed early Friday.

Justin Tallis / AFP - Getty Images

A woman reacts as she looks at floral tributes left at the scene where Lee Rigby was killed outside Woolwich Barracks in London on May 24.

LONDON – The horrific public slaying of a soldier in London, five weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, illustrates the possible emergence of a new terror trend towards unsophisticated attacks that are practically impossible to prevent, intelligence experts warned.

Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old father who had served in Afghanistan, was killed in broad daylight Wednesday as he walked near an army barracks in Woolwich, southeast London.

Eyewitness reports suggest the killing was ideologically motivated, carried out in protest at British military actions in Muslim countries, based on what the alleged attackers were heard to say.

And although London is no stranger to terrorism – dozens of civilians and soldiers have been killed by Irish republican bomb blasts over the past four decades – it is still coming to terms with the latest threat: isolated, uncoordinated attacks.

“I think what we've seen in London, and Boston previously, is largely the new face of al Qaeda-inspired attacks,” said NBC News counter-terrorism analyst, Michael Leiter.

“These are no longer the large scale sophisticated plots from overseas but instead very unsophisticated and simple attacks which can still very much affect the psyche of cities.”

Most chillingly, Leiter believes such actions by “lone wolves” are harder to thwart than planned attacks directed by overseas terror organizations whose activities are monitored by intelligence agencies.

“These are some of the most difficult attacks to stop,” he said. “In London and the United Kingdom you have incredibly capable security forces; but when two individuals do this with potentially no other connections, to stop them when they're using things like knives and cleavers makes this almost impossible to stop beforehand.”

Underlining his point, security sources say both the suspects in this week’s attack were known to intelligence agencies. It is not known if they were deemed to be a low risk.

A key similarity between this week’s attack and the Boston bombings was the possibility that the suspected perpetrators picked up their techniques from al Qaeda publications on the Internet, according to Ed Campbell, home affairs editor at NBC’s U.K. partner ITV News, which obtained exclusive pictures of the aftermath of the attack.

“Its emphasis is on DIY attacks which involve low-tech methods and no contact with an al Qaeda hierarchy because that gives the security forces a lead,” said Campbell.

The machete killing was not the very first incident of its kind. In 2010, a young Bangladeshi Muslim, Roshonara Choudhry, tried to stab a London lawmaker to death with a knife to avenge his support for the war in Iraq. She was jailed for life.

And in 2008, four British Muslims admitted their role in a plot to kidnap and behead a British soldier, and record the execution on camera for use as jihadist propaganda.

Raffaello Pantucci, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said Wednesday’s attack displayed “a level of brutality, I think, we haven’t seen quite yet.”

 “It certainly looks like a terror incident of a trend we have increasing seen recently - small groups of individuals who decide to carry out actions for their own reasons… who decide to choose their targets.”

The two suspects, aged 22 and 28, are under guard in hospitals after being shot and arrested by police following the murder of Rigby on Wednesday in broad daylight. They have not yet been charged.

Detectives were also questioning another man and a woman, arrested on Thursday on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, as they tried to determine whether those responsible had links to militants in Britain or overseas.

"This is a large, complex and fast-moving investigation which continues to develop," police said in a statement, Friday. "Many lines of inquiry are being followed by detectives, and the investigation is progressing well.”

What is not yet clear is how and where the London suspects were radicalized. Although media reports in London said the two were of Nigerian descent, it is not known if there is any link to the Islamic terror groups that have plagued Nigeria in recent years.

The FBI is investigating whether one of the Boston bomb suspects was radicalized during a 2012 trip to his homeland, the Russian republic of Dagestan.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 176 in Boston and could face the death penalty.

The suspect's older brother and accused accomplice, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a firefight with police, and investigators are trying to determine if anyone else was involved.

Related

• Wife of slain British soldier says she thought he was 'safe' back in UK
• UK mom calms man with blood-soaked knife after suspected deadly terror attack
• PhotoBlog: Britons react with horror and anger to London attack
• 'Leave our lands': Man knifed to death in suspected London terror attack

A passenger jet heading from Pakistan to England was intercepted by U.K. fighter jets after an "angry passenger" made a bomb threat Friday, an airline official said.

The Boeing 777 was forced to divert from Manchester airport to London Stansted after a disruptive passenger told a flight attendant he would set off a bomb, said a senior Pakistan International Airlines official who asked not to be identified.

"It seems that the threat was passed in anger," the official said. "But we are still trying to figure things out."

The plane, from Lahore, was carrying 308 passengers and landed safely at London Stansted, the official said.

Police said two passengers had been arrested "on suspicion of endangerment of aircraft" - a criminal offense that includes everything from terror threats to misbehavior.

The two passengers who were arrested were identified by Pakistan International Airlines as Safdar Mahmood and Tayyab Subhani, both British nationals. Essex police did not confirm their identities, but confirmed they were British nationals who were ages 30 and 41.

The Royal Air Force Typhoon jets were scrambled after a security alert was sent to air traffic controllers by the passenger jet's pilots, British military officials said. 

They said fighter jets had been scrambled, but the explanation for the alert was not immediately known. 

"Typhoon aircraft from RAF Coningsby were launched today to investigate an incident involving a civilian aircraft within U.K. airspace; further details will be provided when known," the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

No suspicious items have been recovered from the plane, Essex police said. The plane will remain at its current location for forensic examination by specialists. 

This story was originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 9:14 AM EDT

Stefan Wermuth / Reuters

A worker walks past a British Airways passenger jet after it was towed off the runway following an emergency landing at Heathrow Airport west of London on May 24, 2013.

LONDON - Europe’s busiest airport was disrupted for several hours Friday after a British Airways plane made an emergency landing at Heathrow with a fire in at least one engine.

Thousands of travelers were delayed or diverted to other London airports following the incident, shortly after 8 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).

All 75 passengers were safely evacuated from the Airbus A319 using emergency chutes, but one of the airport’s two runways was closed for almost two hours and the other was also briefly shut.

Significant delays and disruption were expected for the rest of the day at Heathrow, and British Airways said it was canceling all its short-haul flights – to the UK, Europe and parts of north Africa – until 4 p.m. local time Friday (11 a.m. ET).

The stricken jet suffered technical problems as it took off for Oslo, Norway, and was forced to return for an emergency landing.

Eyewitnesses reported smoke billowing from the right hand engine as the jet made its approach over south-west London.

In a statement, British Airways said Flight BA762 had suffered a "technical fault," but fire officials said they had extinguished a blaze.

Amateur video of the aircraft in the air showed smoke coming from one engine, and a picture posted to Twitter by one of the passengers after landing showed the aircraft covered in fire-retardant foam. 

The incident will likely cause disruption for families getting away over the school holiday, which starts on Monday. Britain also has a public holiday on Monday, adding to the number of travelers using Heathrow.

"We were able to reopen the northern runway within two hours of the incident and we are now focused on returning the airport to normal as quickly as possible," Heathrow's duty manager Mark Freeman told Reuters.

David Wyllie, breakingnews.com, and Reuters, contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri May 24, 2013 4:30 AM EDT