We’re ending our live coverage of the diplomatic crisis over the Morales flight. Our latest news story has just been published and can be red here:

Here is a summary of events today.

• A jet carrying the Bolivian president is on its way home after being forced to land at Vienna airport because of the refusal of some European countries to let it pass through their airspace. Eva Morales was returning from a visit to Moscow. He called it “an excuse to scare, intimidate and punish me”.

• The US government has admitted that it had been in contact with other nations about potential flights involving Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower. The State Department would not comment on whether it had made any specific respresentations over Morales’s flight.

• Bolivian and Austrian authorities insisted Snowden was not on the plane. The extent to which the Austrian police officers searched the jet was unclear.

• An Austrian official told AP that Morales’s aircraft asked controllers at Vienna airport to land because there was “no clear indication” that the plane had enough fuel to continue on its journey. This tallies with audio posted online purporting to be of a conversation between the jet pilot and the control room at the airport.

• Bolivia’s UN ambassador has said that the country will file a formal complaint with the United Nations over the “kidnapping” of Morales. A number of South American leaders voiced outrage at the incident, including the Argentinian president Cristina Kirchner and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador.

• Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patino says Ecuador has found a hidden microphone inside its London embassy, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is living, and it would disclose who controls the device. Patino described it as “another instance of a loss of ethics at the international level in relations between governments”.

Guardian, July 3rd, Bolivian president’s plane leaves Austria after enforced diversion

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People have been tweeting that Snowden should flee to the one place where he can guarantee he will be safe from prosecution by the Us government – Wall Street!

Richard Byrne, FB comment

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