Christopher Moore, 20, was pulled over around 3:30 a.m. Thursday on a Calabasas road leading to a gated community where Bieber lives, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Moore was driving a 2012 Fisker registered to the pop star and going between 60 and 70 mph in an area that has a 30 mph speed limit because of construction, authorities said.

Investigators think Moore might have been under the influence of marijuana. Bail was set at $5,000 for the misdemeanor offense.

Moore is signed to Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment label imprint. An email seeking comment was sent to his record label.

Chantal was becoming disorganized and a hurricane watch was discontinued for the Dominican Republic's southern coast, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. However, a tropical storm warning was in effect for the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Turks and Caicos, and the southeastern Bahamas.

Officials in the Dominican Republic, where Chantal was expected to make landfall Wednesday afternoon, urged those living in low-lying areas to evacuate, but few paid heed.

"We're sure nothing is going to happen," said Geovanny Batista, leader of an impoverished community in the capital of Santo Domingo built largely of wood, cardboard and zinc.

"We can't just go and leave behind our belongings," he said. "Thieves will come and take them."

Officials in Haiti, which is forecast to feel the brunt of Chantal Wednesday evening, encountered similar resistance despite repeated radio warnings.

Street vendor Marc St. Juste said he was unaware a storm was coming, but upon learning the news, he decided to remain outside a bit, if only to sell a few more snow cones in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti's congested capital.

"I'm going to go home as soon as possible," St. Juste said as he pushed his rickety wooden cart topped with frozen ice and colorful syrups. "But I'm still going to stay out to make as many sales as possible."

Both Haiti and the Dominican Republic are vulnerable to flooding and landslides from storms, but widespread deforestation and ramshackle housing in Haiti mean even moderate rains pose a significant threat.

Haiti is already in the middle of its rainy season, with 279,000 people still living in grim settlements that popped up in the capital and elsewhere after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain could fall in parts of the island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic and Haiti share, the hurricane center said.

The storm was located about 235 miles (380 kilometers) south of San Juan, Puerto Rico around 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Wednesday, according to the hurricane center. The storm maximum sustained winds had decreased to 50 mph (80 kph), and it was moving west at 30 mph (48 kph).

Meteorologists with AccuWeather warned that the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico could be hard hit, given that some 13 inches (33 centimeters) of rain already have fallen in the capital of San Juan since June, nearly twice the normal rainfall for that period.

"Much of the landscape is primed for excessive runoff and flooding," AccuWeather said.

At least 17 roads will be closed as a preventive measure in the southern mountainous town of Yauco, where some 30 percent of the population lives under zinc roofs, Mayor Abel Nazario told the AP.

"When it rains a lot, a portion of the mountain comes down," he said. "That's always a concern."

Meanwhile, in the popular southwest tourist town of Cabo Rojo, crews cleared branches and debris to prepare for heavy rainfall, said Milton Llitera, the town's emergency management director.

"When this floods, it doesn't forgive," he told the AP.

A tropical storm watch was in effect for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Vieques and Culebra and central Bahamas.

Chantal had raced through the eastern Caribbean early Tuesday, with officials in Dominica reporting that heavy winds ripped off the roofs of several homes. No injuries were reported there or anywhere else in the region.

Chantal also forced Carnival Cruise Lines to change the itineraries of two of its ships, the Carnival Liberty and Carnival Victory, spokesman Vance Gulliksen said.

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico and Lopez from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Associated Press writers Trenton Daniel in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Carlisle Jno Baptiste in Roseau, Dominica; and David McFadden in Kingston, Jamaica contributed to this report.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's top economic planning agency is investigating costs and prices charged by drugmakers, including units of GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, as foreign firms come under pressure from Beijing over possible price-fixing.

The move follows a separate probe into instant milk powder, which has already led to price cuts.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is surveying production costs and prices charged at multiple foreign and Chinese drug companies, according to a July 2 statement from the commission.

News of the investigation was reported earlier on Thursday by the official Securities Daily newspaper.

The NDRC will examine 27 companies on cost issues and 33 for pricing. The investigation is being done to understand the cost and pricing situation within the companies, and to adjust drug prices in a timely manner, the agency said.

In addition to GSK and Merck, other foreign companies being investigated over costs include Astellas, Novartis's generics unit Sandoz, Boehringer Ingelheim, Baxter International and Fresenius.

An investigation team from NDRC will visit the companies involved between July and October, the agency said.

One industry source familiar with the situation said the probe appeared to be focused on so-called transfer pricing, which determines how costs are distributed between units of large companies. Beijing plans to analyze the difference in prices of imported products sold by foreign firms in China compared with those in other markets.

The NDRC has also been investigating potential price-fixing and anti-competitive behavior by five instant milk powder makers, including Swiss food company Nestle and French rival Danone.

In response, Nestle and Danone said on Wednesday they were cutting the price of infant formula milk in China.

GSK OPERATIONS IN FOCUS

The NDRC probe into GlaxoSmithKline comes as high-level Chinese staff at the firm are being investigated by police in a separate case in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha on suspicion of economic crimes.

Changsha police have not provided any further details about the investigation and a GSK spokesman in London said it remained unclear what the investigation was about.

An anonymous whistleblower earlier made allegations that GSK sales representatives in China were involved in widespread bribery to get doctors to prescribe the company's medicines.

However, GSK said it had investigated the allegations thoroughly and found no evidence of any wrongdoing. It is not clear if the Changsha police investigation is related to these bribery allegations.

China is an increasingly important market for international pharmaceutical companies, which are relying on growth in emerging markets to offset slower sales in Western markets where many former blockbuster drugs have lost patent protection.

IMS Health, which tracks pharmaceutical industry trends, expects China to overtake Japan as the world's second biggest drugs market behind the United States by 2016.

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London; editing by Jeremy Laurence, Ron Askew)

The star of HBO's "Behind the Candelabra" spoke about his throat cancer that was diagnosed in 2010 and its sometime association with the ubiquitous human papillomavirus, or HPV, and oral sex.

"Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus," today's edition of The Guardian newspaper .

But the actor's publicist, Allen Burry, told ABCNews.com today that his client "never said it was the cause of his particular cancer. They did discuss it. He did say oral sex is a suspected cause of certain oral cancers. He did not say it was his specifically."

About 63 percent of the estimated 11,726 cases of oropharyngeal cancers diagnosed each year in the United States are thought to be caused by HPV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 3,000 Americans are diagnosed each year with HPV-associated anal cancer and the rate of infection appears to be increasing.

"Right now in the United States only 2 percent of boys are vaccinated, which is shocking because by the time they are adults, these boys will be more likely to get cancer from HPV than girls," said , director of the University of Maryland's Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center.

"By the time they become adults, throat cancer from HPV in men is four times more likely than cervical cancer in women."

HPV spreads via oral, vaginal and anal intimacy, as well as through cunnilingus and fellatio. The virus does not live in the blood, semen or vaginal secretions. It takes about 20 years for exposure to the virus to develop into cancer.

Doctors say that-- earlier sex, more partners and especially oral sex -- are contributing to a new epidemic of orpharyngeal squamous cell cancers, those of the throat, tonsils and base of the tongue.

Similarly high rates have also been seen in Europe, where a 2010showed a strong correlation between oral cancers and oral sex.

About 50 percent of all girls are vaccinated against HPV-related cervical cancer, a number which is slowly increasing because of strong CDC recommendations, Dr. Cullen said. Women do get HPV-related throat cancer, but at a much lower rate than men.

"The take home message is this virus is out there and virtually everyone is exposed as they become sexually active ... no matter what point in life," he said. "And boys are at greater risk than girls."

The CDC recommends two licensed vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, to protect against cervical, anal and oral cancers, but those guidelines have never been fully embraced by parents or young adults.

"Why not prevent what's preventable? HPV infects both sexes," Austin, Texas, pediatrician Dr. Ari Brown said. "And, while the biggest benefit for boys to get this shot is prevention against spreading it to girls, boys are at risk for other types of HPV-related cancers as well as genital warts."

But even as HPV-related head, neck and throat cancers are on the rise -- by more than 225 percent between 1988 and 2004, according to one study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology -- vaccination rates remain low.

"I think the public was spooked and once people are scared, it is hard to unscare them," Brown said. "However, the vaccine has been out for seven years now. Over 40 million doses have been given. Hopefully, people will become more accepting of the vaccine over time and we will be able to reduce the number of illnesses caused by HPV."

Aboutand about 14 million become newly infected each year, according to the CDC. The virus is so common that nearly all sexually active men and women will get at least one kind of HPV in their lifetimes.

Cervarix is recommended for females 10 through 25 years of age. . It is also for 9- through 26-year-old males.

Some parents have objected to giving their sons and daughters a vaccine that presumes they will be sexually active.

"What I always tell parents is that you don't have to have intercourse to get HPV," Dr. Brown said. "There are other forms of intimacy that can spread this virus. So, just because you believe your child will not have sex until they are 30 or married, etc., it is possible that having a physical relationship with a partner will lead to HPV infection."

The virus can be spread via skin-to-skin contact with an infected partner, although thin genital skin is the most easily infected.

Others have expressed safety concerns about the vaccine.

A government report released in 2009 , as well as incidents of blood clots and neurological disorders.

Cullen said looking back at reports, researchers have concluded that there were "no excess deaths" directly attributed to the vaccine.

"The vaccine has been given to hundreds of thousands, if not millions worldwide," oncologist Cullen said. "We have more than 10 years experience and it has been looked at carefully. We can now say with complete confidence that it is very safe and the reactions we have seen are usually very mild, as you would see with any injection."

Because of the growing acceptance of vaccination among girls, cervical cancer rates among women are beginning to decline, Cullen said. "All this is very good news," he added.

But HPV rectal and anal cancers are "going up significantly."

Each year, more than 30,000 new cases of cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx are diagnosed, and more than 8,000 people die from oral cancer, according to the CDC.

There are more than 100 strains of the virus. Some cause genital warts, but others can result in cell changes that decades later can become cancerous. Each strain is identified by a number; oral and cervical cancers are caused by HPV sub-types 16 and 18.

HPV can also cause cancers of the vulva, vagina and penis, and there is some evidence it is associated with lung cancers.

NUERBURGRING, Germany, July 8 (Reuters) - Sebastian Vettel finally got the monkey off his back and triumphed at his home German Grand Prix but more challenges await this month with a tyre test and a race in Hungary he has never won.

Red Bull's triple world champion increased his lead in the current standings to 34 points on Sunday after holding off a late charge from Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen to the delight of thousands of German fans at the famous Nuerburgring track.

The victory was his first in July and he will now head to Budapest at the end of the month with renewed confidence, even if the tyres set to be used at the Hungaroring will differ from Germany.

A series of dangerous tyre blow-outs at the British Grand Prix two Sundays ago forced supplier Pirelli to rush out a safer set of rear tyres for the Nuerburgring which had an inner belt of Kevlar, a synthetic fibre, rather than steel.

A more long-term approach will be taken from Hungary with tyres more similar to 2012 set to be introduced after a special testing session for F1 drivers at the young drivers' test at Silverstone July 17-19. Uncertainty still reigns though.

"There's a test at Silverstone where race drivers are allowed to test and so we have a tyre test you can say, for at least a day and get a little bit more of an idea, and then I think Pirelli will make up their mind and decide to get together with the FIA," Vettel told reporters.

"Whether the teams like it or not, it doesn't matter. So I think at this point we don't know which tyres we are probably running in Hungary. The most important thing is that we learn the lesson from previous races, especially Silverstone."

Red Bull will be sad to see the rears from Germany go after being impressed with how they degraded and performed safety-wise, although they had one calamity at a Mark Webber pit stop when a rear tyre came free and hit a television cameraman, who broke his collarbone and two ribs.

"There are further changes for Budapest and teams get a chance to try it out at Silverstone. I don't think the tyres need to be so high in degradation to produce good races," team principal Christian Horner said after a thrilling end to the race in Germany.

MERCEDES PUZZLED

Romain Grosjean was third in an excellent effort by Lotus and the Frenchman also feels much happier with Pirelli's new tyre outlook after complaints from teams all year about high degradation.

"I am looking forward to using the full new tyres from Budapest onwards that I understood a little bit better last year than this year," he said.

The only team puzzled by this weekend's tyres were home hopes Mercedes, who endured a difficult race with Lewis Hamilton slipping from pole to fifth and Nico Rosberg coming a lowly ninth as they struggled with high temperatures affecting the rubber.

Ferrari took a bold strategy by deciding not to push for pole in qualifying on Saturday to conserve tyres for the race but Fernando Alonso, second in the overall standings, only managed to climb to fourth.

The Italian team's performance in Hungary could be key to the rest of the season with 10 races remaining this year.

The three-week gap until Budapest is likely to see developments on Pirelli's bid for a contract-extension for 2014 with big engine rules changes coming in next year and limited testing opportunities.

Champions Red Bull are also losing Webber to endurance racing at the end of the year and a rumoured announcement of Raikkonen as his replacement can not be discounted this month. (Editing by Patrick Johnston)

Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 68 points at 15,144. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 futures are up 9.20 points at 1,636.50. Nasdaq futures are up 18 points to 2,974.

Aluminum giant Alcoa Inc.'s quarterly earnings report, expected after the markets close Monday, kicks off the summer earnings season.

The overall corporate earnings outlook has dimmed. Analysts now predict that second-quarter earnings for companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 rose 3 percent compared with a year earlier, according to a survey by S&P Capital IQ. But as recently as April 1, they predicted a gain of nearly 7 percent.

LONDON, July 6 (Reuters) - Powerful Brazil midfielder Paulinho looked forward to a Premier League debut with Tottenham Hotspur after completing his move from Corinthians on Saturday.

Spurs said in a statement they had reached agreement for the transfer, put at around 17 million pounds ($25.30 million) by local media, after Paulinho successfully completed a medical examination.

The 24-year-old, who scored 34 goals in 167 games for Sao Paulo-based Corinthians, shone in Brazil's winning Confederations Cup campaign last month.

"I want to thank Tottenham for believing in me," he told the club website (www.tottenhamhotspur.com).

"It's a huge pleasure for my career to be at a club as big as Tottenham. I know it will be a huge challenge but I think I can help all my colleagues to succeed and give a lot of happiness to the supporters.

"We used to watch the Premier League in Brazil - including Tottenham - and this club has big players. I just want to help them to succeed here," added the player after a visit to the club's training centre.

Paulinho has been capped by Brazil 17 times and was a key part of the Corinthians side that beat Chelsea in the Club World Cup final last December.

He joins Brazilian international midfielder Sandro at the North London club.

Tottenham, managed by Portuguese Andre Villas-Boas, finished fifth last season despite a club-record points total and missed out on a Champions League place. They will play in the Europa League instead.

($1 = 0.6719 British pounds) (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Peter Rutherford and Clare Fallon)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Institutional investors are tripping over themselves to buy so-called peer-to-peer loans offered by a new breed of Internet lending companies, a development that could transform the nascent sector into significant player in the credit markets.

P2P lending, as it is known, started in 2006 with the founding of Lending Club and Prosper Marketplace. Back then, the idea was to match individual borrowers with small investors looking to lend as little as $25.

The loans often have interest rates low enough to make them a feasible way for individuals to pay off high-cost credit card debt, yet the returns to investors are attractive compared to many other fixed-income assets.

These developments have caught the eye of hedge funds, endowments, pension funds and even banks and insurers who want to put hundreds of millions of dollars to work.

The influx of institutional money is enabling online lenders, led by Lending Club and Prosper, to offer far more loans and compete more directly with traditional banks. Loan originations are growing at about 300 percent a year, according to the two market leaders.

But the arrival of Wall Street investors also brings new risks for the sector. Sharp changes in interest rates or another economic slump could prompt the new money to depart as quickly as it arrived. And questions remain about the way the peer-to-peer lending industry vets borrowers and whether interest rates on the loans properly reflect the risk.

"The industry says it's more efficient and it uses technology to underwrite better. That's all a bunch of crap," said Mike Cagney, a credit market veteran and founder of SoFi, an Internet lending platform focused on student loans. "Peer-to-peer lending in its current form hasn't really gone through a full credit crisis."

Lending Club and Prosper do not lend money directly. Instead, borrowers fill out loan applications and post requests on their websites. Investors commit to fund the loans, then Utah-based bank WebBank makes the loans, sells them to Lending Club and Prosper, which in turn sell them on to the investors in the form of a note. The companies make money from servicing and origination fees.

The industry is on course to make about $3 billion in loans this year. But the market opportunity is about $85 billion, based on the most creditworthy borrowers currently served by the credit card industry, Prosper executive Ron Suber told a packed crowd at the industry's first conference, LendIt, last month.

Google Inc took a $125 million stake in Lending Club in May, valuing the company at more than $1.5 billion. An initial public offering is planned next year, according to Lending Club Chief Executive Renaud Laplanche.

'ATTRACTIVE YIELD'

P2P loans have annual interest rates ranging from 6 percent to as much as 30 percent, higher than many other fixed-income assets. The loans are typically repaid after just over a year.

"Attractive yield and short duration. In a yield-starved world, it's very interesting," said Jason Jones of private investment firm Disruption Credit, which is starting a fund to buy and possibly securitize P2P loans.

Other investment funds that are jumping into the business include HCG Funds, which recently launched a $10 million fund for Lending Club loans; Colchis Capital, which has more than $200 million allocated to P2P loan investing; and Eaglewood Capital Management and Arcadia Funds.

A new Internet lending site, CircleBack Lending, will launch this month with an exclusive focus on institutions and ultra-wealthy investors, according to co-founder Michael Solomon.

Some institutional loan buyers employ leverage - borrowing money at a lower interest rate and then re-lending it to the online borrowers.

Disruption Credit, according to Jones, is planning to raise a $75 million fund to invest in P2P loans, and will then borrow another $425 million so it can buy $500 million worth of loans.

Eaglewood, which has put about $80 million to work in P2P lending so far, can leverage its fund 3 to 1, depending on the risk of the loans and other criteria.

But counting on money from leveraged hedge funds could leave the industry suddenly starved of funds to lend in the event that rising interest rates, a slumping economy or unexpectedly high rates of default were to suddenly send that money elsewhere.

The credit risk is hardly academic: loans originated by Prosper from November 2005 to June 2009 had a yield of just over 12 percent through the end of 2012. But losses from loan defaults reached almost 18 percent, leaving investors down 5.36 percent overall.

Prosper now sets interest rates on loans itself, based on the creditworthiness of borrowers, a big change from letting borrowers and lenders negotiate rates and an approach it says that has helped the company attract institutional investors.

Still, the challenges of relying on leveraged investors remain for Lending Club, Prosper and new rivals like CircleBack.

"If any P2P platform becomes overly reliant on hedge funds or similar capital that is sensitive to markets and could be quickly removed, a major market shakeout could cut demand for their loans," said Jose Penabad of HCG Funds.

Hedge funds represent less than 10 percent of funding for loans on Lending Club and only half of them use leverage, according to CEO Laplanche. Lending Club has been working to attract more stable sources of institutional funding such as corporate pension plans and community banks, he said.

And Lending Club has sought to prevent too much hedge fund money from flooding the market.

Colchis tried to launch a leveraged P2P loan fund earlier this year, but Lending Club did not allow it because the platform is not originating enough loans to meet the demand that would have been created by such an investment vehicle, according to a Colchis investor who did not want to be identified.

A Colchis representative declined to comment. Lending Club's Laplanche confirmed that there is no leveraged Colchis fund but declined further comment.

SECURITIZATION LOOMS

Some of the new P2P investors hope to employ yet another Wall Street tactic to boost returns: securitizing the loans by slicing them up into pieces for sale.

Disruption Credit, for one, plans to securitize its loan assets in the future, dividing them into different tranches that can be bought and possibly traded by institutions such as pension funds and insurers.

Cagney said SoFi is planning the first securitization of its P2P student loans in September, with ratings from the credit rating agency DBRS and underwriting by banks including Barclays.

Securitization will provide another source of capital to fuel further growth in originations. But it also exposes the industry to even greater interest rate risk.

If yields on other types of debt jump as firms are preparing to securitize a pool of P2P loans, that could imperil the effort by making the offering less attractive to investors.

Junk bond yields have surged from less than 5 percent to almost 7 percent in recent months. That makes P2P loans relatively less attractive to investors, said Cagney.

If rates keep climbing, SoFi may have to wait to do its securitization, he added.

Meanwhile, SoFi's loans are being financed by banks including Morgan Stanley.

"We could afford to wait a few months," Cagney added.

(This story refiles to fix the spelling throughout of SoFi founder to Cagney from Cagny)

(Reporting by Alistair Barr Editing by Jonathan Weber and Tim Dobbyn)

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Japanese practice of catching and killing nearly 1,000 whales a year cannot be justified as science, an expert witness told the World Court on Thursday in a case Australia has brought against Japan.

Despite an international whaling moratorium in force since 1986, Japan continues to catch the aquatic mammals in the Antarctic under a clause allowing scientific research, but critics say the real reason for the hunt is to continue harvesting whale meat.

That view was supported by Marc Mangel, a mathematical biologist from the University of California Santa Cruz, who told the International Court of Justice that "lethal take" - catching and killing specimens - needed to answer specific scientific questions if it was to count as science.

"Lethal take can only make sense if we have a question that needs to be answered ... a meaningful question," said Mangel, who was called as a witness by Australia to the World Court, a U.N. body that settles legal disputes between nations.

Japan and Australia have both agreed to be bound by the Hague court's verdict and activists are hoping for a ruling against Tokyo that they believe will put an end to whaling in the Southern Ocean.

One of only a handful of countries that continues to hunt whales, Japan says the 815-or-so whales it kills each year contribute to research designed to establish if whale stocks are recovering from previous over-hunting. The meat is eaten by the many Japanese consumers who consider it a delicacy.

Japan says its whaling is no threat to the survival of any species, but environmentalists and animal rights activists say whale hunting should be stopped completely.

Under a 1946 treaty on whaling, to which Japan is a signatory, countries can catch unlimited numbers of whales if they are needed for scientific purposes, regardless of the moratorium agreed in the 1980s.

The treaty does not address what counts as science. But lawyers for Australia said the collection of raw data without having in mind a specific question did not count.

"What you have before you is not a scientific research programme. It is a heap of body parts taken from a pile of dead whales," said Phillippe Sands, a lawyer for Australia.

Japan will start presenting its case to judges on Tuesday. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which was taking Morales home from a summit in Russia, where he had suggested that his government would be willing to consider granting asylum to the American.

A furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane, claiming that the decision had put the president's life at risk.

"We don't know who invented this lie" that Snowden was traveling with Morales, Choquehuanca said in La Paz. "We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales."

In a midnight press conference, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia said that not only France and Portugal, but also Italy and Spain were denying the plane permission to fly through their airspace.

He described Morales as being "kidnapped by imperialism" in Europe.

"The ambassador for Spain in Austria has just informed us that there is no authorization to fly over Spanish territory and that at 9 a.m. Wednesday they would be in contact with us again," said Defense Minister Ruben Saavedra, adding that the Spanish government had put as a condition for passage the "revision of the presidential plane."

Earlier, Choquehuanca said that Spain's government allowed Morales' plane to refuel in its territory before flying on to Vienna.

French government officials reached overnight said they could not confirm whether Morales' plane was denied permission to fly over France. Officials at Portugal's Foreign Ministry and National Civil Aviation Authority could not be reached to comment.

Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Schallenberg told The Associated Press that Snowden was not with Morales.

Leaks by Snowden, a former NSA systems analyst, have revealed the NSA's sweeping data collection of U.S. phone records and some Internet traffic, though U.S. intelligence officials have said the programs are aimed at targeting foreigners and terrorist suspects mostly overseas.

He is believed to be in a Moscow airport transit area, seeking asylum from one of more than a dozen countries.

While Bolivia's foreign minister had earlier said officials did not know who was behind the "lie" that Snowden was on Morales' plane, the country's defense minister later expressed no doubt.

"We want to declare very firmly that it was an American story that Edward Snowden was on this flight," said Saavedra at the VIP terminal of Vienna's airport. "This is a plot by the U.S. government to destroy president Morales' image. We say this simply is a lie. And we will confirm this."

Morales himself was present during the improvised press conference but chose not to speak to reporters. Morales will remain at the airport until his plane has been cleared for takeoff.

In Washington, the State Department would not comment directly when asked to speak to the matter and referred the AP to statements on Snowden made at the department's daily briefing. Earlier Tuesday, department spokesman Patrick Ventrell would not discuss how the Obama administration might respond if Snowden left the Moscow airport. "We're not there yet," he said.

Snowden has applied for asylum in Venezuela, Bolivia and 18 other countries, according to WikiLeaks, a secret spilling website that has been advising him. Many European countries on the list including Austria, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland said he would have to make his request on their soil.

One of Snowden's best chances of finding refuge outside the United States may hinge on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was also in Russia on Tuesday.

Maduro told Russian reporters that his country has not received an application for asylum from Snowden and dodged the question of whether he would take him with him when he left.

But Maduro also defended the former National Security Agency systems analyst.

"Who must protect Snowden? This is the question. This young man of 29 was brave enough to say that we need to protect the world from the American imperial elite, so who should protect him?" Maduro said in response to a question from journalists covering a ceremony to rename a Moscow street after Chavez. "All of mankind, people all over the world must protect him."

Maduro was scheduled to spend Wednesday in neighboring Belarus before returning to Venezuela.

In Venezuela, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said that changing the flight's route without checking on how much fuel it had endangered Morales' life.

"All the countries that have denied permission for the flight of our brother president, Evo Morales, must be held responsible for his life and his dignity as president."

Another possible landing spot for Snowden is Ecuador, where Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has been seeking asylum.

"We are willing to analyze Mr. Snowden's request for asylum and this position has not changed," said Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on Tuesday. "What we have said is that we will be able to analyze the request when Mr. Snowden is in Ecuadorean territory or in an Ecuadorean mission."

Patino added that two weeks ago a hidden microphone was found in Ecuador's embassy in London, where Assange is holed up. "We want to find out with precision what the origin of the apparatus is."

Snowden, who recently turned 30, withdrew a bid for asylum in Russia when he learned the terms Moscow had set out, according to Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Putin said on Monday that Russia was ready to shelter Snowden as long as he stopped leaking U.S. secrets.

At the same time, Putin said he had no plans to turn over Snowden to the United States.

Rebuffed by Russia's president, the Obama administration has recently toned down demands Snowden be expelled from the Moscow airport in a sign that the U.S. believes he is not worth scuttling diplomatic relations between the former Cold War enemies.

On Monday, WikiLeaks posted a statement attributed to Snowden on its website, in which he slams Obama for "using citizenship as a weapon."

"Although I am convicted of nothing, (the United States) has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person," Snowden says in the statement. "Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

"Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."

____

Associated Press writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna, Austria, and Carlos Valdez from La Paz, Bolivia.