REUTERS - The online community rallied on Thursday in support of live protests against the U.S. government's surveillance of internet activity, a practice recently exposed by a former contractor for the National Security Agency.

Websites such as Reddit and Mozilla supported a campaign in cities across the United States to "Restore the Fourth" - a reference to the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against unlawful search and seizure.

The home page of the website Boing Boing, for example, displayed the following message to the NSA: "Happy 4th of July! Immediately stop your unconstitutional spying on the world's internet users -- The People."

The protest comes as the United States celebrates its Independence Day holiday.

By early afternoon, crowds of more than 400 had gathered in New York City and Washington, D.C., the organizers said. They estimate the total turnout will be more than 10,000 nationwide.

The NSA, on its own website, said: "NSA does not object to any lawful, peaceful protest. NSA and its employees work diligently and lawfully every day, around the clock, to protect the nation and its people."

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been charged with espionage after disclosing the agency's surveillance programs. He has spent more than a week in a Moscow airport seeking a country that would grant him asylum.

The online protest was launched by the Internet Defense League, a network of more than 30,000 websites and internet users whose goal is to protest attempts to curtail the freedom of the Web.

Evan Greer, a spokesman for the IDL, said nearly 13,500 Twitter users had taken part in a so-called thunderclap, in which they all tweeted the same or similar message at the same time to their more than 9 million followers.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech)

PARIS (AP) — France's top security official publicly dressed down the United States at the American ambassador's July 4 garden party, denouncing alleged U.S. "espionage" of France and other countries, while the European Parliament voted to open an investigation.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls was a guest of honor at the fete hosted by Ambassador Charles Rivkin on Thursday. In a speech before hundreds of guests, he said that "in the name of our friendship, we owe each other honesty. We must say things clearly, directly, frankly."

He said that President Francois Hollande's demand for clear and precise explanations about reports of U.S. spying are justified because "such practices, if proven, do not have their place between allies and partners."

Later Thursday, Valls said France had rejected an asylum request from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. In a statement, Valls said the request, received via the French embassy in Moscow, had been rejected after "taking into account a legal analysis and the situation of" Snowden.

Snowden also won't be getting asylum from Italy, where Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said officials had rejected the leaker's bid because he did not meet their requirements.

Bonino also criticized the American program, saying that unless the U.S. comes up with "convincing responses," Italy would consider the "diffuse practices" reported by Snowden to be unjustified.

"There's no doubt that historically, America has created its leadership in the world based on trust and power," Bonino said. "The damage created by the Snowden case, if confirmed, is above all a wound for the United States, not just for us Europeans, and I think as a friendly country we have the duty to say so. I am certain the American response won't take long."

Bonino said as far as Italy could tell, there was no evidence that its embassy in Washington had been spied on.

In Strasbourg, the European Parliament agreed to start an investigation into the allegations that European Union offices were among those bugged and called for more protection for whistleblowers.

European countries agreed Wednesday that planned talks on free trade with the U.S. must start in parallel with discussions on NSA surveillance. Those talks are still on track to begin next week.

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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this article.

By Daniel Flynn

DAKAR (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for more than $1 billion to help feed 11 million people at risk across Africa's arid Sahel belt, warning that the crisis in Syria was distracting donors from the humanitarian situation there.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that this year's war in northern Mali, where a French-led military campaign destroyed an Islamist enclave, had worsened annual food shortages across the region.

Some 175,000 Malian refugees are camped in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger, placing strain on scant food supplies. A further 353,000 people are displaced within Mali itself, having abandoned their homes and livelihoods.

Robert Piper, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, said donor governments had provided only $607 million from an estimated $1.72 billion needed this year to help people at risk of hunger and malnutrition across the desolate region, which runs east to west across Africa.

Piper said the shortfall was partly a reflection of the financial crisis, which had reduced aid budgets in donor nations. The European Union, the United States, Japan and Britain are the main contributors to the appeal.

"Humanitarian funding is also under huge pressure now because of Syria. The amount of money required for Syria is off the chart," Piper said. Syria alone accounts for more than $4 billion of a global U.N. humanitarian appeal of $13 billion, an OCHA official said.

The conflict in Syria has killed 100,000 people and, according to the United Nations, driven 1.7 million more to seek sanctuary outside the country.

The amount of money already spent on Mali for non-humanitarian ends could also explain donor fatigue. The deployment of a 12,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission from this month could cost some $700 million a year, Piper said.

"Mali is overshadowing the rest of the region a little bit. I suspect in some capitals they feel that they are doing a lot for the Sahel already," Piper said.

The worsening humanitarian situation in northern Mali, which has by far the worst nutritional statistics in the region, prompted the United Nations to increase the size of the appeal by $100 million from earlier this year.

Nonetheless, the United Nations has received less than a third of the $500 million in humanitarian donations it targeted for Mali, one of the poorest countries on earth.

WORSENING TREND

The number of people at risk from hunger this year is down from 18 million in 2012, when the nine-country Sahel region was struck by drought for the second time in three years, OCHA said.

However, that 11.3 million people remain at risk from food insecurity despite good rains reflected the region's worsening underlying humanitarian situation, Piper said.

In many markets across the region, food prices were 50 to 60 percent above their five-year average.

"The question is when are we going to start reversing the trend of ever-escalating humanitarian needs for the Sahel?" he said.

With the region's population growing at one of the fastest rates on earth, over-farming of agricultural land means that good weather is no longer sufficient to alleviate the problem.

Piper said that, with funding scarce, donor money was going to emergency food and refugee schemes, bypassing agricultural programmes which could help provide a long-term solution.

The appeal has only provided around 1 million farmers from a target of 8 million with food and livestock support to make them less food insecure.

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syria's fractious opposition coalition met on Thursday under pressure to name a new leader and prove to its Western and Arab backers it can be trusted with advanced weapons to beat back a concerted offensive by President Bashar al-Assad.

The opposition's inability to unite has made Western countries reluctant to send weapons, even as Assad's forces have seized the initiative in recent months and Washington and its European allies have vowed to aid his enemies.

Rebels are under siege in the strategic city of Homs and trying to hold on to swathes of territory across the country, while the opposition in exile has been unable to exert authority on the ground and halt strides toward radical Islamism.

The Syrian National Coalition has been without a leader for months after its head quit over disagreement about potential talks with Assad's government. It aims to agree on a new unified leadership at its talks in Istanbul.

Coalition insiders say its international backers want to avoid a repeat of a near debacle a month ago when last-minute intervention by senior officials from Turkey and Western and Arab countries was needed to keep it from disintegrating.

A new leadership for the body of mainly exiled politicians will also need to show that it can forge stronger links with the activists and rebel fighters inside Syria, the sources said.

Senior opposition figures met overnight to agree on a deal that would satisfy the three main players in the coalition: the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized faction in the political opposition, a Saudi-backed bloc and a wing loyal to secretary general Mustafa Sabbagh, a businessman seen as Qatar's pointman.

Possible candidates to lead the opposition include Ahmad Jarba, a tribal figure well connected with Saudi Arabia, and Sabbagh himself.

Sources at the meeting said possible consensus candidates included Ahmed Tumeh al-Khader a veteran opposition figure, and Burhan Ghalioun, a professor based in Paris.

BOOSTING REBEL COMMAND

More than two years into a war that has killed more than 90,000 people, momentum has shifted in recent months in favor of Assad, especially since he gained the support of fighters from the seasoned Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

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George Sabra (L), a veteran Christian opposition figure and acting President of the Syrian National …

Western countries opposed to Assad were predicting at the end of last year that the Syrian leader's days were numbered. But they now fear for the survival of the rebellion after Hezbollah fighters helped capture the rebel-held town of Qusair.

The West has had to balance its desire to aid the rebels with its worry that the rebellion has become dominated by militant Sunni Islamists, including groups allied to al Qaeda.

A senior opposition source in contact with U.S. officials said Washington, as well as French security operatives, were concentrating on supporting rebel units in the province of Aleppo on the border with Turkey, where new anti-tank missiles are helping reverse the military tide.

"I think we will be hearing good news from Aleppo soon. No one wants to repeat the weakness in logistics that allowed Hezbollah to take over Qusair and paved the way for the offensive on Homs," the source said.

Saudi Arabia has assumed a central role in backing the opposition and has begun limited delivery of sophisticated weapons to the rebels, with the United States playing a bigger role than before in supervising such shipments to keep weapons out of Islamist hands, diplomats in the region say.

"The Americans will have the final say on Saudi support. On the surface, U.S. military pledges are minimal, but indirectly, Washington's role is big," a Western diplomat said.

At the core of Western and Saudi strategy is boosting the Supreme Military Council, a centralized rebel command structure led by defectors from the Syrian army, to claw back Assad's advances and create a counterbalance to militant Islamists.

Kamal al-Labwani, a senior member of a liberal bloc of the coalition, said that the opposition has started to build up its military capability through the Supreme Military Council but Islamists still dominate the battlefield. He said he expected an increase in weapons shipments to rebels, dismissing U.S. and Russian plans for a peace conference, known as Geneva 2.

Washington and Moscow, Cold War foes supporting the opposing sides, announced plans for the peace conference in May but never agreed a date for it. Their relations have deteriorated rapidly as momentum on the battlefield swung in favor of Assad and Washington committed to aid the rebels.

"Geneva 2 is preparation for more war. Does anyone seriously think Assad would give up power to a transitional government that would order the army to take its tanks from the streets, release tens of thousands of prisoners and allow demonstrations?" Labwani said.

The rebels have been receiving light arms from Saudi Arabia and Qatar for many months, but say they need more sophisticated weapons to defeat Assad, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to counter the government's big air power advantage.

The West is wary, because such missiles could be used by militants to threaten civil aviation. Diplomats said the United States is overseeing delivery of Saudi weapons after concern that shoulder-fired missiles sent by Qatar may have been delivered to jihadist fighters.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel and Susan Cornwell in Washington; Editing by Peter Graff and Robin Pomeroy)