LONDON (AP) — President Vladimir Putin probably approved a plan by Russia's FSB security service to kill a former agent-turned-Kremlin critic who died after drinking tea laced with radioactive poison, a British judge said Thursday in a strongly worded report that led Moscow to accuse Britain of souring bilateral relations.

Litvinenko, a former FSB agent, fled to Britain in 2000 and became a vocal critic of Russia's security service and of Putin, whom he accused of links to organized crime. Owen said Litvinenko "was regarded as having betrayed the FSB" with his actions, and said "there were powerful motives for organizations and individuals within the Russian state" to kill him.

This week the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest LGBT group, endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. It was a bit of a shocker not because HRC endorsed a Democrat -- the group has only endorsed Democratic presidential candidates, as the GOP has always been hostile toward LGBT rights -- but that it occurred before even one vote has been cast in the Democratic primaries and while two hugely gay-supportive candidates are so close in the polls in the first contests.

In 2008, HRC endorsed Barack Obama, but not until June, when it was clear he would be the nominee. (For 2012, the group endorsed the president, who had no major challenger, in May of 2011). In 2004, HRC also endorsed the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, in June, after all the votes in the primaries were in. And it's very first endorsement of a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, came in June of 1992.

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But here we are less than two weeks from Iowa, and Senator Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, looking like he will take one or both. He has many LGBT donors and supporters, many of whom are HRC contributors who are, judging from Twitter, bewildered and angry. As I wrote last fall, Sanders has a stellar gay rights record, having been one of only a small handful of federal legislators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act (when he was in the House), and he's been out front in this campaign. Last spring Sanders called for amending the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT protections -- 14 years after Bill Bradley did, but several months before Hillary Clinton did -- and he backed open transgender military service before Clinton too. Sanders wasn't always supportive of marriage equality, even when he voted against DOMA -- though he likes to cloud that fact and his own past now -- but he certainly was publicly for marriage equality several years before Clinton.