Danish filmmaker identified as 1st Copenhagen shooting victim

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Jan M. Olsen and Karl Ritter, The Associated Press Published Sunday, February 15, 2015 7:32AM EST Last Updated Sunday, February 15, 2015 9:04PM EST

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The slain gunman suspected in the deadly Copenhagen attacks was a 22-year-old with a history of violence and may have been inspired by Islamic terrorists -- and possibly the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Danish authorities said Sunday.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt mourned the two people killed and vowed to protect freedom of speech and Denmark's Jewish community.

The suspect was killed in a gunbattle with a SWAT team early Sunday. He had opened fire Saturday at a cultural centre hosting a seminar on free speech with an artist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and then later at security forces outside a synagogue, police said.

A Danish filmmaker was killed in the first attack. Nine hours later, a security guard protecting a bat mitzvah near a synagogue was slain. Five police officers were wounded in the shootings.

Jens Madsen, head of the Danish intelligence agency PET, said investigators believe the gunman "could have been inspired by the events in Paris." Last month Islamic militants carried out a massacre at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo followed by an attack on Jews at a kosher grocery, killing 17 people.

"He could also have been inspired by material sent out by (the Islamic State group) and others," Madsen said.

Copenhagen police made no mention of Islamic extremism and said the Danish-born suspect had a history of violence and weapons offences and connections to a criminal gang. They didn't release his name.

"Denmark has been hit by terror," Thorning-Schmidt said. "We do not know the motive for the alleged perpetrator's actions, but we know that there are forces that want to hurt Denmark. They want to rebuke our freedom of speech."

Chief Rabbi Jair Melchior identified the security guard as Dan Uzan, a 27-year-old member of Denmark's 7,000-strong Jewish community. Two police officers who were near the synagogue were slightly wounded.

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Danish filmmaker identified as 1st Copenhagen shooting victim

Radical Islamic link in Copenhagen attacks: Denmark intelligence chief

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Jan M. Olsen and Karl Ritter, The Associated Press Published Sunday, February 15, 2015 7:32AM EST Last Updated Sunday, February 15, 2015 9:04PM EST

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- The slain gunman suspected in the deadly Copenhagen attacks was a 22-year-old with a history of violence and may have been inspired by Islamic terrorists -- and possibly the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, Danish authorities said Sunday.

Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt mourned the two people killed and vowed to protect freedom of speech and Denmark's Jewish community.

The suspect was killed in a gunbattle with a SWAT team early Sunday. He had opened fire Saturday at a cultural centre hosting a seminar on free speech with an artist who had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad and then later at security forces outside a synagogue, police said.

A Danish filmmaker was killed in the first attack. Nine hours later, a security guard protecting a bat mitzvah near a synagogue was slain. Five police officers were wounded in the shootings.

Jens Madsen, head of the Danish intelligence agency PET, said investigators believe the gunman "could have been inspired by the events in Paris." Last month Islamic militants carried out a massacre at the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo followed by an attack on Jews at a kosher grocery, killing 17 people.

"He could also have been inspired by material sent out by (the Islamic State group) and others," Madsen said.

Copenhagen police made no mention of Islamic extremism and said the Danish-born suspect had a history of violence and weapons offences and connections to a criminal gang. They didn't release his name.

"Denmark has been hit by terror," Thorning-Schmidt said. "We do not know the motive for the alleged perpetrator's actions, but we know that there are forces that want to hurt Denmark. They want to rebuke our freedom of speech."

Chief Rabbi Jair Melchior identified the security guard as Dan Uzan, a 27-year-old member of Denmark's 7,000-strong Jewish community. Two police officers who were near the synagogue were slightly wounded.

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Radical Islamic link in Copenhagen attacks: Denmark intelligence chief

Student Sentenced To Year In Egyptian Jail For Atheism

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World By Michael Allen, Fri, March 6, 2015

Sherif Gaber, 22, was recently sentenced to one year in jail by an Egyptian court for supporting atheism and creating an atheist Facebook page.

Gaber was a student at Suez Canal University in 2013 when his fellow students and a teacher snitched on him via a petition to the universitys then-president Mohamed Mohamedein.

Mohamedein turned Gaber into local authorities for contempt of religion, which he was convicted for on Monday.

The judge in the case said Gaber could avoid jail for now if he paid a bail equivalent to about $130 dollars.

While he is out of jail for now, Gaber faces a retrial that could put him in prison for over two years.

Gaber told Daily News Egypt that he was arrested on Oct. 27, 2013:

[I couldnt believe] the strength of the security of the state three armoured cars and an army vehicle, surrounded my house. I said there must be another Osama bin Laden living in the same tower I didnt know I was that dangerous.

Gaber also claimed that he was abused and electrocuted while he was held in jail until December 2013.

Gaber hopes he can claim emergency asylum before he is sentenced at his retrial.

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What scares the new atheists

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In 1929, the Thinkers Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckels 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as the German Darwin, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages. Hostile to Jewish and Christian traditions, Haeckel devised his own religion of science called Monism, which incorporated an anthropology that divided the human species into a hierarchy of racial groups. Though he died in 1919, before the Nazi Party had been founded, his ideas, and widespread influence in Germany, unquestionably helped to create an intellectual climate in which policies of racial slavery and genocide were able to claim a basis in science.

The Thinkers Library also featured works by Julian Huxley, grandson of TH Huxley, the Victorian biologist who was known as Darwins bulldog for his fierce defence of evolutionary theory. A proponent of evolutionary humanism, which he described as religion without revelation, Julian Huxley shared some of Haeckels views, including advocacy of eugenics. In 1931, Huxley wrote that there was a certain amount of evidence that the negro is an earlier product of human evolution than the Mongolian or the European, and as such might be expected to have advanced less, both in body and mind. Statements of this kind were then commonplace: there were many in the secular intelligentsia including HG Wells, also a contributor to the Thinkers Library who looked forward to a time when backward peoples would be remade in a western mould or else vanish from the world.

But by the late 1930s, these views were becoming suspect: already in 1935, Huxley admitted that the concept of race was hardly definable in scientific terms. While he never renounced eugenics, little was heard from him on the subject after the second world war. The science that pronounced western people superior was bogus but what shifted Huxleys views wasnt any scientific revelation: it was the rise of Nazism, which revealed what had been done under the aegis of Haeckel-style racism.

Related: New atheists are not scared, but they are angry | Letters

It has often been observed that Christianity follows changing moral fashions, all the while believing that it stands apart from the world. The same might be said, with more justice, of the prevalent version of atheism. If an earlier generation of unbelievers shared the racial prejudices of their time and elevated them to the status of scientific truths, evangelical atheists do the same with the liberal values to which western societies subscribe today while looking with contempt upon backward cultures that have not abandoned religion. The racial theories promoted by atheists in the past have been consigned to the memory hole and todays most influential atheists would no more endorse racist biology than they would be seen following the guidance of an astrologer. But they have not renounced the conviction that human values must be based in science; now it is liberal values which receive that accolade. There are disputes, sometimes bitter, over how to define and interpret those values, but their supremacy is hardly ever questioned. For 21st century atheist missionaries, being liberal and scientific in outlook are one and the same.

Its a reassuringly simple equation. In fact there are no reliable connections whether in logic or history between atheism, science and liberal values. When organised as a movement and backed by the power of the state, atheist ideologies have been an integral part of despotic regimes that also claimed to be based in science, such as the former Soviet Union. Many rival moralities and political systems most of them, to date, illiberal have attempted to assert a basis in science. All have been fraudulent and ephemeral. Yet the attempt continues in atheist movements today, which claim that liberal values can be scientifically validated and are therefore humanly universal.

Fortunately, this type of atheism isnt the only one that has ever existed. There have been many modern atheisms, some of them more cogent and more intellectually liberating than the type that makes so much noise today. Campaigning atheism is a missionary enterprise, aiming to convert humankind to a particular version of unbelief; but not all atheists have been interested in propagating a new gospel, and some have been friendly to traditional faiths.

Evangelical atheists today view liberal values as part of an emerging global civilisation; but not all atheists, even when they have been committed liberals, have shared this comforting conviction. Atheism comes in many irreducibly different forms, among which the variety being promoted at the present time looks strikingly banal and parochial.

In itself, atheism is an entirely negative position. In pagan Rome, atheist (from the Greek atheos) meant anyone who refused to worship the established pantheon of deities. The term was applied to Christians, who not only refused to worship the gods of the pantheon but demanded exclusive worship of their own god. Many non-western religions contain no conception of a creator-god Buddhism and Taoism, in some of their forms, are atheist religions of this kind and many religions have had no interest in proselytising. In modern western contexts, however, atheism and rejection of monotheism are practically interchangeable. Roughly speaking, an atheist is anyone who has no use for the concept of God the idea of a divine mind, which has created humankind and embodies in a perfect form the values that human beings cherish and strive to realise. Many who are atheists in this sense (including myself) regard the evangelical atheism that has emerged over the past few decades with bemusement. Why make a fuss over an idea that has no sense for you? There are untold multitudes who have no interest in waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them. Throughout history, many have been happy to live their lives without bothering about ultimate questions. This sort of atheism is one of the perennial responses to the experience of being human.

As an organised movement, atheism is never non-committal in this way. It always goes with an alternative belief-system typically, a set of ideas that serves to show the modern west is the high point of human development. In Europe from the late 19th century until the second world war, this was a version of evolutionary theory that marked out western peoples as being the most highly evolved. Around the time Haeckel was promoting his racial theories, a different theory of western superiority was developed by Marx. While condemning liberal societies and prophesying their doom, Marx viewed them as the high point of human development to date. (This is why he praised British colonialism in India as an essentially progressive development.) If Marx had serious reservations about Darwinism and he did it was because Darwins theory did not frame evolution as a progressive process.

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Self-Proclaimed Atheist Charged After Gunning Down Muslim University Students

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. Aself-described anti-theist has been charged with three counts of murder after gunning down three Muslims near the University of North Carolina campus on Tuesday.

Craig Hicks, 46, turned himself into the Chatham County Sheriffs Office following the execution-style shooting that took the lives of Deah Barakat, 23, and his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, as well as Abu-Salhas sister Razan. Barakat was studying at the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry and his wife was set to attend the school in the fall.

Hicks had regularly shared posts about atheism on his social media page, noting himself to be a supporter of Atheists for Equality and a fan of the TV show The Atheist Experience, as well as Richard Dawkins The God Delusion.

Of course I want religion to go away, his Facebook cover reads. I dont deny you your right to believe whatever youd like, but I have the right to point out its ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keep killing people.

On Sunday, Hicks shared a photograph about the alleged commonalities between radical Christians and radical Muslims, and late last month, he shared a quotefrom the page Militant Atheism for the Soul. He had also recently posted a photograph of his loaded 38 revolver with five extra rounds in a speedloader.

Police outlined on Wednesday that initial findings appeared to indicate that Tuesdaysshooting, which took the lives of Hicks Muslim neighbors, occurred over a parking dispute. However, they have not yet ruled out whether religion played a role in the incident and are further investigating the matter.

Our investigators are exploring what could have motivated Mr. Hicks to commit such a senseless and tragic act, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement. We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.

Hicks wife spoke during a press conference and asserted that her husband did not target Barakat and his wife and sister-in-law because of his opposition to religion.

I can say with my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or victims faith, but in fact was related to the long-standing parking disputes that my husband had with the neighbors, she stated.We were married for seven years, and that is one thing that I do know about him.

But the family of the victims contend otherwise.

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Self-Proclaimed Atheist Charged After Gunning Down Muslim University Students

Hubble telescope finds a smile in space

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By Kate Seamons

Newser

The universe is smiling down on usalmost literally. The Hubble Telescope has captured a "smiley face" in space: two bright yellow eyes (a cluster of galaxies called SDSS J1038+4849), a white nose, and a faint smile and incomplete circle around the entire face.

But those curving lines "don't existor at least not in the form that we see them in the photo," writes Michelle Starr at CNET. As SpaceTelescope.org reports, galaxy clusters have a mammoth gravitational pull, and at Slate, astronomer Phil Plait explains why in pretty easy-to-understand terms: The cluster holds trillions of stars, which is "a lot of mass, and a lot of gravity." J1038 is roughly 4.5 billion light-years away, and past it, at a distance of 7.5 billion light-years, are additional galaxies.

When those galaxies' light passes through the area that's been altered by the cluster's gravity, the light is bent. The phenomenon is called gravitational lensing, and the "strongest" example of it is called an Einstein ring, as in the Hubble image.

As Starr writes, such rings "only occur when the source of the original light, gravitational lens, and observer are in exact alignment in a straight line." Though the observer in this case was Hubble, the image surfaced thanks to Judy Schmidt, who submitted the image via the "Hubble's Hidden Treasures" effort, which invites armchair astronomers to search the massive Hubble archive for "iconic" photos the public has never seen.

This image was released by NASA yesterday. The phenomenon of seeing non-existent faces in thingsit's known as face pareidoliahas been known for centuries, and last year, researchers confirmed that it's perfectly normal and relates to how our brains are wired.

Among the better-known instances of this occurring: the "Virgin Mary tree," "Google Earth Jesus," and "Griddle Virgin."

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Hubble telescope finds a smile in space

NATO combat readiness to be put to test in 2015

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At NATOs Allied Land Command on Thursday, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Nicholson was overseeing what only a year ago could have been viewed as just a mundane classroom training exercise.

Nicholson and his command team in Izmir, Turkey, were busy getting a group of military members ready to head out into the field. Not to conduct war games themselves, but to observe alliance armies that were being put to the test.

Our evaluators have to be trained, and thats what were doing this week, Nicholson said in a telephone interview with Stars and Stripes.

But today, such training occurs as NATO is shifting from a decade fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan to confronting security concerns in Europes own backyard, a notion that only a year ago might have been viewed as throwback to the Cold War.

Now, Russian aggression in Ukraine and concerns along NATOs southern flank, where the rise of the Islamic State has parts of Europe on edge, has revitalized the alliance. For NATO Land Command, that means getting the alliances ground forces to work effectively together to respond to any threat or crisis, Nicholson said.

The political guidance has lined up. The military structure is lined up, and the focus and energy is all lined up, Nicholson said. These threats to the stability of the world around us, especially to the east and the south, have clearly energized the political and military leadership of the alliance to enact these improvements to readiness and responsiveness of the alliance.

From Greece and Spain to Turkey and Germany, NATOs Land Command will be spending much of the year dispatching teams of combat evaluators to test the readiness of the alliances ground fighters.

In Izmir this week, NATO military personnel from across the 28-nation alliance have been busy learning skills needed to measure the effectiveness of alliance armies.

A key challenge for the militaries is overcoming communication barriers, Nicholson said difficulties that are less about language and more about technology.

One of the biggest challenge areas is our command-and-control systems and our ability to talk to one another, and this remains a challenge, he said.

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NATO combat readiness to be put to test in 2015

Officials warn of Russian danger to EU, NATO

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LONDON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- A senior NATO military officer warned that Russia could invade the Baltic States with tactics practiced in Ukraine.

In a London speech to the Royal United Services Institute, British Gen. Sir Adrian Bradshaw, Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO forces, cited a "danger that Russia might believe that the large-scale conventional forces which she has shown she can generate on very short notice, as we saw in the snap exercise that preceded the takeover of Crimea, could in the future be used not only for intimidation and coercion but potentially to seize NATO territory."

He referred to the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, NATO-member countries which border Russia and were part of the Soviet Union.

Bradshaw's comments came the same day Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission Vice president and former Latvia Prime Minister, called for a stronger NATO presence in the Baltic countries.

"Russia's aggression against Ukraine is very worrying for Baltic states. It shows that Russia is looking to redraw Europe's 21st century borders by force, and it must be noted that Ukraine is not the first country to face Russia's aggression," Dombrovskis said in London.

The unusually strong warnings came a day after British defense minister Michael Fallon called Russian President Vladimir Putin "a real and present danger" to NATO and to the Baltic states, and two days after British fighter jets intercepted Russian bombers flying near British airspace.

Britain's House of Lords committee overseeing European Union relations issued a report Friday accusing the EU and the British government of a "catastrophic misreading" of Russia's intentions for Ukraine, saying Britain was not "active or visible enough" to dissuade the Kremlin from its involvement in Ukraine.

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Officials warn of Russian danger to EU, NATO

Prepare for Russian blitzkrieg: General

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A snap exercise in Russia's eastern military district later the same year was meanwhile the largest since the fall of the Iron Curtain it involved 160,000 troops.

Russia could potentially seize territory in a Nato state using its rapidly assembled forces for example, the Russian-speaking enclave of Narva in Estonia before the alliance had time to swing into action, forcing leaders to either declare war or swallow their pride.

Such a course of action would raise the prospect of a "slide into strategic conflict", which, "however unlikely we see that as being now, represents an obvious existential threat to our whole being", Sir Adrian added, hinting at the potential for nuclear confrontation.

Read MoreRussia sanctions over Ukraine fighting seen as 'symbolic' by experts

The prospect of a brazen Russian attack is one of the key drivers behind Nato moves to speed up its ability to deploy sizeable military units in the event of a crisis. The centrepiece of the alliance's shift in policy following a summit in Wales in September is a "spearhead" brigade-sized rapid-reaction force capable of deploying within 48 hours.

Nato is preparing to deploy "force integration units" in each of its eastern European member states. They will act as eyes and ears on the ground as well as preparing the way for the rapid deployment of Nato forces should they be required by building links and logistical plans with local military units and commands.

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NATO coalition convoy struck in Kabul

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KABUL, Afghanistan A suicide attack struck a NATO coalition convoy in downtown Kabul Thursday morning, killing two people.

At about 8:30 a.m. a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla attacked two vehicles belonging to Turkish members of the NATO-led Resolute Support mission, said Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai.

The blast killed at least one Turkish individual and one Afghan civilian bystander, as well as the attacker, he said. The Associated Press, citing the Turkish military, reported that one Turkish soldier was killed and another was wounded in the attack.

Coalition officials confirmed that it was one of their convoys but did not release any information on casualties.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in an online post.

The purpose of today's attack in Kabul was a U.S. convoy, the embassy or any other country nationals were not objective, the groups spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, wrote on Twitter.

The recently appointed NATO civilian representative to Afghanistan, Ismail Aramaz, who is Turkish, had been reported to be the target of the attack. But NATO spokesman Chris Chambers told Stars and Stripes that Aramaz was at his residence, not in the vehicles, at the time of the blast.

The attack occurred deep in the heart of Kabul in an area that hosts the embassies of Turkey and Iran, among other government buildings.

smith.josh@stripes.com Twitter: @joshjonsmith

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NATO coalition convoy struck in Kabul

Gemalto: Spy Agencies 'Probably' Hacked Us, But Encryption Keys Secure

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The NSA and GCHQ probably hacked SIM card maker Gemalto, but didn't nab any encryption keys, the firm said.

SIM card maker Gemalto today said it believes the NSA and GCHQ did indeed breach its systems, but the firm found that the agencies were unable to swipe any encryption keys.

The news comes after a recent report, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, said that the NSA and its U.K. counterpart hacked Gemalto in order to steal encryption keys and spy on wireless communications.

A multinational chipmaker based in The Netherlands, Gemalto supplies SIM cards used by all four of the top U.S. carriers and 450 wireless network providers around the world. Access by intelligence agencies, therefore, would allow the monitoring of mobile communications without approval, warrant, or wiretap.

Gemalto's subsequent investigation found that the agencies' "intrusions only affected the outer parts of our networksour office networks," Gemalto said. SIM encryption keys and customer data is stored on other networks.

The Dutch tech giant said its networks are frequently under attack, but that very few efforts actually succeed. Two sophisticated attacks in 2010 and 2011, however, caught Gemalto's eye and "could be related" to the reported NSA and GCHQ breaches.

One of those attacks focused on suspicious activity on one of its French sites, while another involved fake emails sent to mobile operator customers. At the same time, Gemalto detected numerous attempts to access the employees' PCs.

Though unable to identify the intruders at the time, the company now believes the NSA and GCHQ were behind the breaches. "An operation by NSA and GCHQ probably happened," it said.

"It is important to understand that our network architecture is designed like a cross between an onion and an orange," the report said. "It has multiple layers and segments which help to cluster and isolate data."

The breach was allegedly detailed in a "secret" 2010 GCHQ document, but was only just made public via the Snowden data dump.

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Gemalto: Spy Agencies 'Probably' Hacked Us, But Encryption Keys Secure

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NSA braced for new leaks

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By Bill Gertz

Washington Free Beacon

FILE: An aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah.(AP)

The National Security Agency, still reeling from massive leaks caused by Edward Snowden, is preparing to be hit with another major loss of secrets, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The leaks are expected to be published in the near future by a news outlet that was not further identified by the officials familiar with details of the compromise, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

The NSA is aware of the news outlets forthcoming disclosures and is taking steps to try and minimize any damage they will cause.

According to the officials, the latest NSA disclosure of secrets is not the result of an insider stealing documents, as occurred in the case of fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Instead, the leaks will reveal certain NSA technical cyber intelligence gathering capabilities. The officials did not provide details about the leaks.

Click for more from The Washington Beacon.

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NSA braced for new leaks

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