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Earth 2.0: NASA finds planet that matches our own

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Space agency’s Kepler mission finds planet outside solar system that may have volcanoes, oceans and sunshine like Earth.

Kepler 452b's star is 1.5 billion years older and 10 percent brighter than our sun [Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle]

Kepler 452b’s star is 1.5 billion years older and 10 percent brighter than our sun [Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle]

by Al Jazeera

Astronomers hunting for another Earth have found the closest match yet, a potentially rocky planet circling its star at the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun, NASA has said.

Named Kepler 452b, the planet is about 60 percent larger than Earth. It could have active volcanoes, oceans and sunshine like ours, twice as much gravity and a year that lasts 385 days, scientists said on Thursday.

“Today we are announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that, as far we can tell, is a pretty good close cousin to the Earth and our Sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“This is about the closest so far, and I really emphasize the ‘so-far,'” he added, describing Kepler 452b as “the closest twin,” or “Earth 2.0.”

The planet was detected by the US space agency’s Kepler Space Telescope, which has been hunting for other worlds like ours since 2009.

This planet sits squarely in the Goldilocks zone – where life could exist because it is neither too hot nor too cold to support liquid water, the US space agency said.

“Today the Earth is a little less lonely,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Kepler 452b’s star is 1.5 billion years older, four percent more massive and 10 percent brighter than our sun.

But at a distance of 1,400 light-years away, humankind has little hope of reaching this Earth-twin any time soon.

“You and I probably won’t be travelling to any of these planets without some unexpected breakthrough, but you know, our children’s’ children’s children may,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California.

The Kepler mission launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, particularly those about the size of Earth or smaller.

On Thursday, NASA released the latest catalog of exoplanet candidates, adding more than 500 new possible planets to the 4,175 already found by the space-based telescope.

The new list includes 12 candidates that are less than twice the diameter of Earth and which are orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars.

Of those 12 new candidates, Kepler 452b “is the first to be confirmed as a planet”, NASA said.

The Kepler mission has cost NASA about $600m, and the US space agency said in 2013 that two of its orientation wheels had lost function, leaving the space telescope beyond repair.

(AFP)

Fragments of what could be world’s oldest Quran have been found in the U.K.

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The university's academics were "startled" when the radiocarbon dating tests showed it was so old

The university’s academics were “startled” when the radiocarbon dating tests showed it was so old.

by Sean Coughlan, BBC

What may be the world’s oldest fragments of the Koran have been found by the University of Birmingham.

Radiocarbon dating found the manuscript to be at least 1,370 years old, making it among the earliest in existence.

The pages of the Muslim holy text had remained unrecognised in the university library for almost a century.

The British Library’s expert on such manuscripts, Dr Muhammad Isa Waley, said this “exciting discovery” would make Muslims “rejoice”.

The manuscript had been kept with a collection of other Middle Eastern books and documents, without being identified as one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the world.

Oldest texts

When a PhD researcher, Alba Fedeli, looked more closely at these pages it was decided to carry out a radiocarbon dating test and the results were “startling”.

The university’s director of special collections, Susan Worrall, said researchers had not expected “in our wildest dreams” that it would be so old.

“Finding out we had one of the oldest fragments of the Koran in the whole world has been fantastically exciting.”

The University of Birmingham’s manuscript was in a collection brought back from the Middle East

The tests, carried out by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, showed that the fragments, written on sheep or goat skin, were among the very oldest surviving texts of the Koran.

These tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.

“They could well take us back to within a few years of the actual founding of Islam,” said David Thomas, the university’s professor of Christianity and Islam.

“According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Koran, the scripture of Islam, between the years 610 and 632, the year of his death.”

Prof Thomas says the dating of the Birmingham folios would mean it was quite possible that the person who had written them would have been alive at the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

“The person who actually wrote it could well have known the Prophet Muhammad. He would have seen him probably, he would maybe have heard him preach. He may have known him personally – and that really is quite a thought to conjure with,” he says.

First-hand witness

Prof Thomas says that some of the passages of the Koran were written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels – and a final version, collected in book form, was completed in about 650.

Prof Thomas says the writer of this manuscript could have heard the Prophet Muhammad preach

He says that “the parts of the Koran that are written on this parchment can, with a degree of confidence, be dated to less than two decades after Muhammad’s death”.

“These portions must have been in a form that is very close to the form of the Koran read today, supporting the view that the text has undergone little or no alteration and that it can be dated to a point very close to the time it was believed to be revealed.”

Susan Worrall says the university wants to put this internationally significant discovery on public display

The manuscript, written in “Hijazi script”, an early form of written Arabic, becomes one of the oldest known fragments of the Koran.

Because radiocarbon dating creates a range of possible ages, there is a handful of other manuscripts in public and private collections which overlap. So this makes it impossible to say that any is definitively the oldest.

But the latest possible date of the Birmingham discovery – 645 – would put it among the very oldest.

‘Precious survivor’

Dr Waley, curator for such manuscripts at the British Library, said “these two folios, in a beautiful and surprisingly legible Hijazi hand, almost certainly date from the time of the first three caliphs”.

The first three caliphs were leaders in the Muslim community between about 632 and 656.

Dr Waley says that under the third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan, copies of the “definitive edition” were distributed.

“The Muslim community was not wealthy enough to stockpile animal skins for decades, and to produce a complete Mushaf, or copy, of the Holy Koran required a great many of them.”

Dr Waley suggests that the manuscript found by Birmingham is a “precious survivor” of a copy from that era or could be even earlier.

“In any case, this – along with the sheer beauty of the content and the surprisingly clear Hijazi script – is news to rejoice Muslim hearts.”

Muhammad Afzal of Birmingham Central Mosque said he was very moved to see the manuscript

The manuscript is part of the Mingana Collection of more than 3,000 Middle Eastern documents gathered in the 1920s by Alphonse Mingana, a Chaldean priest born near Mosul in modern-day Iraq.

He was sponsored to take collecting trips to the Middle East by Edward Cadbury, who was part of the chocolate-making dynasty.

The local Muslim community has already expressed its delight at the discovery in their city and the university says the manuscript will be put on public display.

“When I saw these pages I was very moved. There were tears of joy and emotion in my eyes. And I’m sure people from all over the UK will come to Birmingham to have a glimpse of these pages,” said Muhammad Afzal, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque.

The university says the Koran fragments will go on display in the Barber Institute in Birmingham in October.

Prof Thomas says it will show people in Birmingham that they have a “treasure that is second to none”.

Just a ‘Mistake’: US airstrikes kill allied soldiers in Afghanistan

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Helicopters attack outpost in broad daylight in what could be worst such incident in nearly 14 years of war

U.S.-led coalition has "made a very big mistake," said one official, after an attack on an Afghan outpost left at least ten soldiers dead. (Photo: File/Wikimedia Commons)

U.S.-led coalition has “made a very big mistake,” said one official, after an attack on an Afghan outpost left at least ten soldiers dead. (Photo: File/Wikimedia Commons)

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

In what may be the worst “friendly fire” incident of the U.S. war in Afghanistan since it began in 2001, reports on Monday indicate that at least ten Afghan soldiers were killed and others wounded after their compound was fired on by U.S. military helicopters.

According to initial reports citing Afghan officials, a pair of U.S. gunships attacked the outpost in Logar Province in the morning hours. Pentagon officials have confirmed there was an “incident” in the area which is now under investigation.

Agence France-Presse reports:

The early morning raid in Baraki Barak district of Logar province comes as coalition forces increase air strikes on potential militant targets despite a drawdown of NATO forces after 13 years of war.

The bombing marked the second such incident in the area since last December when a NATO air strike killed five civilians and wounded six others.

“At 6am (0130 GMT) today, two US helicopters attacked a checkpoint in Baraki Barak,” district governor Mohammad Rahim Amin told reporters. “The checkpoint caught fire … and 10 Afghan army soldiers were killed,” he added, revising down a previous estimate that 14 soldiers were killed.

A statement by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense said that helicopters belonging to the U.S.-led military coalition had come under enemy attack in the area and returned fire, mistakenly hitting the army post.

Despite that statement, the Afghan army corps commander for the region, Sharif Yaftali, told the Washington Post that the U.S.-led coalition had “made a very big mistake” because the strike was during the daytime, and the outpost was perched on a hill top, making it visible for U.S. forces to determine that it was controlled by its allies.

“The Afghanistan flag was waving on our post, when we came under attack,” said Yaftali.

Retired US general: Drones cause more damage than good

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Retired US Lieutenant General Michael Flynn calls for “different approach” on drones in interview with Al Jazeera.

Flynn acknowledged the US invasion of Iraq helped fuel the rise of ISIL [File]

Flynn acknowledged the US invasion of Iraq helped fuel the rise of ISIL [File]

by Al Jazeera

US President Barack Obama’s former top military intelligence official has launched a scathing attack on the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy, including the administration’s handling of the ISIL threat in Iraq and Syria and the US military’s drone war.

In a forthcoming interview with Al Jazeera English’s Head to Head, retired US Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in August 2014, said “there should be a different approach, absolutely” on drones.

“When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” Flynn said.

Flynn was a senior intelligence officer with the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is responsible for the US military’s secretive and controversial drone program in countries such as Yemen and Somalia.

Asked by Al Jazeera English’s Mehdi Hasan if drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill, Flynn, who has been described by Wired magazine as “the real father of the modern JSOC”, replied: “I don’t disagree with that”, adding: “I think as an overarching strategy, it is a failed strategy.”

“What we have is this continued investment in conflict,” the retired general said. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done but I am looking for the other solutions.”

Commenting on the rise of ISIL in Iraq, Flynn acknowledged the role played by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. “We definitely put fuel on a fire,” he told Hasan. “Absolutely… there is no doubt, history will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003.”

“Going into Iraq, definitely… it was a strategic mistake,” said Flynn on Head to Head.

The former lieutenant general denied any involvement in the litany of abuses carried out by JSOC interrogators at Camp Nama in Iraq, as revealed by the New York Times and Human Rights Watch, but admitted the US prison system in Iraq in the post-war period “absolutely” helped radicalise Iraqis who later joined Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and its successor organisation, ISIL.

Calls for accountability

Flynn also called for greater accountability for US soldiers involved in abuses against Iraqi detainees: “You know I hope that as more and more information comes out that people are held accountable… History is not going to look kind on those actions… and we will be held, we should be held, accountable for many, many years to come.”

Publicly commenting for the first time on a previously-classified August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo, which had predicted “the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria (…) this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want” and confirmed that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the former DIA chief told Head to Head that “the [Obama] Administration” didn’t “listen” to these warnings issued by his agency’s analysts.

“I don’t know if they turned a blind eye,” he said. “I think it was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.”

Chad police: Anyone wearing face veils will be arrested

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Authorities vow to implement ban on veil a day after Boko Haram bomber disguised as woman attacked market in capital.

Chad

by Al Jazeera

Chadian police have said anyone wearing a full-face veil will be arrested, a day after a Boko Haram suicide bombing – carried out by an attacker disguised as a women wearing one – left 15 dead.

Saturday’s attack at a market in the capital, N’Djamena, also injured 80 others and spread panic across the city. The assailant detonated an explosives belt when he was stopped for security checks at the entrance to the city’s main market.

“This attack just confirms that a ban on the full-face veil was justified,” national police spokesman Paul Manga said, adding that “it now must be respected more than ever by the entire population”.

“Anyone who does not obey the law will be automatically arrested and brought to justice,” he warned.

Muslim-majority Chad banned the full-face veil, ramped up security measures and bombed Boko Haram positions in Nigeria last month after the first ever attack by the armed group in its capital.

Security was tightened across the capital on Sunday with police and soldiers deployed in all areas, including intersections, markets and mosques.

Nine of the dead were women traders, and fear still permeated the market on Sunday.

“What was happening elsewhere and what we heard about from media reports is now happening here,” said Zenaba, a woman trader in her forties.

“I’m really scared for me and my children,” she said.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility on Twitter for the suicide bombing, signing off as “Islamic State, West Africa province” – the fighters’ self-styled moniker since pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group in March.

The conflict has killed at least 15,000 people since 2009 and left more than 1.5 million homeless.

A four-nation coalition of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon has reportedly pushed the armed group from captured towns and villages in an operation that began in February.

Remembering Srebrenica, two decades on

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Thousands of mourners descend on town where more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered during Bosnian war.

The bodies of the recently identified victims will be transported to the memorial centre in Potocari where they will be buried on Saturday [Reuters]

The bodies of the recently identified victims will be transported to the memorial centre in Potocari where they will be buried on Saturday [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Tens of thousands of people poured into Srebrenica 20 years after more than 8,000 people were killed in the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.

The remains of 136 newly-identified victims will be laid to rest on Saturday along with thousands of others already buried at a memorial centre just outside the Bosnian town.

Thousands of Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured Srebrenica in July 1995 near the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war,

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic arrived at a memorial complex on Saturday morning and spoke with female relatives of the victims.

Dozens of dignitaries from across Bosnia and abroad, were also expected to be present at the ceremony and a day of mourning will be observed throughout the Balkan country.

Former US President Bill Clinton, whose administration brokered the Dayton peace deal that ended Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war only a few months after the Srebrenica killings, travelled to Srebrenica for the memorial.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Britain’s Princess Anne and Jordan’s Queen Noor were also due to attend.

The bones of newly identified victims will be interred beneath marble gravestones in the Potocari memorial cemetery, in what has become annual ritual as more graves are discovered.

“One cannot describe with words how I feel today,” said Zijada Hajdarevic as she escorted the remains of her brother on Thursday from the morgue to the cemetery, where her grandfather and other close relatives are all buried.

“We knew he was gone, but it will be easier now we know where we can visit his grave,” said Hajdarevic, who is still searching for her father.

Disputed term

A UN court has ruled that the killings in Srebrenica was genocide.

Many Serbs dispute the term, the death toll and the official account of what went on – reflecting conflicting narratives of the Yugoslav wars that still feed political divisions and stifle progress toward integration with Western Europe.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik last month described Srebrenica as “the greatest deception of the 20th century”.

Russia this week vetoed a UN resolution last week that would have condemned the denial of Srebrenica as genocide. Moscow called for all people responsible for the massacre to be brought to justice.

Samantha Power, Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations who was a 24-year-old journalist in Bosnia at the time, said: “You cannot build reconciliation on the denial of genocide.”

Ever since the massacre, the West has faced questions over how it allowed the fall of Srebrenica, a designated UN “safe haven” for Muslims Bosniaks displaced by the war.

Months later, NATO air strikes forced the Serbs to the negotiating table. A US-brokered peace treaty ended the fighting and enshrined in Bosnia a complicated and unwieldy system of ethnic power-sharing that survives today.

The accused chief architects of the massacre – Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic – remain on trial at a UN court in The Hague, protesting their innocence.

Backed by popular mandate, Greece submits new deal for dignity and debt relief

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Meanwhile, dueling rallies are taking place in Athens on Thursday and Friday

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reportedly told the Greek Parliament on Thursday to brace for 'compromise'. (Photo: Martin Schulz/flickr/cc)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reportedly told the Greek Parliament on Thursday to brace for ‘compromise’. (Photo: Martin Schulz/flickr/cc)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

The Greek government on Thursday evening approved a package of specific reform measures it will present to foreign creditors in an effort to break an impasse that has raised questions about austerity and democracy across the European continent.

While details were not immediately made public, early news reports suggested the reform plan could include “punitive” measures such as at least €12 billion of cuts and tax increases—all in exchange for debt relief.

According to the Guardian:

Parliament is expected to endorse the package after a frantic few days of negotiation that followed a landmark referendum last Sunday in which Greek voters backed the radical leftist Syriza government’s call for debt relief.

Syriza, which is in coalition with the rightwing populist Independent party, is expected to meet huge opposition from within its own ranks and from trade unions and youth groups that viewed the referendum as a vote against any austerity.

Panagiotis Lafazanis, the energy minister and influential hard-leftist, who on Wednesday welcomed a deal for a new €2bn gas pipeline from Russia, has ruled out a new tough austerity package.

Lafazanis represents around 70 Syriza MPs who have previously taken a hard line against further austerity measures and could yet wreck any top-level agreement.

As the Guardian‘s Helena Smith argued: “The irony has not been lost on anyone… that after the Greeks’ resounding rejection of further biting austerity at the weekend, prime minister Alexis Tsipras has with lightning speed now agreed to put his name to the most punitive austerity package any government has been asked to implement during the five years of economic crisis in Greece.”

Indeed, the UK’s Telegraph adds that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras “has now reportedly told his parliament to brace themselves for ‘compromise’.”

Still, “[t]he concession would allow Mr. Tsipras to sell the deal as a face-saving measure after the Greek people delivered a ‘No’ to the previous bail-out terms, which provided no explicit promise to debt relief,” Telegraph journalist Mehreen Khan wrote on Thursday.

Tsipras and his Syriza government have long said that easing the country’s debt would restore “dignity” to impoverished Greeks.

The new proposal will be studied on a technical level by the so-called Troika—the European Central Bank, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—on Friday, followed by further discussions among Eurozone finance ministers on Saturday and a full EU summit on Sunday.

It is not yet clear how these stakeholders will respond to Greece’s pitch. European Council president Donald Tusk said Thursday that any “realistic proposal from Athens needs to be matched by realistic proposal from creditors on debt sustainability to create [a] win-win situation”—suggesting he, like the IMF, supports the idea of debt relief.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was in Bosnia on Thursday, continues to rule out slashing the face value of Greece’s government debt, saying a so-called “haircut” on Greek loans was out of the question.

The BBC‘s Hugh Schofield argues that “at this dramatic juncture Greece looks to France as its last remaining hope.”

Schofield continues:

As one by one other EU governments have accepted the likelihood of an impending Greek departure, France cleaves to the imperative of compromise.

On Wednesday, even as Mr Tsipras addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was telling a debate in the French National Assembly that keeping Greece in the EU was of “utmost geostrategic and geopolitical importance” and that a deal was “within grasp”.

Reporting from Athens, the Guardian‘s Smith adds: “Officials here are saying that all hope now rests with the French connection. Paris has dispatched a team of technocrats to help finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos draft the new proposal in an effort to ensure it is as convincing as can possibly be.”

Meanwhile, dueling rallies are slated to take place in Athens on Thursday and Friday, amidst ongoing negotiations between Greek officials and foreign creditors over debt relief and austerity, and ahead of the weekend meetings that could decide Greece’s future in the Eurozone.

Declaring “We’re staying in Europe,” Greeks who favor a harsh, Troika-proposed bailout deal—albeit at the cost of more cuts and austerity—will converge outside Parliament at 7:30 pm local time on Thursday.

The following day—same time, same place—”No” supporters, who won a landslide victory in Sunday’s referendum, will hold an anti-austerity rally under the slogan “Hands off democracy.”

A Guardian analysis published Thursday offers an indication of who might be in attendance at each demonstration. The Guardian‘s interactive map shows that while last week’s vote indeed reflected divisions between the old and young, it also split along class lines, with the nation’s poor voting overwhelmingly against the austerity package, and rich people voting “Yes.”

US Muslim groups launch fundraiser to help rebuild burned black churches

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At least eight predominantly black churches have burned since Charleston shooting; Ramadan fundraiser aims to help

Photo: AFP

Photo: AFP

by Al Jazeera

A coalition of Muslim groups has launched an online fundraiser to help rebuild predominantly African-American churches damaged in a recent spate of fires across the South.

At least eight churches have suffered fire damage since a shooting on June 17 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine black parishioners dead.

The church burnings took place within just 10 days of one another, and three are being investigated as possible arson cases.

“To many, it is clear that these are attacks on black culture, black religion and black lives,” the coalition wrote on the campaign’s LaunchGood page.

“It’s Ramadan, and we are experiencing firsthand the beauty and sanctity of our mosques during this holy month. All houses of worship are sanctuaries, a place where all should feel safe,” it added.

The coalition — which consists of U.S. organizations Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative and the Arab American Association of New York as well as digital startup Ummah Wide — has so far raised over $23,000 in five days. After the campaign ends on July 18, the money will be given to pastors of the burned churches that need it most, the groups said.

Like black communities in the United States, the coalition wrote, American Muslims are also vulnerable to intimidation, though not to the same extent as African-Americans.

“The American Muslim community cannot claim to have experienced anything close to the systematic and institutionalized racism and racist violence that has been visited upon African-Americans,” organizer Imam Zaid Shakir wrote on the campaign’s website.

However, Muslims can understand the “climate of racially inspired hate and bigotry that is being reignited in this country,” he wrote, saying the American Muslim community should stand in solidarity with African-Americans.

Just 65 miles north of the church where professed white supremacist Dylann Roof allegedly killed nine people, investigators took samples from the charred rubble of Mount Zion AME Church. Authorities said last week they were assessing whether accelerant was used to fuel the blaze at the church, which the Ku Klux Klan burned to the ground two decades ago.

Two other church burnings — God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia, and College Hill Seventh Day Adventist in Knoxville, Tennessee — were also suspected arson attacks and are being investigated.

Authorities have not classified any of the fires as hate crimes.

With wire services

WikiLeaks: US bugged more than two dozen Brazilian leaders

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New spy revelations ‘likely to reinvigorate tensions,’ says The Intercept, which co-published list of targets

Photo published Tuesday under the ABC News headline, "2 Years After Spying Flap, US, Brazil Seek to Turn the Page." (Photo: AP)

Photo published Tuesday under the ABC News headline, “2 Years After Spying Flap, US, Brazil Seek to Turn the Page.” (Photo: AP)

by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams

Just days after Brazil President Dilma Rousseff’s official working visit to the United States, during which she and President Barack Obama issued a joint communique affirming their “mutual respect and trust,” WikiLeaks and The Intercept on Saturday, July 4 published a “top secret U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) target list of 29 key Brazilian government phone numbers that were selected for intensive interception,” or phone-tapping.

Noting that last week’s visit to the U.S. was one “she had delayed for almost two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil,” The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda argue that “these new revelations extend far beyond the prior ones and are likely to reinvigorate tensions.”

As WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange said in a press statement accompanying the leak: “Our publication today shows the U.S. has a long way to go to prove its dragnet surveillance on ‘friendly’ governments is over.”

The list of priority targets includes not only Rousseff but also her assistant, her secretary, her chief of staff, her Palace office, and the phone in her Presidential jet. According to WikiLeaks, the NSA targeted “not only those closest to the President, but waged an economic espionage campaign against Brazil, spying on those responsible for managing Brazil’s economy, including the head of its Central Bank.”

This is notable because, as Greenwald and Miranda write, “Brazilians are particularly sensitive to economic espionage by the U.S., both for historical reasons (as a hallmark of American imperialism and domination on the continent) and due to current economic concerns (for that reason, the story of NSA’s targeting of Petrobras was arguably the most consequential of all prior surveillance stories).”

The phones of Brazil’s foreign minister as well as its ambassadors to Germany, France, the EU, the U.S., and Geneva were also on the list.

In an interview with The Intercept, Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to Rousseff, described his reaction to the spying revelations as “maximum indignation.”

Greenwald and Miranda continue:

For his part, the Central Bank’s Pereira da Silva said his reaction is to fully embrace the stinging denunciation of NSA’s electronic surveillance contained inDilma’s September, 2013 United Nations speech, delivered while Obama waited in the hallway to speak. That blistering speech was widely regarded in Brazil as a high point of Dilma’s leadership on the world stage.

Speaking from the General Assembly podium, she declared that “tampering in such a manner in the affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and is an affront of the principles that must guide the relations among them, especially among friendly nations.” She condemned U.S. mass surveillance as a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties” and, in a rare invocation of her own personal history as a rebel against the country’s oppressive military dictatorship, said: “As many other Latin Americans, I fought against authoritarianism and censorship, and I cannot but defend, in an uncompromising fashion, the right to privacy of individuals and the sovereignty of my country. In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy.”

Saturday’s leak comes on the heels of previous publications by WikiLeaks that show systematic U.S. targeting of the highest officials including three French presidents and the current chancellor of Germany. On Friday, CNN and The Intercept reported that the U.S. government spied on German journalists as well.

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