A.M. Links: NSA Uses Cookies To Track Targets, Budget Deal Announced, Pope is TIME’s Person of the Year

• The latest reporting on the documents leaked by Edward Snowden
  reveals that the
  NSA uses cookies to track targets. 
• Lawmakers unveiled a budget
  deal yesterday that would avoid another partial government
  shutdown.
• India’s Supreme Court has ruled that a colonial-era law
  
  criminalizing homosexuality is constitutional.
• 
  Pope Francis is TIME‘s Person of the Year.
  Edward Snowden was runner-up.
• New York City Mayor
  Michael Bloomberg is backing legislation that would require all
  children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years who attend a
  licensed preschool or daycare to get a flu vaccine.
• Experts claim that the gestures made by the the sign language
  interpreter at the
  Nelson Mandela memorial didn’t mean anything in American or
  South African sign languages.

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