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Antennas of Former National Security Agency (NSA) listening station are seen at the Teufelsberg hill (German for Devil's Mountain) in Berlin, June 30, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

By Patricia Zengerle and Alina Selyukh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New revelations from former security contractor Edward Snowden that U.S. intelligence agencies have access to a vast online tracking tool came to light on Wednesday, as lawmakers put the secret surveillance programs under greater scrutiny.

The Guardian, citing documents from Snowden, published National Security Agency training materials for the XKeyscore program, which the British newspaper described as the NSA's widest-reaching system that covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet."

Intelligence analysts can conduct surveillance through XKeyscore by filling in an on-screen form giving only a "broad justification" for the search and no review by a court or NSA staff, the newspaper said.

Snowden's disclosures to media that U.S. intelligence agencies collected data on phone calls and other communications of Americans and foreign citizens as a tool to fight terrorism have sparked uproar in the United States and abroad.

Intelligence officials insist the surveillance programs helped thwart terrorist attacks and saved many American lives.

"The implication that NSA's collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false," the agency said in a statement in response to the Guardian's new report, calling XKeyscore part of "NSA's lawful foreign signals intelligence collection system."

Opposition to the sweeping surveillance has been gaining traction in Congress, despite intense lobbying on the intelligence agencies' behalf from the Obama administration, congressional leaders and members of the House of Representatives and Senate Intelligence Committees.

President Barack Obama scheduled a meeting for Thursday with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence Committees, to discuss programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a White House official said on Wednesday.

Intelligence officials were grilled at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday about their data gathering, the lack of transparency and security lapses that let Snowden get away with so much information.

SENATE, HOUSE LEGISLATION

Two Democratic members of the committee, Senators Al Franken and Richard Blumenthal, said they would introduce legislation on Thursday to force the Obama administration to provide more information about the data collection programs, including how many Americans' records were reviewed by federal agents.

"The government has to give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy," Franken said.

Senior intelligence officials at the hearing said they were open to making some changes in the system.

Keith Alexander, the NSA director, jousted with hecklers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday as he defended the U.S. spy agency's surveillance programs before a crowd of cybersecurity experts and hackers.

"Read the Constitution!" one shouted. But the four-star general replied: "I have. So should you," to sustained applause.

Last week, the House defeated by a narrow 217-205 margin a bill that would have cut funding of the NSA program that collects the phone records. Strong support for the measure - bolstered by an unlikely alliance of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans - surprised many observers.

Snowden, who has been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act and had his passport revoked, left Hong Kong more than a month ago and is stuck in limbo at a Moscow airport while seeking asylum in Russia, which has refused to extradite him.

"If a 29-year-old school dropout could come in and take out massive, massive amounts of data, it's obvious there weren't adequate controls," Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee chairman, said at the hearing. "Has anybody been fired?"

John Inglis, the NSA's deputy director, said no one had been dismissed and no one had offered to resign.

GOVERNMENT DECLASSIFIES DOCUMENTS

The director of national intelligence released three declassified documents on Wednesday in the "interest of increased transparency." They explained the bulk collection of phone data - one of the secret programs revealed by Snowden.

Much of what is in the newly declassified documents has already been divulged in public hearings by intelligence officials. The released documents included 2009 and 2011 reports on the NSA's "Bulk Collection Program," carried out under the U.S. Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation passed shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

They also included an April 2013 order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which directed communications company Verizon to hand over data from millions of Americans' telephone calls. The declassified documents said the data would only be used when needed for authorized searches.

"Although the programs collect a large amount of information, the vast majority of that information is never reviewed by anyone in the government, because the information is not responsive to the limited queries that are authorized for intelligence purposes," the 2009 report said.

But the secret NSA slide show from 2008, posted by the Guardian on its website, showed that XKeyscore allowed analysts to access databases that collect and index online activity around the world, including searching for email addresses, extracted files, phone numbers or chat activity.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles in Washington and Joseph Menn in Las Vegas; Writing by Deborah Charles and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

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U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is escorted into court for the first day of the sentencing phase in his military trial at Fort Meade, Maryland July 31, 2013. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

FORT MEADE, Maryland (Reuters) - A military judge on Thursday will continue to weigh arguments on how long to imprison Bradley Manning for releasing a huge amount of classified U.S. data through the WikiLeaks website.

Judge Colonel Denise Lind earlier this week found Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, guilty of 19 criminal counts related to the leak. The crimes carry penalties that could lead to up to 136 years in prison.

Prosecutors opened the sentencing phase of Manning's court-martial on Wednesday by arguing the intelligence analyst hurt national security and damaged relationships with intelligence sources overseas when he leaked more than 700,000 secret diplomatic and war documents.

One prosecution witness, John Kirchofer, chief financial officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said it cost the federal government $6.2 million to review the threat posed by Manning's release.

Defense lawyers, who during the court-martial portrayed Manning as naive but well intentioned, are expected to call for leniency, arguing the soldier wanted to provoke a broader debate on U.S. military policy, but not to harm anyone.

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U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is escorted into court for the first day of the senten …

The slightly built Army private first class was in Baghdad in 2010 when he was arrested and charged with leaking files, including videos of a 2007 attack by an American Apache helicopter gunship in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. Other files contained diplomatic cables and secret details on prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Observers said the verdict could have "a chilling effect" on WikiLeaks by making potential sources in the United States more wary about handing over secret information.

It could also encourage the United States to seek to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for his role in publishing the information.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for over a year to avoid extradition to Sweden, where two women have accused him of sexual assault. The activist says he fears Sweden might hand him over to U.S. authorities.

(Writing by Scott Malone. Editing by Andre Grenon)

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Huge explosions rocked regime-held districts in the central Syrian city of Homs on Thursday, sending a massive ball of fire into the sky and causing successive blasts that activists said likely came from a struck weapons depot.

A Homs resident said thick smoke and dust could be seen from a distance, as explosions shook the ground and panicked those nearby.

A video posted online by activists showed a huge ball of fire over Homs neighborhoods.

The explosions in Homs coincided with a rare trip by President Bashar Assad to a former rebel bastion near the capital, Damascus, to mark Army Day.

Assad's visit to Daraya is his first known public trip outside the capital, his seat of power, in more than a year. He visited the battered Baba Amr district in the central city of Homs after troops seized it from rebels in March 2012.

It also is the latest sign of confidence from Assad, whose troops have been on the offensive and scored significant gains against rebels in recent months. Assad pledged victory over troops fighting to topple him.

The explosions in Homs reflected the see-saw nature of the conflict. It showed that despite significant advances by Assad's military, rebels could still strike back.

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This undated photo posted on the official Instagram account of the Syrian Presidency purports to sho …

An official at the governor's office in Homs said about 10 rockets slammed into the neighborhood of Zahra and the nearby sports stadium, sparking a large fire and causing several casualties.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a rocket may have struck an arms depot, igniting the fire.

A resident of Homs corroborated that account, saying he was still hearing blasts more than an hour after the first explosion. He said they could be heard from the overwhelmingly pro-regime districts of Wadi Dahab and al-Walid.

Syrian state television did not provide details of Assad's visit to Daraya but the presidency's Facebook page released a photo of Assad in a blue suit and tie, chatting with two soldiers before what appears to be a damaged building.

Daraya, just south of Damascus, was held by rebels for months and it took the army weeks of heavy fighting to regain control of the suburb earlier this year.

Before his trip to Daraya, Assad lauded his troops' accomplishments in the battle against opposition forces.

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This undated photo posted on the official Instagram account of the Syrian Presidency and purports to …

"You have stunned the entire world with your steadfastness and ability to overcome the difficulties and score achievements in the face of the fiercest barbaric war the modern history has ever witnessed," he said in comments released for Army Day.

"Had we in Syria not been confident of victory, we wouldn't have been able to resist" for more than two years, Assad said. The statement was carried by the state news agency SANA.

In August 2012, activists reported that regime forces went on a days-long killing spree after they seized Daraya from rebels.

At the time, reports of the death toll ranged from more than 300 people to as many as 600. It was impossible at the time to independently verify the numbers because of severe restrictions on media coverage of the conflict.

Assad's comments Thursday followed several major gains against the rebels, mostly in the central province of Homs and near Damascus.

The rebels suffered two major setbacks during a wide-ranging government offensive in central Syria. In June, Assad's army recaptured the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border. Earlier this week, government troops took control of a district in the city of Homs that had long been an opposition stronghold.

More than 100,000 people have been killed since the uprising against the Assad family's four-decade rule began in March 2011. The revolt later escalated into a civil war, which has uprooted millions of people from their homes.

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Mroue reported from Beirut.

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian authorities on Thursday offered "safe passage and protection" for thousands of supporters of the country's ousted president if they end their marathon sit-ins in Cairo.

The offer by the Interior Ministry appears to be the first step in an effort by Egypt's new leadership to clear the more than a month-long protest by Mohammed Morsi's followers in an eastern Cairo district and in the capital's twin city of Giza.

It came a day after Egypt's military-backed Cabinet ordered the ministry, which is in charge of the police, to clear the two sit-ins, arguing that they posed a threat to national security and terrorized citizens.

"The Interior Ministry ... calls on those in the squares of Rabaa el-Adawiya and Nahda to listen to the sound of reason, side with the national interest and quickly leave," Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel-Latif said in a televised address.

"Whoever responds to this call will have a safe passage and protection," he added.

The offer also raised the specter of another bout of violence if security forces move in against the sit-ins in the eastern suburb of Nasser City and in Giza, outside the main campus of the Cairo University.

The Egyptian police have a track record of deadly crackdowns on street protests and Wednesday's Cabinet move in effect gave the police the ministry the mandate to act as they see fit.

Morsi was toppled in a July 3 military coup that followed days of mass protests in which millions of Egyptians demanded that he step down.

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Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi chant slogans during a protest outside Rabaah …

He has been in detention since, along with several top leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which he hails.

The Brotherhood insists that Morsi be reinstated and refuse to join the military-sponsored political process.

Senior Brotherhood leader Essam el-Erian was defiant in the face of the growing pressure, saying on his official Facebook page on Thursday that "the people will be victorious."

Brotherhood protester Saad Mohammed at the Giza sit-in sounded another defiant note, claiming that the number of protesters there grew after the government's warning.

"We are not afraid," he said.

At least 130 Brotherhood supporters have died in clashes with security forces since Morsi's ouster.

By early afternoon on Thursday there were no significant movements by Egyptian security forces against the protesters in either camp.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry had said it would not clamp down on the protesters but will take gradual measures including warnings, using water cannons and tear gas to minimize casualties.

Aug 1, 2013