At the time, Areva's chairman and chief executive, Luc Oursel, said that business would go on at its Niger mining operations after a number of measures to reinforce security had been set up.

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NGOs and big energy and mining companies, have signed up to a set of Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

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The around-the-clock mining operation involves dozens of specialists drawn from across the U.S. national-security agencies.

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Many cyber-thieves who control botnets, large networks of home PCs compromised with a virus, were using them as a dedicated mining pool in a bid to generate bitcoins for themselves, said Derek Manky, senior security strategist at Fortinet.

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The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights was established in 2000 as a code of conduct for oil, gas, and mining companies, to maintain the safety of their staff and assets while avoiding human rights violations.

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Social Security was designed to give a few years of modest benefits to people whose bodies were worn out through coal mining, factory work and other physically demanding labor.

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Inspired by the Depression-era Farm Security Administration photography project, its photographers shot everything from small Midwestern towns, barrios in the Southwest and coal-mining communities in Appalachia to African-Americans in Chicago, urban renewal in Kansas City and migrant farm workers in Colorado.

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Areva, which has been a recurring target for Islamist activists there over the past three years, said Niger forces would now handle the security of its operations but didn't call into question its presence in the country, where it has been mining uranium for 40 years.

WSJ: Car Bombs Hit Mine, Base in Niger