/usr/lib/R/site-library/base64enc/NEWS is in r-cran-base64enc 0.1-1-2.
This file is owned by root:root, with mode 0o644.
The actual contents of the file can be viewed below.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  | 0.1-1	2012-11-05
   o	fix a bug in base64decode where output is a file name
   o	add base64decode(file=...) as a (non-leaking) shorthand for
	base64decode(file(...))
0.1-0	2012-09-07
   o	initial CRAN release
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