International Herald Tribune, “Russia sees in credit crisis end of U.S. domination”
MOSCOW: The Russian president said in a speech Thursday that the financial crisis in the United States should be taken as a sign that America’s global economic leadership is drawing to a close, reiterating an argument that leaders here have been making for some time, though investors in recent weeks have been fleeing Russia and depositing money in U.S. Treasury bills.
Perhaps inevitably for a country long lectured to by the United States, Russia is using the occasion of the U.S. financial crisis to do some lecturing of its own.
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Herald Tribune, “OPEC chief warns of ‘unlimited’ oil prices if Iran is attacked”
VIENNA: The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries warned Thursday that oil prices would see an “unlimited” increase in the case of a military conflict involving Iran, because the group’s members would be unable to make up the lost production.
“We really cannot replace Iran’s production - it’s not feasible to replace it,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, said in an interview.
Iran, the second-largest producing country in OPEC, after Saudi Arabia, produces about four million barrels of oil a day out of the daily worldwide production of close to 87 million barrels.
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Herald Tribune, “McCain to meet possible running mates”
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Friday is scheduled to meet with two Republican governors who have been prominently mentioned as potential running mates, according to Republicans familiar with McCain’s plan.
The two governors, Charlie Crist, of Florida, and Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, have both accepted invitations to meet with McCain at his home in Arizona, according to Republican familiars with the decision. One Republican said that Mitt Romney, a former rival of McCain for the presidential nomination wasalso expected to visit him this weekend. Romney’s advisers declined to comment.
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Herald Tribune, “CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work”
Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.
Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.
Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Herald Tribune, “Spy drones in demand by U.S. police departments, but approval pending”
MIAMI: The Miami police could soon use cutting-edge flying drones to help fight crime.
A small pilotless vehicle manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and “staring” using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to be introduced soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.
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Herald Tribune, “Sizing up Medvedev, the next Russian president”
ALABINO, Russia: Dmitri Medvedev, the man chosen to be the next Russian president, sat surrounded by soldiers. It was Feb. 23, Defenders of the Motherland Day, and Medvedev had traveled to the parade grounds of the Tamanskaya Motorized Rifle Division.
The division has been a perennial character in Russian political life. One of its tanks opened fire on the Parliament building in Moscow in 1993, preserving Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. Eight years ago, as a new president, Vladimir Putin, was introducing himself to the world, its platoons fought for the capital of Chechnya, helping forge Putin’s persona as a leader of icy resolve.
Now Medvedev, the presidential successor Putin has personally selected, is creating his own public identity. And here, in a mix of Soviet and Russian symbols, the man rising to Kremlin power avoided the stern themes that have often accompanied Putin’s appearances.
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