Free Republic

Russia and Niger, under military rule since a coup last year, have agreed to develop military cooperation, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. According to Russian news agencies, Russian Deputy Defense Ministers Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Alexander Fomin met Niger's junta-appointed Defense Minister Salifu Modi on Tuesday. "The parties noted the importance of developing Russian-Niger relations in the defense sector and agreed to intensify joint actions to stabilize the situation in the region," - the ministry said, adding that it aims to continue dialogue on "increasing the combat readiness" of Niger's military.

A politician bidding to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia's upcoming presidential election described the decision to go to war in Ukraine as a "big mistake" in comments to the wives of soldiers on Thursday. Boris Nadezhdin, representing a centre-right party called Civic Initiative that has no seats in parliament, is seeking to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures from people across Russia to enable him to stand against Putin. -snip- Nadezhdin has promised to present a plan for ending the conflict. Last week he also aimed sharp criticism at the authorities over heating outages that have struck parts of Russia...

NEW YORK - U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise 84,000 barrels per day (bpd) in March to a record of about 8.4 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a monthly report on Tuesday. The largest change is forecast in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where output is expected to climb by 43,000 bpd to a record 4.024 million bpd in March. A shale revolution has helped boost the United States to the position of world's biggest crude oil producer, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. Overall crude production...