US President Barack Obama said former Russian President Vladimir Putin and his hand-picked successor should expect an in-person reminder the Cold War is over when the US leader makes his first trip to a Moscow summit.
Days before he departs for Russia, Obama said on Thursday that Putin “still has a lot of sway” in his nation as its nominal prime minister.
“I think that it’s important that even as we move forward with [Russian] President [Dmitry] Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated,” he said. “Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.”
In an interview with reporters, Obama discussed a wide range of topics: The president said he could see abandoning his own proposal to indefinitely hold some terror detainees — “it gives me great pause” — and that he would not be comfortable ordering such a disposition for Guantanamo Bay prisoners without congressional action.
In light of recent Supreme Court cases dealing with highly charged questions about the nation’s racial progress, Obama said the high court was “moving the ball” away from affirmative action.
Yet he also noted that the justices had not foreclosed the continued use of racial preferences in hiring and college admissions, which he said he supported in some circumstances. In any case he said affirmative action was neither the panacea — nor the problem — that it’s often made out to be.
With most experts in agreement that there’s a good chance Iran could have a usable nuclear bomb sometime during his presidency, Obama said: “I’m not reconciled with that.”
The 24-minute interview, with Obama nearly six months into his job and his approval ratings still high, ranged from the serious to the silly. Asked to let Americans in on a secret about White House life, the president chose the pastry chef and rued that “the best pie I have ever tasted” is a challenge to the first couple’s self-discipline and waistlines.
Asked to choose between basketball greats Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, Obama — a committed hoops player and fan of Jordan’s Chicago Bulls — didn’t pause for even a second.
“Michael,” he said, picking the retired superstar. “I haven’t seen anybody match up with Jordan yet.”
Scheduled to depart tomorrow for a trip to Russia, an international summit in Italy and his first trip to Africa as president, Obama praised Moscow for its cooperation in international efforts to persuade North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear development programs.
After North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in May, the UN approved “the most robust sanction regime that we’ve ever seen with respect to North Korea,” he said.
He expressed optimism he could get international agreement for even tougher action if North Korea persists in defying demands that it dismantle its nuclear weapons and stop production.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
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UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.