Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia pulled out of an anti-crime accord with the United States on Wednesday in a move the U.S. called "self-defeating," the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Washington.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed an order to scrap the 10-year-old agreement "because it was no longer relevant," his office said.
The agreement covered fighting terrorism, corruption and cross-border crimes such as drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Alexei Pushkov, head of Russia's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said the decision reflected Russia's ability to manage its affairs without outside help.
"Russia is changing the format of its relations with the U.S.," he tweeted. "We are ending our dependence on 'the country No. 1.'"
The Foreign Ministry expressed gratitude to the U.S. for providing $12 million in aid for crime-fighting projects under the accord, but said Moscow no longer needs such assistance.
"From a recipient of Western aid for anti-crime projects, Russia has turned into a donor for such programs in Central Asian nations and Afghanistan," it said in a statement, adding that Moscow was ready to continue cooperation with the U.S. in fighting crime, including drug-trafficking.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed regret about the Russian move, saying that the agreement provided a framework for "very fruitful cooperation with Russia on rule of law, counter-corruption efforts, preventing trafficking in persons, counter-narcotics and strengthening our mutual legal assistance cooperation.
"From our perspective," Nuland said, the decision is "self-defeating because most of the work we were doing under this agreement was also involved in training Russians, training them on trafficking in persons interdiction, training them in implementation of the mutual legal assistance treaty that we have, training them in implementation of their own new criminal procedures code - which was something that they sought our help on."
The agreement is just one of several bilateral cooperation deals that Moscow has decided to abandon. Last year, Russia expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development and also warned it wouldn't extend the Nunn-Lugar program helping it dismantle nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons stockpiles.
On Friday, the U.S. withdrew from a joint civil society group.
President Barack Obama's efforts to "reset" relations with Russia have met a markedly colder wind from the Kremlin since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May. Faced with unprecedented street protests against his 12-year rule, Putin accused the U.S. State Department of staging the protests in order to weaken Russia.
After Putin's inauguration, the Kremlin-controlled parliament then quickly rubber-stamped a series of laws imposing new restrictions in an apparent bid to curb American influence in Russia. Non-governmental organizations funded from abroad were required to register as "foreign agents," a term intended to ruin their credibility among Russians for whom the term sounds synonymous to spies. The Russian definition of treason was also expanded to include potentially any contact with a foreign organization.
Two U.S.-based NGOs have closed their Russian offices in response to the new laws. The business daily Kommersant reported Wednesday that the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which ran programs championing democratic rights, moved their staff to Lithuania after Russian security officials threatened to prosecute them under the new treason law.
Amnesty International Russia's director, Sergei Nikitin, wrote on his blog Wednesday that the closures "show the stability of the general trend: the pressure on civil society in Russia continues."
After Congress passed a law introducing sanctions against Russian officials involved in human rights abuses, Russia responded by banning all adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans. The country's top investigative agency is also investigating a sexual abuse case against American parents already convicted in the U.S. of abusing their adopted Russian child but given suspended sentences.
Lawmakers in the Kremlin-controlled lower house have also rushed to propose such measures as banning English phrases from Russian and limiting marriages between Russian officials and foreigners.
Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NPR on Wednesday that the Russian adoption ban was "tragic" and the decision to expel USAID "really hurts the Russian people."
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Bradley Klapper in Washington and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.klkntv.com/story/20813623/russia-scraps-anti-crime-deal-with-the-us
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We've shown you how to get started with the Raspberry Pi, the pocket-sized DIY dream computer. Here are ten awesome projects you can put together in a weekend with this $35 board. 
We showed you how to build a Raspberry Pi Airplay Receiver, now take it up a notch and add a Pandora Jukebox to the mix so you can stream tunes to your speakers when you're not listening to your own music. It's a simple project, and Shaun Gehring even shares the code and steps required to get it up and running.
It's not for everyone, and it's definitely more expensive than just buying a similar device, but this previously mentioned hand-held Raspberry Pi-powered computer is an excellent DIY project that'll put your skills to the test. It's packed with a 3.5" LCD display and a 64GB SSD, a full physical keyboard and trackpad, and serious processing power. It's not for the quick-and-easy crowd, but if you're a serious hacker or maker, this is a project to try. Don't want to roll your own everything? Try this Raspberry Pi PC in a keyboard (German link) project they we've featured before instead. Alternatively, try this all-in-one Raspberry Pi PC mod that just straps the Pi and all of its gear to the back of a display, perfect for that iMac-like feel.
If your vision is impaired, or you just like doing other things while having a book?or your Twitter stream?read aloud to you, the Raspberry Pi is the perfect device to dedicate to the task. For example, this one-button audiobook player was an ideal gift for a 90-year old grandmother who loves listening to audio books. Just pop in an SD card loaded with a book, and press the button to hear it read aloud. Prefer Twitter to literature? Okay, this adorable wood bowl looks cute and reads your stream aloud in real time. Plus, all of the tools required to build both are available. If an adorable wood bowl isn't your style, there's always Manuel, the Scottish Moose. He'll read your tweets, and look creepy while he does it.
The Raspberry Pi is essentially a tiny, headless computer, that you can manage remotely. Servers also happen to be headless computers that you can manage remotely, so it makes sense that someone would turn a Raspberry Pi into a tiny personal web server you can run just about anywhere. We covered it not too long ago, but the full guide walks you through the setup, installing the right packages, installing PHP, and getting it all ready for your automated torrenting/streaming box, your hand-crafted online resume or your own personal landing page.
Time-lapse videos of cityscapes or stars streaming across the sky can make for beautiful video, but to get the same effect, you'll need a dolly that can move, pan, and tilt the shot ever-so-slowly over the course of many hours. Instead of spending a ton of money on a professional rig, Rick Adam's DIY Raspberry Pi-powered dolly does the same for far far cheaper, and can be remotely controlled and managed by an Android phone. This one will take some work if you want to do it yourself, but the proof is in the results.
If photography is your hobby, this previously mentioned Raspberry Pi hack essentially embeds the tiny computer into a DSLR to extend its functionality. With their powers combined, you get a DSLR that can wirelessly (or wired, via USB) transmit photos to a PC while you shoot them, as they're saved, control the camera remotely with a PC, tablet, or smartphone, convert images on the fly as you take them, and much much more. Photographer David Hunt managed to fit the Pi and all of the electronics needed into a tiny battery pack that attaches to the bottom of his DSLR's grip.
We showed you how to do a little packet sniffing with your Raspberry Pi during the last Evil Week, but you don't have to go that far if you want to use your Raspberry Pi as a computer security and forensics tool. The folks at Pwnie Express have a Debian (not Raspbian, mind you) based penetration-testing and security auditing distro for the Raspberry Pi called Raspberry Pwn. With it comes a myriad of security and networking tools, all rolled into a tiny OS on a tiny portable computer that you can hook up anywhere. Use these powers for good, folks.
Dropbox is great, but sometimes you want to be in control of your own files. If you have a Raspberry Pi, you can build your own personal cloud storage service. We discussed the project not too long ago, but the full project uses OwnCloud to create a personally managed and hosted cloud storage service across systems that you own and only you have access to. You'll need some storage to get this one up and running, not to mention the Raspberry Pi and a good case for it, but that's about all. When you're done, you'll have a personal Dropbox that you can use to store anything you want, with as much storage as you're willing to add to it.
Electronic picture frames are cool, but this Raspberry Pi-powered DeviantArt picture frame lets you hook up your Pi to the web and to do an LCD screen (presumably one you have framed on the wall or on your desk) and a DeviantArt account. From there, just use the source code that Cameron Wiebe provides in his walkthough to pull popular photos down for display as a slideshow. You can even tweak the code so you only get images from your favorite artist, or of your favorite subject or topic. You can check out what the frame looks like in the image here, with an illustration by ArtGerm at DeviantArt that Cameron took of the final product (via Wired).
The other beautiful thing about the Raspberry Pi being such a tiny computer is that you can task it with things that don't take too much processing power but that you'd like built into other devices, like this Raspberry Pi arcade system that we absolutely love. It's embedded into a coffee table, along with the joystick, buttons, and a 24" display for all of the games you'll play on it. Best of all, the full walkthrough is right there, and if you have the equipment to make it work, it's easy to build. Alternatively, you can consider a different form factor and follow the same guide. Maybe a stand-up cabinet, perhaps?