The International Energy Agency has predicted a supply crunch in the world’s oil markets that could send prices soaring and place a severe dent in global growth.

In a report that painted a bleak outlook for the global economy, the IEA said spare capacity in oil production would dry up over the next five years, even as demand continues to jump significantly.

By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects following the London subway bombings in 2005 and after the car bomb plots last month.

Internal city memos show the issue of Republican “vote caging” efforts in Jacksonville’s African-American neighborhoods was discussed in the weeks before the 2004 election, contradicting recent claims by former Duval County Republican leader Mike Hightower - the Bush-Cheney campaign’s local chairman at the time.

“Caging” is a longtime voter suppression practice by which political parties collect undeliverable or unreturned mail and use it to develop “challenge lists” on Election Day.

The contradiction comes to light as the U.S. Justice Department continues to consider a June 18 request from two U.S. senators for an investigation into potential illegal voter suppression tactics in Duval County three years ago. A department spokeswoman said last week that the request is still being reviewed.

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

The political leaders Washington has backed are incapable of putting national interests ahead of sectarian score settling. The security forces Washington has trained behave more like partisan militias. Additional military forces poured into the Baghdad region have failed to change anything.

A new video released Friday morning makes a three-part case for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films released the short film at their website ImpeachCheney.org.

The video comes the same day that a polling firm found a majority of Americans supporting impeachment of the Vice President. American Research Group, in a poll of 1,100 respondents taken from July 3-5, found that 54% of Americans favored impeachment. Only 17% of Republicans in the poll favored the impeachment of Cheney, while 76% of Democrats supported the move in the House of Representatives. However, of independents polled, a slight majority of 51%, also supported impeaching the Vice President.