NightBlogger

FT.com–Analysts yesterday dismissed a threat by Libya to cut its oil production in response to legislation that would allow the US to sue Opec members for manipulating international oil prices. The Libyan threat caused oil prices to jump above $142 a barrel for the first time yesterday, serving as a stark reminder of the nervousness in the oil market stemming from the small amount of spare production capacity available to absorb any supply shock. Traders jumped on the threat, buying oil futures as the market’s cushion to absorb a supply disruption has fallen to one of its lowest levels in the past decade. Oil prices in New York yesterday surged to a fresh record of $142.26 a barrel. The world’s spare capacity stands at about 1.5m barrels a day, almost all of it in the hands of Saudi Arabia. More

This week, members of the House Judiciary Committee introduced the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act of 2007,” a bill that ratchets up the federal government’s role in dealing with intellectual property infringement. While portions of the bill seem legitimately targeted at combating mass, commercial counterfeiting operations, other parts are devoted to little more than protecting the entertainment industry’s obsolete business models.

Going after commercial pirates is a good idea, but copyright law often fails to distinguish between commercial counterfeiters and regular folks — like those caught up in the RIAA’s anti-downloading litigation dragnet. More

A German citizen has gone to court in an attempt to force his government to seek the extradition of 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped him. Khaled al-Masri says he was abducted in December 2003, flown to a US detention centre in Afghanistan and tortured. Mr Masri was released in May 2004 after his captors allegedly told him he had been mistaken for someone else.

He says he was kidnapped in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, in 2003, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, nicknamed the “salt pit” and tortured there. On his flight to Afghanistan, he says, he was stripped, beaten, shackled, made to wear nappies and drugged. Mr Masri says he was finally released in Albania five months later after the CIA realised they had got the wrong man. More