U.S. President Barack Obama played a key role in hammering out a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, speaking with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 14 occasions since last spring to help resolve impasses that arose between negotiators meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, the New York Times reported Friday (see GSN, March 26). . . .

John Taylor, the Stanford University economist who created a rule for guiding monetary policy, talks with Bloomberg's Margaret Brennan about the outlook for Federal Reserve. . . .

Sergey Brin shouldn't expect many invitations to visit China this year. . . .

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into how a 9/11 defendant got photos of CIA interrogators raises interesting questions. . . .