Facing populism, world finance chiefs defend globalization ADVERTISING Facing populism, world finance chiefs defend globalization WASHINGTON (AP) — Global finance officials on Friday defended their efforts to promote free trade and closer international links against a rising ride of populism
Facing populism, world finance chiefs defend globalization
WASHINGTON (AP) — Global finance officials on Friday defended their efforts to promote free trade and closer international links against a rising ride of populism around the world and criticism from a Trump administration intent on pursuing its “America First” agenda.
Finance ministers from the world’s major economies wrapped up two days of talks with German Finance Minister Wolfang Schaeuble saying that the G-20’s efforts represented a solid response to unhappiness over globalization.
Schaeuble said a year ago people were talking about the “swan song of multilateral cooperation,” but now with the global economy beginning to grow at a faster clip “we see that things are not as bad as predicted.”
The G-20 did not issue a closing communique, but Schaebel, who served as the group’s leader because Germany holds the rotating chairmanship this year, said he and his colleagues were united in their commitment to promoting economic initiatives that will foster stronger growth. Other leaders said that higher growth was essential to combat a widening income gap in many countries.
Schaeuble told a news conference it was wrong to interpret as a repudiation of globalization Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the populist anger that led to Donald Trump’s election in the United States, and in Germany, parliamentary gains for a far right party when Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to power with a reduced majority last month.
‘Star Wars’ fantasy? Cubans doubt US sonic attacks claims
HAVANA (AP) — A bizarre string of attacks on diplomats in Havana has sent Cuban-American relations to their lowest point in decades, with the Trump administration virtually closing its embassy here and expelling Cuban officials from Washington. But few people on this communist-run island believe a word of the U.S. allegations.
Despite increasingly tough talk by the U.S., including White House Chief of Staff John Kelly saying Thursday that Cuba “could stop the attacks on our diplomats,” the common reaction in Havana is mocking disbelief.
“It isn’t the first or the last excuse that they invent to discredit Cuba and its leaders,” lawyer Alexander Tamame, 36, said as he walked through the Vedado neighborhood in this city where the U.S. says at least 22 strange episodes have occurred over the last year. “I don’t think anything really happened.”
This skepticism stretches from government supporters like Tamame to its detractors; from fans of the United States to those wary of the giant to the north. Talk to anyone, anywhere in the country about the U.S. allegations that Cuba bears responsibility for attacks with a strange sonic weapon that have affected at least 22 embassy officials or spouses — some very seriously — and you’ll likely be met with laughter.
“I don’t believe any part of it,” said Luis Felipe Gonzalez, a 59-year-old taxi driver, as he waited for customers nearby. “It’s absurd propaganda.”
Parents of freed Afghanistan hostage angry at son-in-law
WASHINGTON (AP) — The parents of an American woman freed with her family after five years of captivity say they are elated, but also angry at their son-in law for taking their daughter to Afghanistan.
“Taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place, to me, and the kind of person I am, is unconscionable,” Caitlan Coleman’s father, Jim, told ABC News.
Caitlan Coleman and Joshua Boyle were rescued Wednesday, five years after they had been abducted by a Taliban-linked extremist network while in Afghanistan as part of a multi-nation backpacking trip. She was pregnant at the time and had three children in captivity.
Two Pakistani security officials say the family left by plane from Islamabad on Friday. The officials did not say where the family was headed, but Boyle’s family has said the couple’s plan is to return to Canada. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with official protocol.
Caitlan Coleman is from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, and Boyle is Canadian.
Sheriff again shifts time gunfire started in Vegas massacre
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas investigators offered a new version of events Friday in a shifting timeline surrounding the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history as they described how the gunman opened fire on nearby airport jet fuel tanks and on police officers arriving at the massacre.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo held a highly anticipated news conference alongside the top FBI agent in Las Vegas amid questions about whether police could have done more to stop gunman Stephen Paddock on Oct. 1.
They provided no new information about Paddock’s motivation as he killed 58 people at a country music festival. Lombardo again revised the number of injured, to 546, with 45 people still hospitalized, including some in critical condition.
The sheriff said a visual inspection during a coroner’s autopsy found “no abnormalities” in Paddock’s brain. Lombardo said the brain has been shipped to a facility to do a microscopic evaluation.
Lombardo confirmed that Paddock intentionally opened fire on jet fuel tanks at the nearby Las Vegas airport and said he took shots at arriving police officers, possibly to keep them at bay as police rushed to his room.
Suspect in 4 Ohio slayings arrested while walking along road
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Unarmed, worn out and ready to give up, the suspect in the fatal shootings of three adults and a 7-year-old boy didn’t try to flee when officers arrested him Friday as he walked along a road in far southern Ohio, a sheriff said.
Officers were acting on a tip from a resident who spotted 23-year-old Arron Lawson. Authorities had said he fled into the woods Thursday, shortly after midnight.
Lawson is an outdoorsman and hunter who liked being in the woods, but “I think he was just plumb worn out from being out in the elements” during a manhunt that spanned two cool nights, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeffery Lawless said.
The sheriff wouldn’t discuss any potential motive or the chronology of the slayings, and he declined to disclose what Lawson said to the arresting officers. Lawson was wearing a camouflage jacket, but the sheriff said investigators hadn’t determined whether it was his or an item he stole while on the run.
Lawson is being held on charges of murder and aggravated murder. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
