BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Russia is putting on a brave face after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly junked a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian officials said Friday that It’s all about internal U.S. politics and “anti-Russian hysteria.”
But Trump’s snub was a clear kick to Putin just as he arrived at a Group of 20 summit where Western leaders banded together to denounce Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
So Putin turned elsewhere for attention.
He subbed Turkey’s president for the time slot he had reserved for Trump, and sought to strengthen his alliance with China and other non-Western economies.
DALLAS — A white former Dallas police officer was indicted on murder charges Friday, nearly three months after she fatally shot an unarmed black neighbor whose apartment she said she entered by mistake, believing it to be her own.
Amber Guyger told fellow officers that she opened fire when Botham Jean appeared in the darkness.
Jean’s relatives joined Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson for the announcement of the charges. Jean, a 26-year-old native of the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, attended college in Arkansas and had been working in Dallas for accounting and consulting firm PwC.
Guyger was arrested on a manslaughter charge three days after the Sept. 6 shooting, prompting criticism that the original charge was too lenient. But Johnson said at the time that the grand jury could upgrade the charges, which it did Friday.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. plans to cut the number of active-duty troops along the border with Mexico but extend the unusual deployment for another 45 days, U.S. officials said Friday.
Overall troop levels assigned to assist the Department of Homeland Security with border enforcement will drop from 5,600 to about 4,000 under a new proposal from the agency to the Pentagon.
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was traveling and had not yet signed off on the plan but the Pentagon has been working with DHS on the request and it is expected to get approval, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
President Donald Trump ordered the unusual deployment of active-duty troops to the border in response to a caravan of Central American migrants walking north toward the U.S. Critics dismissed the deployment as a political stunt ahead of the midterm elections
WASHINGTON (AP) — James Comey’s lawyer urged a judge Friday to block a subpoena requiring that the former FBI director submit to a private interview before a House panel, arguing that Republican lawmakers want to take shots in a “dark alley.”
But a lawyer for Congress said committees are free to conduct investigations as they please and that Comey, who is concerned that statements from a closed-door interview would be selectively leaked, had no right to refuse a subpoena and demand a public hearing.
“No federal district court judge in the history of the republic has granted the type of relief that Mr. Comey seeks,” said Thomas Hungar, general counsel for the House of Representatives.
From Associated Press