$100,000 reward posted for prison escapees
DANNEMORA, N.Y. — Two murderers who used power tools to escape from prison must have taken days to cut through steel walls and pipes and break through the bricks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday as a $100,000 reward was posted for information leading to their capture.
Authorities were investigating how the inmates obtained the power tools they used in the “Shawshank Redemption”-style breakout over the weekend.
“It was a sophisticated plan,” Cuomo said. “It took a period of time, no doubt, to execute.”
David Sweat, 34, was serving a sentence of life without parole for the 2002 killing of a sheriff’s deputy. Richard Matt, 48, had been sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping, killing and dismembering his former boss in 1997.
“These are killers. They are murderers,” the governor said. “There’s never been a question about the crimes they committed. They are now on the loose, and our first order of business is apprehending them.”
G-7 leaders signal united front on upholding Russia sanctions
ELMAU, Germany — German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday she expects a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies to produce a “united signal” that sanctions against Russia can only be softened if a February peace accord for Ukraine is fully implemented.
Even before the issue was brought to the table, most of the leaders had already expressed their support for the idea.
This year’s meeting of the leading industrialized democracies was the second in a row without Russia, which was ejected from what was the G-8 last year over its actions in Ukraine. Even with President Vladimir Putin absent, Russia was prominent in the leaders’ minds as they gathered in the Bavarian Alps.
Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed during a pre-summit bilateral meeting that the duration of sanctions imposed upon Moscow should be “clearly linked to Russia’s full implementation of the Minsk” peace accord agreed in February, the White House said in a statement. Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, another summit participant, were central to drawing up that accord.
Later, Merkel stressed anew in an interview with Germany’s public ZDF television that sanctions are not an end in themselves and they “can be dispensed with when the conditions under which they were introduced are no longer there and the problems are resolved.”
Obama’s trade quest in Congress discussed with G-7 leaders
ELMAU, Germany — President Barack Obama’s politically fraught trade quest in Washington trailed him across the Atlantic Sunday, as he met with world leaders anxiously watching a debate on Capitol Hill that could impact the status of economic pacts with the Asia-Pacific and Europe.
The leaders spent more than an hour privately discussing trade issues as they opened a two-day meeting of the Group of Seven leading industrial nations. The talks in the majestic Bavarian Alps coincided with the delicate debate in Washington over giving Obama the authority to move trade agreements through Congress more quickly.
In addition to the summit events at Schloss Elmau Obama met privately with British Prime Minister David Cameron and joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel for beer and sausages in a nearby town.
Obama and his advisers voiced confidence in the trade push, but the effort faces a deeply uncertain future. The president’s own Democratic Party is largely opposed to legislation that allows Congress to reject or approve, but not change, trade deals negotiated by the administration. In an unusual political role reversal, the president’s reservoir of support has come from his Republican opponents.
By wire sources.