Anchor, Worldfocus
Martin Savidge is the anchor of Worldfocus a half hour International newscast that airs nightly on PBS. The program uses its own reporters as well as those of news oanizations around the world and can also be found on the web at worldfocus.org.The World Embraces President Obama Barack Obama’s inaugural address was not an event witnessed by Americans alone. On his first day in office, President Obama has been calling leaders in the Middle East. Opposition to the war in Iraq was a major factor in Barack Obama’s campaign and his election. And despite the friendship between George Bush and Britain’s Tony Blair, US relations with Western Europe took a dive during the past 8 years. Barack Obama is an African-American, but he’s not the descendent of slaves. His father was a highly educated civic leader in Kenya who came to the US for higher education. There was no reference to Latin America—not even to Mexico, where President Obama will be faced with increasingly rampant drug and gun smuggling, and where the economic crisis could drive more immigrants northward.
G7 Finance Ministers to Gather to Discuss Global Financial Crisis Treasury Secretary Paulson said yesterday that governments around the world need to coordinate their actions so "the action of one country does not come at the expense of others or the stability of the system as a whole." Finance ministers from the industrialized West as well as China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are coming to Washington in the next few days. They'll talk about interest rates, tax cuts, spending increases and the possibility of coordinating their efforts to restore confidence in the worldwide economy. But different countries face different problems, and they compete, especially with the US, which has been economically dominant for so long. We talk about hopes, as opposed to realities, as well as the decline of mutual trust and how it might be restored.
Trump plays scolder-in-chief with NATO allies At the opening of NATO’s dramatic new headquarters in Brussels today, President Trump acknowledged that Article 5 — promising that “an attack on one nation is an attack on all” -- has only been invoked one time: in the aftermath of September 11. But the President failed to provide what 27 other Alliance members have been waiting for: a re-commitment by America’s new leader to Article 5. Instead, they got a scolding.
Who's to blame for the opioid crisis? Some of the lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are now going after Big Pharma. It’s all about the deadly epidemic of opioid use. Are the drug companies to blame? What about the users? Later, on today’s Talking Point: making sense of Britain’s upset election.
Janesville and the American Dream Janesville, Wisconsin is the hometown of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. But he couldn’t prevent the closing of the General Motors factory after 100 years. On this Memorial Day rebroadcast of To the Point, we hear what’s happened to what once was a model of American middle-class unity.
What happens when America retreats from the world? Is President Trump taking his "America First" agenda to extremes, withdrawing the country from the international stage on trade and climate change, distancing America from its traditional allies across the Atlantic and even threatening to physically isolate the country through the building of a wall along its southern border? León Krauze guest hosts.