[Photo by CORY.COUSINS]
REUTERS: The Group of 20 is set to become the premier coordinating body on global economic issues, reflecting a new world economic order in which emerging market countries like China are much more relevant, according to a draft communique. Leaders of the G20 developed and developing nations also agreed to make the International Monetary Fund more representative by increasing the voting power of countries that have long been under-represented in the world financial body, said the draft G20 communique obtained by Reuters. MORE
TIME: The anarchist march had started at 2:30 p.m. in a park in the working class Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville. The sounds of chanting — “Our city, our streets” — mixed oddly with the jingle of an ice-cream truck trying to make some money off the protest crowd, which was led by a banner reading “No Hope in Capitalism.” Bicycle scouts reported police locations to the marchers, who had swarmed around an unmarked police car just a few blocks after their start. Still, the first confrontation between anarchists and cops was over quickly. The police took less than half an hour to block the anarchists’ way downtown, stopping them on the wide expanse of Liberty Avenue and forcing them to reroute. “I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly,” came the booming pre-taped police announcement — the first of at least six aimed at the march of about 800 people against the Group of 20 economic summit of the world’s richest countries that had started in Pittsburgh’s convention center Thursday afternoon. The announcements also made clear the consequences of not dispersing: “The use of riot control agents and less lethal munitions.” The organizers of the protest had refused to seek an official city permit. But the march had the citizens’ attention. On every main thoroughfare, onlookers filmed the spectacle, some offered water to marchers, others cheered on the cops. MORE