World News Washington Post, NY G7 ministers look to persuade Times win Pulitzers for Russia to abandon Syria’s Assad work on Trump, Putin

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pulitzer Prizes yesterday honoured The Washington Post for hard-hitting reporting on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and The New York Times for revealing Vladimir Putin’s covert power grab, praising their probing of powerful people despite a hostile climate for the news media.

The Daily News of New York and ProPublica, a webbased platform specializing in investigative journalism, won the prize for public service journalism for coverage of New York police abuses that forced mostly poor minorities from their homes.

Other winners included an international consortium of more than 300 reporters on six continents that exposed the so-called Panama Papers detailing the hidden infrastructure and global scale of offshore tax havens used by the high and mighty.

The Pulitzers, the most prestigious honours in American journalism, have been awarded since 1917, often going to famed publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

But they are also won by smaller, lesser known publications across the country whose work does not always gain national attention when it is published.

Reporter Eric Eyre of Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia took the prize for investigative reporting for exposing a flood of opioids in depressed West Virginia counties with the country’s highest overdose death rates.

The staff of the East Bay Times of Oakland, California, won the breaking news award for coverage of the “Ghost Ship” fire that killed 36 people at a warehouse party, exposing the city’s failure to take actions that might have prevented the disaster.

While the Pulitzer ceremony highlighted the news media’s importance to democracy, it has been challenged by so-called fake news, which once referred to fabricated stories meant to influence the US election but has become a term used by Trump to dismiss factual reporting that is critical. Trump has frequently excoriated the media and in February called it “the enemy of the American people.”

Operating in the glare of the 2016 presidential campaign, David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post took the national reporting award. The judges said he “created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities.”

Fahrenthold found that Trump’s charitable giving had not always matched his public statements. He also broke perhaps the biggest scoop of the campaign, revealing Trump had been captured on videotape making crude remarks about women and bragging about kissing and grabbing them without their permission.

The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a longtime Republican, took the commentary prize for a series of critical pieces about Trump during the real estate magnate’s successful run for the White House.

The New York Times staff won the international reporting prize for articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to project Russia’s power abroad, a particularly pertinent story given US intelligence conclusions that Putin’s government actively tried to influence the US election in Trump’s favour.

The Times revealed “techniques that included assassination, online harassment and the planting of incriminating evidence on opponents,” the judges said.

Reuters was a finalist in the national reporting and breaking news photography categories. Photographer Jonathan Bachman was recognized for his image of a woman being detained by police during a protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

In national reporting, the Reuters team of Renee Dudley, Steve Stecklow, Alexandra Harney, Irene Jay Liu, Koh Gui Qing, James Pomfret and Ju-min Park was recognized for their series “Cheat Sheet,” documenting how the business of college admissions and standardized testing has been corrupted.

The 19-member Pulitzer board is made up of past winners and other distinguished journalists and academics. It chose the winners with the help of 102 jurors. LUCCA, Italy (Reuters) Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations met in Italy yesterday, looking to put pressure on Russia to break its ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In a shift in Washington’s strategy, US missiles hit a Syrian air base last week in retaliation for what the United States and its allies say was a poison gas attack by Syria’s military in which scores of civilians died. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the assault.

US President Donald Trump had previously appeared disinclined to intervene against the Syrian leader and the attack raised expectations that he might now be ready to adopt a tougher-thanexpected stance with Russia, Assad’s main backer.

Calling the strike a “game changer,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said support for the Syrian president “was toxifying the reputation of Russia” and suggested sanctions could be imposed on Moscow if it refused to change course.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is due to travel to Moscow today at the end of the two-day gathering in the Tuscan city of Lucca with his Italian, German, French, British, Japanese and Canadian counterparts.

“What we’re trying to do is to give Rex Tillerson the clearest possible mandate from us as the West, the UK, all our allies here, to say to the Russians ‘this is your choice: stick with that guy, stick with that tyrant, or work with us to find a better solution’,” Johnson said after meeting Tillerson.

Russia has rejected accusations that Assad used chemical arms against his own people and has said it will not cut its ties with Assad, who has been locked in a six-year-old civil war that has devastated Syria and displaced half its population.

“Returning to pseudoattempts to resolve the crisis by repeating mantras that Assad must step down cannot help sort things out,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said yesterday.

Johnson said he was keen to seen further sanctions imposed on both Syrian and Russian “military figures.” Speaking to reporters in France, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was also ready to stiffen sanctions on Moscow.

Tillerson said at the weekend the main priority for the United States was the defeat of one of Assad’s main foes, the Islamic State militant movement, and it is unclear how far he will want to push the Russians on Tuesday.

Yesterday, the former oilman-turned-diplomat visited the site of a World War Two Nazi massacre in Italy and said the United States would never let such abuses go unchallenged.

“We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world,” he said in Sant’Anna di Stazzema before heading to Lucca.

As the talks began, a few dozen anti-G7 protesters clashed with batonwielding riot police on the edges of the walled city.

Looking to build their case against Assad, Italy has invited the foreign ministers from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Qatar to sit down with the G7 group today to discuss Syria. All oppose Assad’s rule.

Before the meeting started, the foreign minister of Iran, which supports Assad, asked to speak to Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano to discuss Syria, Italian diplomats said. Details of their conversation were not disclosed.

The foreign ministers’ discussions will prepare the way for a G7 leaders’ summit in Sicily at the end of May, which looks set to be Trump’s first overseas trip since becoming president.

The ministers will also talk about growing tensions with North Korea, with the United States moving a navy strike group near the Korean peninsula amid concerns over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

They will also debate Libya. Italy is hoping for vocal support for a United Nations-backed government in Tripoli which has struggled to establish its authority even in the city, let alone in the rest of the country.

The Trump administration has not yet defined a clear policy and Rome fears Washington may fall into step with Egypt and Russia, which both support general Khalifa Haftar, a powerful figure in eastern Libya.

The struggle against terrorism, relations with Iran and instability in Ukraine are also on the agenda, with the meeting expected to finish by midday today.