Summit snubbed by USA concludes

THE G20 summit in South Africa ended yesterday with the glaring absence of the United States - the next country to lead the bloc after President Donald Trump's administration boycotted the two days of talks involving leaders of the world’s richest and top developing economies.

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South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the summit in Johannesburg closed by banging a wooden gavel on a block, in a G20 tradition. The gavel would normally be handed over to the leader of the next country to hold the rotating presidency, but no US official was there to receive it.

The world’s biggest economy boycotted a summit meant to bring rich and developing nations together, over President Trump's claims that South Africa is violently persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.