After shaking hands for the cameras, the US president, Joe Biden, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, plunged into hours of face-to-face talks on Wednesday at a lush lakeside Swiss mansion. It was a highly anticipated summit at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries
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States lift Covid restrictions as US passes 600,000 deaths – live
- America’s death toll from Covid-19 highest in the world
- Biden arrives in Geneva for summit with ‘worthy adversary’ Putin
- No sign of thaw between Russia and US ahead of Swiss summit
– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh
The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.
James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions.
Related: Morgan Stanley boss tells US staff to be back in office in September
Continue reading...Biden meeting marks rare trip out of ‘bunker’ for Covid-cautious Putin
Rare sit-down talks come after Russian leader shut himself away for months to escape outbreak
For more than a year, people who have wanted to get within breathing distance of Vladimir Putin have performed a ritual, two-week quarantine in Russian hotels and sanatoriums to protect the 68-year-old president from falling ill with coronavirus.
Since March 2020, powerful business people, regional governors, his pilots and medical staff, volunteers at an economic conference, and even second world war veterans have shut themselves away to meet the Kremlin leader or even stand in his general vicinity.
Continue reading...Putin refuses to give guarantee Navalny will survive prison – video
Vladimir Putin has refused to give any guarantee that the opposition leader Alexei Navalny will get out of prison alive, saying nobody imprisoned in Russia should be given exclusive treatment.
In an extended and testy interview with NBC News before his Geneva summit with Joe Biden, the Russian president refused to use Navalny's name, leaving journalist Keir Simmons to say 'his name is Alexei Navalny'.
Continue reading...No sign of thaw between Russia and US ahead of Geneva summit
Analysts say event will be ‘boring’ as both sides attempt a reboot following catastrophic meeting between Trump and Putin in 2017
On the 24-hour Russian state news channel, Thursday began as any other might: with a segment about the ageing president of the United States battling back cicadas and then giving a “confused” speech about his upcoming summit in Geneva with Vladimir Putin.
“I’ll let [Putin] know what I want him to know,’” said Biden after a cutaway shot of him swatting his neck before boarding Air Force One this week.
Continue reading...Biden says Putin a ‘worthy adversary’ ahead of talks – video
Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents
- Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’
- Vladimir Putin refuses to guarantee Navalny will survive prison
- Joe Biden to use Nato summit to atone for damage of Trump years
Joe Biden meets Nato leaders and Turkish president Erdoğan – US politics live
- Biden continues European trip with summit in Brussels
- Leaders of US and Turkey have somewhat strained relationship
- Nato summit: leaders agree that China presents security risks
As expected, the newly released Nato summit communique indicates that leaders view China’s rising power as a security threat.
“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security. We are concerned by those coercive policies which stand in contrast to the fundamental values enshrined in the Washington Treaty,” the Nato document says.
Related: Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk
As Joe Biden prepares for his meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Brussels, Kamala Harris has just arrived in South Carolina for an event to promote coronavirus vaccinations.
Continue reading...Expect China to be furious at being cast as a threat to the west
Analysis: Beijing may well seek to undermine Nato unity in response to being accused of posing a systemic challenge to western values
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was established on 4 April 1949, its mission was to counterbalance armies from the Soviet Union that were stationed in central and eastern Europe after the conclusion of the second world war.
After Emmanuel Macron, the current leader of one of its founding members, France, called it “brain-dead” in 2019, some analysts said the alliance will have to look for a new unifying mission to keep itself relevant in the new age of great power competition between the United States and China.
Continue reading...New Israeli government is just as bad as the last, says Palestinian PM
Mohammad Shtayyeh condemns Naftali Bennett’s announcements in support of Israeli settlements
Benjamin Netanyahu’s ousting closes one of the “worst periods” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the new government headed by a settler advocate, Naftali Bennett, is just as bad as the last, the Palestinian prime minister has said.
“We do not see this new government as any less bad than the previous one, and we condemn the announcements of the new prime minister Naftali Bennett in support of Israeli settlements,” Mohammad Shtayyeh said, referring to hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis who have taken land in the occupied West Bank.
Continue reading...Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk
Communique will be first time alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to China’s growing power
Nato leaders are expected to agree that China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time that the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance will have asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised ahead of a meeting that will be attended by Joe Biden that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.
Continue reading...Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’
Speaking at G7, president addresses autocracy and democracy, climate crisis and Donald Trump’s legacy
Joe Biden agreed on Sunday with Vladimir Putin’s latest assessment that US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years but insisted that while the two countries may have fundamental disagreements, “we are not looking for conflict”.
The US president also addressed the issues of autocracy versus democracy, the climate crisis, future pandemics and problems caused by his predecessor Donald Trump, while holding a press conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in the English county of Cornwall.
Continue reading...Biden reveals Queen asked about Putin and Xi during tea at Windsor Castle
US president gives insight into his discussions with monarch in short visit after G7 summit in Cornwall
Joe Biden revealed the Queen had asked him about his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, during their 45-minute talk over tea at Windsor Castle, in the aftermath of the G7 summit on Sunday.
It was an exceptionally rare, if limited, insight into political discussions involving the British monarch: the contents of her regular weekly audiences with the British prime minister of the day are kept confidential.
Continue reading...G7: Biden says democracies in ‘contest with autocrats’ as G7 summit ends – video
The US president Joe Biden said: ‘America is back at the table’ as the G7 summit came to a close. Speaking in Newquay, southwestern England, after the three-day summit, Biden said democracies faced a threat from autocratic governments.
He said the US was in a ‘contest with autocrats’ and that he wanted a democratic alternative to China’s belt and road initiative
- G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma
- Boris Johnson closes G7 summit with vow to protect integrity of UK
G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma
Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.
Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.
Continue reading...Scott Morrison denied one-on-one with Joe Biden as Boris Johnson joins meeting
Labor’s Penny Wong says it’s disappointing the Australian prime minister did not secure a private meeting with the US president
Scott Morrison has met with Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit and agreed to work closely on challenges in the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region including China.
Regional issues dominated the Australian prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with the US president late on Saturday – but the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, also attended in what became a trilateral engagement.
Continue reading...‘America is back’: Biden gets thumbs up from Macron at G7 – video
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Joe Biden has convinced allies that the US is back, as the two leaders met at the G7 summit on Saturday. Biden, asked by a reporter if America was back, turned to Macron and gestured with his sunglasses towards the French president that he should answer that question. 'Yes, definitely,' Macron said. 'It's great to have a US president who's part of the club and very willing to cooperate'
Continue reading...Drop Covid vaccine patent rules to save lives in poorest countries, Britain and Germany told
G7 summit hears move would slash the cost of jabs and accelerate rollout of programmes across the developing world
Britain and Germany were under intense pressure on Saturday to drop their resistance to proposals that would slash the cost of Covid-19 vaccines, following accusations that an agreement at the G7 summit to fund a billon doses will give the world’s poorest countries “crumbs from the table”.
Aid agencies said rules that protect drug patents from being illegally copied must be waived during the pandemic to accelerate the rollout of vaccines and save lives across the developing world.
Continue reading...No joint news conference after Biden-Putin summit: White House
- Biden will speak to press alone after Geneva meeting
- Trump caused outcry by accepting Putin denials at Helsinki
Joe Biden will give a solo news conference after his meeting next week with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the White House has said.
Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.
Continue reading...G7: Emmanuel Macron tells Boris Johnson UK-France relations need ‘reset’ – live updates
Leaders of the G7 industrialised countries are meeting in Cornwall this weekend to discuss vaccines, the pandemic recovery and the climate crisis
- Boris Johnson to face pressure from EU on Northern Ireland
- Calls for G7 spending restraint misguided, warns Lord Stern
- Boris Johnson appears to repudiate Tory austerity at summit opening
- See all our G7 coverage
The Duchess of Cambridge and US first lady Jill Biden have written a joint article on the importance of early childhood, following their visit to a primary school in Cornwall, where the G7 is taking place.
The two women met for the first time on Friday at Connor Downs Academy in Hayle, where they took part in a round-table discussion with experts on the importance of the early years of childhood for future outcomes.
In the article, published by CNN, they say there must be a fundamental shift in how the UK and US approach the earliest years of life. “If we care about how children perform at school, how they succeed in their careers when they are older, and about their lifelong mental and physical health, then we have to care about how we are nurturing their brains, their experiences and relationships in the early years before school,” they write.
The European Union has been urged to back down in a dispute with the UK over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Boris Johnson was holding talks with the EU’s key players on Saturday as the dispute threatened to overshadow his hosting of the G7 summit.
The prime minister was meeting European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, European Council head Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the margins of the gathering in Cornwall.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab urged the EU to take a more “pragmatic” approach to the Northern Ireland issue.
The main summit agenda will see the leaders of the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy commit to a new plan aimed at preventing a repeat of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Johnson also faces a potentially tricky series of meetings with the EU’s senior representatives. Downing Street has indicated the UK would be prepared to unilaterally delay the full implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol to prevent a ban on chilled meats crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.
‘Unique problem’: Catholic bishops split over Biden’s support for abortion rights
US bishops to debate whether the president should be denied communion over his pro-choice stance
At some point this weekend, Joe Biden will take his place in a line of people approaching the altar of a Catholic church to receive communion.
The US president, a devout Catholic whose speeches regularly include biblical references and who carries a rosary that belonged to his late son, attends Mass every weekend – in Washington, his home town of Wilmington in Delaware, or wherever he happens to be traveling. If the traditional Sunday morning Eucharist service is not possible because of his schedule, he will receive the sacrament on Saturday evening as permitted by the Roman Catholic church.
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