Emmanuel Macron made a beeline for Joe Biden after the G7 summit photo call in Cornwall. Biden, on whom Boris Johnson expended considerable energy attempting to politically woo ahead of the summit, warmly embraced the French president. Johnson was left lingering with Angela Merkel as he waited for the pair to catch up.
Twelve people, including a minor, were targeted in a leak investigation as Democrats decry ‘weaponization’ of DoJ
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin shared in the outrage over the Justice Department under Donald Trump retrieving data from from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House intelligence committee, in addition to their aides and family members.
They said Trump’s former attorney generals, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, “must testify before the Senate judiciary committee under oath.”
Schumer/Durbin: "The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers."
Schumer/Durbin: "This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress."
Schumer/Durbin:"This issue should not be partisan; under the Constitution, Congress is a co-equal branch of government and must be protected from an overreaching executive, and we expect that our Republican colleagues will join us in getting to the bottom of this serious matter.”
In an attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, a digital marketing firm closely linked to a pro-Trump youth group ran a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections.
A new Guardian investigation found that Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser - Rally Forge, a group with ties to Turning Point Action - which used socialist memes and rhetoric to sway leftwing voters toward the Green party.
Related: Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats
Continue reading...Jill Biden and Carrie Johnson play happy families, Justin Trudeau channels Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, giant Pikachus descend on a beach – and more
It’s that time again – the G7 summit. It was previously the G8 summit, until the Russians went full Russia and, rather than receiving coordinated international condemnation and effective sanctions, were kicked out of this faintly ridiculous rigmarole as “punishment”.
This year’s is being held in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Very rarely are things achieved at these summits. The best thing about them is the opportunity to laugh at the photographs, which somehow are even more excruciating than the usual political photo ops.
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Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man who was shot by North Carolina deputies in April, died of a gunshot to the head, a state autopsy confirmed.
An independent autopsy commissioned by Brown’s family had found the same. But a North Carolina prosecutor said Brown’s death at the hands of officers “while tragic, was justified”. The prosecutor also would not release body-camera video of the confrontation.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson’s guests are set to enjoy buttered rum, an indoor rainforest and a beach barbecue with local sea shanties
Sea shanties, buttered rum and toasted marshmallows on the beach: away from the tense negotiations at this weekend’s G7 summit, Boris Johnson is hoping to give the assembled leaders a taste of Cornwall at its laid-back best.
Emmanuel Macron hosted the 2019 G7 summit in Biarritz, but Johnson’s team believe the dramatic Cornish scenery can match the glitzy riviera resort – although not necessarily the balmy sunshine of the south of France.
Continue reading...Analysis: Mundane conflicts over sausage exports have no place in high-flown plans for new Atlantic charter
Whatever precise pressure US diplomats put on Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost, ahead of Joe Biden’s rather chaotic first photocall with Johnson at the G7 summit at Carbis bay, both sides were keen at their bilateral meeting to put the ugly genie back in the bottle.
The US side claimed there was nothing it had been saying to the British in private about the sanctity of the Good Friday agreement that it had not said in public, adding there had been no presidential directive to the US embassy to heighten the issue via a demarche to Frost, a florid piece of diplomatic jargon of French origin normally reserved for something akin to Russian diplomats caught spying.
Continue reading...PM calls US president a ‘breath of fresh air’ and strikes optimistic tone about Northern Ireland tensions
Boris Johnson sought to play down any differences with Washington over the way Brexit could affect Northern Ireland after talks with Joe Biden at the G7 summit, as he called the US president “a breath of fresh air”.
Speaking to TV reporters after bilateral talks with Biden at the summit venue in Cornwall, where according to Downing Street the pair discussed Covid and the climate emergency, as well as Northern Ireland, Johnson called the discussions “very good”.
Continue reading...Analysis: Northern Ireland row dashes Johnson’s hopes of greeting world leaders as PM of a newly emboldened and nimble UK
When Boris Johnson selected Cornwall as the venue for this weekend’s G7 summit, he must have imagined greeting the world’s leaders against the backdrop of a blazing blue sky on the English riviera, while getting to grips with the great global challenges of climate breakdown and Covid.
Instead, his first face-to-face meeting with Joe Biden on Thursday had to be moved from the picturesque St Michael’s Mount to the conference hotel in Carbis Bay, because of the Cornish mizzle – and Brexit was frustratingly high on the agenda.
Continue reading...Joe Biden wants alternative to Chinese belt and road offer while Japanese PM’s interests are more domestic
Leaders of the world’s seven leading industrialised nations will meet in Cornwall this weekend to agree a communique on how to redraw the world post-Covid, but also to pursue their own agendas and try to forge new personal relations after nearly 18 months apart.
1. Joe Biden has restored order, calm and direction to US international alliances, but now has to show what he will do with that goodwill.
Continue reading...Joe Biden marked his first overseas trip as US president, telling a crowd of US troops and their families at RAF Mildenhall the "the US is back and democracies of the world are standing together to tackle the toughest challenges and the issues that matter most to our future." The speech came ahead of Biden's talks with Boris Johnson, the G7 summit and a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Continue reading...Statement indicates leaders will also commit to delivering 1bn vaccine doses and plans to tackle forced labour
Leaders at the G7 summit will call for a new, transparent investigation by the World Health Organization into the origins of the coronavirus, according to a leaked draft communique for the meeting.
The call was initiated by Joe Biden’s administration and follows the US president’s decision to expand the American investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with one intelligence agency leaning towards the theory that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.
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Democratic Florida Representative Val Demings has announced she is running for Senate, challenging Republican Marco Rubio for his seat.
I'm running for U.S. Senate because I will never tire of standing up for what is right. Never tire of serving Florida. Never tire of doing good.
Join my campaign today: https://t.co/rHVPBuSzKU pic.twitter.com/HuWB80Mrxh
https://t.co/kPlysL0aZd pic.twitter.com/06iEZMpmfS
Continue reading...Biden’s initiative aims to help vaccinate the world against Covid and to restore America’s global influence and soft power
The US has reached an agreement with Pfizer to buy 500m doses of their coronavirus vaccine to distribute to nearly 100 countries around the world, as the centrepiece of Joe Biden’s initiative to help vaccinate the world against Covid-19, according to US reports.
Related: Vaccine inequality exposed by dire situation in world’s poorest nations
Continue reading...Joe Biden swatted a cicada from his neck while on the tarmac as he prepared to board Air Force One on his journey to the G7 summit in Cornwall. Every 17 years, cicadas swarm several eastern and midwest US states, and 'Brood X', the largest and most widespread of them, began emerging last month. After giving himself a hearty swat, Biden walked over to the assembled press and joked: 'Watch out for the cicadas. It got me. I got one'
Continue reading...The US president has become convinced that Beijing is the main adversary in a global battle of governance systems
The unifying theme behind Joe Biden’s European tour this week is a country which will not be at any of the meetings and may not even be mentioned in the final communiques: China.
Before setting out on his first foreign trip as president, Biden has made clear that the competition between the world’s democracies and its authoritarian regimes – mostly importantly Beijing – is the defining global challenge of the age, with victory anything but guaranteed for the US and its allies.
Continue reading...The US risks being superseded by China as the prime global power within decades. For Washington, the idea is appalling
Joe Biden crosses the Atlantic this week on a tide of goodwill. After four years of Donald Trump, European leaders are grateful for the mere fact of a US president who believes in democracy and understands diplomacy.
Trump had no concept of historical alliance, strategic partnership or mutual interest. He saw multilateral institutions as conspiracies against US power, which he could not distinguish from his own ego. He heard European talk of a rules-based international order as the contemptible bleating of weakling nations.
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Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.
Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.
“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR
LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.
KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3
Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9
Continue reading...Critics say US president’s realpolitik ignores Sisi regime’s ‘hostage-taking tactics’ against dissidents
“It’s a hostage negotiation and it has been all along,” said Sherif Mansour, describing the arrest of his cousin Reda Abdel-Rahman by Egyptian security forces last August as an attempt to intimidate Mansour into silence.
Abdel-Rahman has been imprisoned without trial for nine months. Mansour, an outspoken human rights advocate in Washington with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has since learned that he and his father are listed on the same charge sheet, all accused of joining a terrorist group and spreading “false news”.
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Newly released audio from a 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani, US diplomats and a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has added credence to the claims that Trump’s longtime adviser pressured the Ukrainians to help the former president politically.
In the call — which occurred prior to the infamous conversation between Trump and Zelensky that led to his first impeachment — Giuliani pushes the Ukrainians to publicly announce unfounded investigations into Joe Biden.
So @CNN got audio of @RudyGiuliani pressuring Ukrainian officials into announcing a fake investigation into @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/OJljFCcH6h
Related: Giuliani pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden family, new transcript reveals
The new audio demonstrates how Giuliani aggressively cajoled the Ukrainians to do Trump’s bidding. And it undermines Trump’s oft-repeated assertion that “there was no quid pro quo” where Zelensky could secure US government support if he did political favors for Trump.
The call was one of the opening salvos in the years-long quest by Trump and his allies to damage Biden and subvert the 2020 election process — by soliciting foreign meddling, lying about voter fraud, attempting to overturn the results, and inciting the deadly January 6 assault on the Capitol”.
A Republican representative in Oregon may be ousted from his seat after video footage was published Friday showing he let violent protesters into the state capitol late last year.
On 21 December, far-right rioters descended on the statehouse, attacking police officers and assaulting journalists as lawmakers inside were meeting to discuss how to respond to the Covid crisis. Many of the demonstrators would also be among the mob that attacked the US Capitol on 6 January.
Update: Rep. Mike Nearman "willing to have some consequences for what I did" but says OSP and Salem police also to blame for not keeping armed demonstrators out of the Capitol after Nearman opened a door for the demonstrators. https://t.co/zd68zviL5Z #orleg #orpol
In her resolution, Kotek said personnel who were authorized to be in the Oregon Capitol described the events on Dec. 21 as intense and stressful, terrifying and distressing.
‘Law enforcement officers were visibly injured and shaken due to the demonstrators’ action,’ Kotek added.
Continue reading...At least 40 Conservative MPs are fighting on to get overseas funding restored after setback in Commons
Boris Johnson has set himself on a collision course with scores of his MPs as No 10 suggested it would defy an order by the House of Commons speaker to bring a vote on swingeing foreign aid cuts.
Between 40 and 50 Conservative MPs were said to be considering defying the government on Monday before an ambush in the Commons was thwarted, with rebels now exploring options including legal action.
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