Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbinshared 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'
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.
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.