Ukraine allies criticise G20 statement for not naming Russia’s role in conflict

Scholz, Starmer, Trudeau and Macron among leaders who say communique finalized by Lula ‘not strong enough’

Ukraine’s western allies have criticised the final G20 communique as inadequate for failing to highlight Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in 2022 as the conflict enters its 1,000th day.

The final agreed text from the summit in Brazil was significantly weaker than that of the previous year, only highlighting humanitarian suffering in Ukraine and the importance of territorial integrity.

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Starmer twice declines to directly condemn jailing of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures

UK prime minister was condemned by Iain Duncan Smith, who is on Beijing’s sanctions list

Keir Starmer has twice declined to directly condemn the jailing of dozens of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy figures, less than 24 hours after meeting China’s president at the G20 summit.

The UK prime minister was asked both during a BBC interview and at his press conference in Rio de Janeiro to respond to the jailing of the activists, including being asked if he would condemn the sentences directly, but he reiterated the importance of building bridges with China for the sake of economic growth.

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Take two: Biden makes it into G20 leaders’ photo after missing first one

Summit leaders have reshoot in Rio after Biden, Justin Trudeau and Giorgia Meloni were no-shows the day before

The first time G20 leaders took their photo together at a summit in Rio, they forgot Joe Biden. On Tuesday, they had a reshoot – with the outgoing US president firmly back in the frame.

Biden; the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau; and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni all missed the photo on Monday due to what US officials called “logistical issues”.

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Australia politics live: Dutton calls Labor’s international student caps bill ‘a dog’s breakfast’; RBA fuels expectations for February interest rates cut

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First investment announced as part of National Reconstruction Fund

The science and industry minister, Ed Husic, was on ABC News Breakfast to discuss the government’s first investment via the National Reconstruction Fund – $40m to a Toowoomba mineral processing factory.

The difference in terms of what the [NRF] does is it provides loans, equity, and guarantees to firms that are [working across] seven priority areas to expand and grow their operations.

Given the sizes of the investments, it does take more time to be able to go through to shape up what the investment will look like, how big it’ll be, over what term, the rate of return – because the other important thing to stress to viewers is – this is not about handing out grants, and certainly not doing it on the basis of political colour-coded spreadsheets as we saw with the last government.

In fact, the social media users were less likely to have a negative attitude towards Jewish and Muslim people, irrespective of where they were on the political spectrum.

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No-show Joe: G20 leaders take group photo without Biden

US president arrived for photograph with other world leaders – but found they had gone ahead without him

Joe Biden headed for a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro at his final summit as US president on Monday – only to find they had already taken the picture without him.

Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder which meant that Biden missed out on the shot, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.

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Xi Jinping praises Labour’s economic policy as Keir Starmer discusses human rights concerns

PM questions sanctions against MPs and plight of Jimmy Lai as China’s president says Starmer ‘fixing foundations’

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has heaped praise on Keir Starmer’s economic policy, as the UK prime minister used their first meeting to raise concerns about sanctions on MPs and the treatment of the pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai.

During their conversation at the G20 summit in Rio, the first meeting between the UK and China’s leaders in six years, Starmer said he would be keen to host a full bilateral meeting with Xi and the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, in Beijing or London as soon as possible, aimed at turning the page on frosty UK-China relations.

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Lula launches alliance to combat world hunger as Brazil hosts G20

Summit’s first day notable for frosty meeting of far-right Argentinian leader Javier Milei and leftwing host

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has opened the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro with the launch of an alliance to combat hunger, which he described as the “ultimate symbol of our collective tragedy”.

Brazil holds the rotating presidency of the group and is hosting the meeting this Monday and Tuesday, attended by all but two – Russia and Saudi Arabia – of the 19 member countries.

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Keir Starmer says he wants ‘serious and pragmatic’ relationship with China – as it happened

Prime minister says he wants to ‘be clear about issues we do not agree on’ after meeting Chinese president Xi Jinping at G20

Keir Starmer has held his bilateral with Xi Jinping in Rio at the G20, offering to meet his counterpart, the Chinese premier Li Qiang, in Beijing or London at the earliest opportunity.

But the PM also raised human rights issues with Xi, including the sanctions on parliamentarians and the persecution of Hong Kong and British citizen Jimmy Lai.

A strong UK China relationship is important for both of our countries and for the broader international community.

The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.

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Backflip on international student caps ‘baffling’, MP says – as it happened

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Three million Australians are at risk of homelessness, a 63% increase since 2016, a new report from Homelessness NSW and Impact Economics has revealed.

By looking at household data including income, support and rental stress, the report found in 2022 there were 3.04m Australians now at risk of homelessness, an increase on the 1.87m reported in 2016.

1 in every five days the frontline services could not assist a family with children because they were so stretched.

Individuals without children were turned away 1 in every 2 days.

Unaccompanied young people and children without accommodation were turned away on 1 in 9 days.

I think more broadly, the government under Anthony Albanese has got an excellent record of managing relationships around the world, making genuine progress, whether it’s with China, whether it’s with American friends or others.

I think when it comes to Peter Dutton, I think he has a kind of a reckless arrogance which doesn’t lend itself to foreign policy and maintaining and managing some of these complex relationships.

I think he would be a risk to our economy, and that’s because that reckless arrogance, which has been a defining feature of his time as a politician over a long period of time now … [it] doesn’t lend itself to managing these relationships, which are so important to us.

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Starmer aims to build ‘pragmatic and serious relationship’ in meeting with Xi

Prime minister wants bilateral at G20 to lead to closer ties with China, which he sees as key to faster growth

Keir Starmer will become the first UK prime minister in six years to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, promising to turn the page on UK-China relations by building “a pragmatic and serious relationship”.

Starmer and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been pursuing a thawing of relations with the world’s second-largest economy on pragmatic grounds, suggesting that the UK cannot achieve its growth ambitions without better terms with China.

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Keir Starmer promises Ukraine will be ‘top of the agenda’ at G20

UK prime minister to meet world leaders at summit in Brazil that Vladimir Putin has declined to attend

Ukraine will be “top of the agenda” this week at a meeting of leaders from the world’s most powerful economies, Keir Starmer has pledged, though he said he had “no plans” to follow the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and speak directly to Vladimir Putin.

Starmer will meet world leaders on Monday at the G20 summit in Brazil, which the Russian president has declined to attend, sending his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in his place.

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Judge investigating 2023 coup was court bomb target, say Brazilian police

Police name 59-year-old with explosive devices said to have killed himself after trying to enter court in Brasília

The main target of a bomber who killed himself while attempting to attack Brazil’s supreme court was the justice leading the key investigations into the attempted coup of 8 January last year, when supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings to protest against his election defeat, police have said.

The explosions outside the court on Wednesday took place just five days before the G20 heads of state are due to meet in Rio de Janeiro, which will be followed by a state visit to Brasília, the capital, by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

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Lula and Petro have the chance of a lifetime to save the Amazon. Can they unite idealism and realpolitik to pull it off?

The South American leaders are in the spotlight as they prepare to host this week’s Cop16 biodiversity summit, November’s G20 meeting and next year’s Cop30 climate summit

The rainforest nations of Brazil and Colombia have the best opportunity in a generation to drag the Amazon back from the abyss as they host three of the world’s most important environmental negotiations in the space of little more than a year.

In the process, their leaders – pacesetting Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, and the more cautious and contradictory Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – will offer up overlapping visions for the future of the Amazon, and the world’s path to net zero.

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Australia ‘horrified’ by Gaza humanitarian catastrophe – as it happened

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Both sides of politics are pulling out all the stops as the Dunkley byelection goes down to the wire.

Speaking on Sunrise this morning, the education minister, Jason Clare, and the deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, went head-to-head over a tweet she published last night.

You should delete the tweet… This is a classic example of why women aren’t joining the Liberal party and why they’re not voting for the Liberal party, because of that classic, desperate, grubby political scare campaign we saw from the Liberal party yesterday.

I don’t know, really, you must wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, after 25 years of being a member of parliament, is this what I’ve become? I’m reduced to putting out tweets like this?

Anyone who watched question time during this week and saw your hopeless immigration minister unable to demonstrate that he even knows where his criminals [are], what they’re doing, who’s monitoring them and whether the community is safe, would probably not agree with what you’ve just said.

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Visualised: how all of G20 is missing climate goals — but some nations are closer than others

As world leaders gather at Cop28, these charts show how far away the major economies are from their targets

Not a single G20 country has policies in place that are consistent with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C and meeting their “fair share” of emissions reduction.

The assessment, based on data up to 5 December provided by the Climate Action Tracker, comes as leaders gather in Dubai for the Cop28 conference.

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Lula backpedals on suggestion Putin could attend G20 without fear of arrest

Comments were at odds with Brazil foreign minister’s statement that Putin could face ‘issues’ if he traveled to any ICC member state

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has rowed back on comments suggesting Vladimir Putin would be able to attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest.

The international criminal court (ICC) has issued a warrant for the Russian leader’s arrest for alleged war crimes in Ukraine and, as a signatory of the Rome statute, Brazil is duty-bound to cooperate with the court. But on Saturday Lula raised eyebrows by telling an Indian interviewer there was “no reason” Putin would be detained if he travelled to the November 2024 summit in Brazil.

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Canada PM Justin Trudeau stuck in India after plane breaks down

Canadian PM was due to return home on Sunday after G20 summit in Delhi but a mechanical fault kept him in India overnight

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and his entire delegation have been forced to extend their stay in New Delhi for the G20 summit by an extra day after his aircraft broke down, Canadian officials confirmed.

Trudeau arrived in India for the meeting of the leaders of 20 leading economies on Friday.

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Sunak refuses to make pensions triple lock election commitment

PM says he will not speculate over policy as he grapples with how to fund tax cuts demanded by Tory MPs

Rishi Sunak has refused to commit to keeping the pensions triple lock in the next Conservative manifesto, as he grapples with how to fund tax cuts demanded by his own MPs.

The prime minister told reporters during the G20 summit in Delhi that the triple lock – which guarantees that pensions will rise by at least 2.5%, and by either inflation or earnings if they are higher – remains government policy.

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Russian minister says G20 summit a success after criticism over war blocked

Language on invasion of Ukraine noticeably softened compared with statement after last year’s summit

Russia’s foreign minister has hailed the G20 summit in Delhi as a success, after Moscow was shielded from criticism over the Ukraine war in a joint declaration.

“We were able to prevent the west’s attempts to Ukrainise the summit agenda,” Sergei Lavrov said as the two-day meeting drew to a close.

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Lula says Putin can attend next year’s G20 in Rio without fear of arrest

Brazil’s president, now the group’s leader, says his Russian counterpart is welcome at 2024 event

Vladimir Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said as he took leadership of the forum.

Speaking at this year’s meeting in Delhi, Lula – who has controversially tried to position himself as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv – said the Russian president would be welcome to attend the November 2024 event.

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