Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
Some summit spouses must have trust issues – why else would they turn up?
It could be said that anyone who voluntarily attends their partner’s office party is either a masochist or has trust issues. So, why, then, do the spouses of world leaders feel obliged to turn up to global summits?
Ordinarily, it appears that their only duty is to make small talk with their fellow spare parts while their other halves chew over the big issues of the day. At the G7 meeting in Cornwall this weekend, the Wags and Habs were also required to admire Boris Johnson’s latest child when he was rolled out before their beachfront BBQ.
Delivering his closing press conference in the Carbis Bay hotel on Sunday, pale golden sand and azure sea visible behind him, Boris Johnson sought to play down the unseemly diplomatic spat that had marred his moment on the world stage.
“Actually, what happened at this summit was that there was a colossal amount of work on subjects that had absolutely nothing to do with Brexit,” he insisted.
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.
Green campaigners and anti-poverty groups say Cornwall summit failed to address challenges facing the world
Boris Johnson has sought to defend the deal struck by G7 leaders at the Cornwall summit, as green groups and anti-poverty campaigners said the rich nations’ club had failed to match the scale of the challenges facing the world.
The final communique contained no early timetable to eradicate coal-fired emissions, offered only 1bn extra coronavirus vaccines for the world’s poor over the next 12 months and made no new binding commitments to challenge China’s human rights abuses.
Boris Johnson sought to play down reports of a rift with the EU over Northern Ireland at the end of the G7 summit, although he insisted it was the job of the government to protect the UK’s territorial integrity. Speaking at an end-of-summit press conference, the prime minister was careful not to escalate a row that had intensified following a report that France’s Emmanuel Macron had suggested that Northern Ireland was not wholly part of the UK
Concerns are growing that St Ives may face a spike in Covid cases as the G7 summit winds up with hospitality venues, police officers and a protest camp all reporting cases of the virus.
At least five venues in St Ives, the town closest to the main venue summit, Carbis Bay, have closed or are limiting their operations because of cases.
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.
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.
The setting is a small English village on the Cornish coast, but the message that Boris Johnson wants projected from the beachside summit in Carbis Bay is one of big British influence across the globe.
The three-day G7 meeting of world leaders, which ends on Sunday, was identified months ago by the prime minister as the moment to launch his vision of a confident post-Brexit “global Britain”.
Northern Ireland border row hits summit in Cornwall as prime minister tells other leaders UK is ‘a single country’
Boris Johnson was embroiled in an extraordinary public spat with EU leaders over Northern Ireland on Saturday as tensions over Brexit boiled over at the G7 summit in Cornwall.
After a series of tense bilateral meetings at which the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told their summit host the UK must implement the Brexit deal in full, an unrepentant Johnson said he had urged his EU colleagues to “get it into their heads” that the UK is “a single country”.
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'
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.
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.
The Queen caused G7 world leaders to break out into laughter as she cracked a joke when they posed for a photo at an evening reception hosted by the monarch on Friday. ‘Are you supposed to be looking as if you're enjoying yourself?’ she asked as they posed for photographers, to which Boris Johnson could be heard replying: ‘Yes, definitely. We have been enjoying ourselves in spite of appearances’
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.
Boris Johnson was accused of hypocrisy after announcing at the G7 leaders summit he would provide £430m of extra UK funding for girls’ education in 90 developing countries only weeks after his government made “inexcusable cuts” of more than £200m set aside for the same cause from its bilateral programme this year.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced in April that he was providing only £400m from the main UK aid budget for girls’ education in 2021, down from £600m in 2019. Johnson has dismissed stories of aid cuts, and their consequences as “lefty propaganda”, but refused to hold a Commons vote on the issue.
G7 leaders have opened their first in-person talks in nearly two years. Welcomed by Boris Johnson to the beachside summit venue in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, the leaders posed for a photograph before opening their first session of talks
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.