Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
Ahead of the G7 summit starting on Friday, 5,000 mutual aid officers have arrived in the area from police forces across the UK. They will join 1,500 officers and staff from Devon and Cornwall police being deployed at the event. More than 100 police dogs will be working at the summit, though no police horses are due to be there
Bloc leaders say UK must fully implement post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland
Boris Johnson must respect the “rule of law” by fully implementing the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, EU leaders have said ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said the behaviour of the prime minister was of increasing concern to EU member states. “It’s paramount to implement what we have decided – this is a question of rule of law,” he said.
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.
The top items on the leaders’ agenda for this week’s gathering at Cornwall, and some possible outcomes
World leaders are gathering for the G7 summit in Cornwall this week. Here we look at the key themes that will dominate their meeting and what might constitute a successful outcome from discussions:
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.
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.
Alongside coronavirus measures, huge security operation under way as thousands plan to join protests
Everybody from the most junior official to the president of the United States will have to follow the rules. Take daily Covid tests, wear masks at appropriate times and respect everything from one-way systems around venues to limits on how many people can gather around a table for a meal or drink.
Welcome to G7 UK 2021, the first world summit in the times of Covid.
Conservative backbencher Steve Baker has urged the UK government to press ahead with lifting England’s remaining Covid restrictions on 21 June despite a sharp rise in cases.
He claimed that by that date, all over-50s and vulnerable younger adults should have been given the opportunity to receive two doses of Covid vaccine.
These groups represent about 99% of Covid deaths and about 80% of hospitalisations. As of today, according to announcements made by the government, these groups should all have been offered a chance to have had a second dose. It would be helpful for the government to clarify that this has been achieved.
If this brilliant milestone isn’t enough to convince ministers that we need to lift all remaining restrictions – especially social distancing requirements – on 21 June, nothing will ever get us out of this.
The Dutch government has promised an independent investigation into a supposedly not-for-profit €100m deal to buy facemasks from China last year that ended up making three young entrepreneurs about €20m richer.
The investigative website Follow the Money revealed that Sywert van Lienden, 30, a former civil servant turned TV pundit and activist, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Christian Democrat (CDA) party (part of the ruling coalition), netted €9.2m.
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.
Global tax changes could mean Treasury loses £230m digital services tax receipts from Google, Amazon, Facebook and eBay
Experts have warned that US tech companies, including Google, Amazon and Facebook, could pay less tax in the UK and several other big economies under global reforms agreed at the weekend by the G7.
In a key stumbling block emerging days after the landmark deal, research from the TaxWatch campaign group indicates that the UK Treasury stands to lose about £230m from the taxes paid each year by four of the big US tech firms.
Prime minister to say it should be up to sovereign nations to chart their own course and Australia does not support ‘setting false deadlines’
Scott Morrison is resisting international pressure to lock in more ambitious climate commitments, declaring Australia opposes setting targets for certain parts of the economy or “false deadlines for phasing out specific energy sources”.
Before he sets off for the G7 summit in the UK later this week, the prime minister will use a foreign policy speech to say that “ambition alone won’t solve the problem of actually reducing emissions”.
As ambitious declarations go – even for Boris Johnson – it was a big one. At the weekend, the UK prime minister said he would urge the G7 leaders to vaccinate the world against Covid by the end of next year.
But is this feasible? That rather depends on your definition. No country will vaccinate every adult. Vaccinating enough to achieve herd immunity, which could be 60% or 70%, is the real aim. It is possible to achieve that by December 2022, say experts, but only if the G7 leading economies move immediately to make it happen.
Newly released audio from a 2019 phone call between Rudy Giuliani, US diplomats and a senior adviser to Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelensky 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.
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.
G7 countries will lose $5tn a year by 2050 if temperatures rise by 2.6C
The economies of rich countries will shrink by twice as much as they did in the Covid-19 crisis if they fail to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to research.
The G7 countries – the world’s biggest industrialised economies – will lose 8.5% of GDP a year, or nearly $5tn wiped off their economies, within 30 years if temperatures rise by 2.6C, as they are likely to on the basis of government pledges and policies around the world, according to research from Oxfam and the Swiss Re Institute.
More than 100 former prime ministers, presidents and foreign ministers are among 230 prominent figures calling on the leaders of the powerful G7 countries to pay two-thirds of the $66bn (£46.6bn) needed to vaccinate low-income countries against Covid.
A letter seen by the Guardian ahead of the G7 summit to be hosted by Boris Johnson in Cornwall warns that the leaders of the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada must make 2021 “a turning point in global cooperation”. Fewer than 2% of people in sub-Saharan Africa have been vaccinated against Covid, while the UK has now immunised 70% of its population with at least one dose.
Joe Biden will use his visit to Europe this week to “rally the world’s democracies” in a reset of US foreign policy after four turbulent years under Donald Trump – all while threats to American democracy, stoked by Trump, proliferate at home.
Mark Lowcock says funds slashed affect key issues on G7 agenda, as party rebels prepare to vote for reversal
A senior UN diplomat has warned Boris Johnson that his decision to slash overseas aid is tarnishing international faith in Britain’s trustworthiness at a crucial moment, as he called on the government to back Tory demands for a swift reversal of the cuts.
With Conservative rebels increasingly confident they have enough votes to inflict a humiliating government defeat before the G7 meeting in Cornwall late this week, the head of the UN’s office for humanitarian affairs said Johnson had demonstrated “a failure of kindness and empathy” that was undermining Britain’s reputation.
Call for ‘solidarity’ in Covid fight as Boris Johnson calls on world leaders to help vaccinate global population by end of 2022
Progress on climate change could be scuppered by developing nations if they are not given equitable access to vaccines, Boris Johnson has been warned, as rich nations come under new pressure to donate more doses.
Figures compiled by the Observer show that the wealthiest nations, including the UK, have enough vaccines to inoculate their populations more than twice over.