Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The US risks being superseded by China as the prime global power within decades.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.
Finance ministers from the world’s richest economies have agreed a deal to tackle tax abuses by some of the world’s biggest multinationals and establish a minimum global corporation tax for the first time. Announcing the deal, the UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said it would create ‘a fairer tax system fit for the 21st century’
Finance ministers agree deal to force multinationals to pay tax in all countries where they operate
The G7 group of wealthy nations have signed a landmark deal to tackle tax abuses by some of the world’s biggest multinationals and establish a minimum global corporation tax for the first time.
Finance ministers from the group agreed the plan on Saturday as part of talks held in London, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said.
As UK prepares for environment push at G7 summit, letter asks richest to make climate charitable focus
The UK’s 100 richest families are being urged to commit £1bn over the next five years to tackle the climate emergency and halt the destruction of the natural world, as the world prepares for a big push on environmental issues at the G7 summit.
Each of the 100 richest families in the UK, and the 100 biggest charitable foundations, will receive a letter on Saturday asking them to make the climate and biodiversity crises a focus of their philanthropic efforts, in order to stave off pending disasters that would imperil all their other charitable efforts.
Talks hosted by Rishi Sunak believed to be very close to agreement in principle on global reforms
The G7 group of wealthy nations is close to a historic agreement to radically reshape international tax rules by using a global minimum rate of corporation tax to prevent abuse of the system by multinationals.
Finance ministers from the world’s biggest western economies were negotiating details late on Friday with the aim of reaching a landmark deal early on Saturday as part of talks being held in London.
Vaccinating children in the UK against Covid-19 will take priority over donating doses to other countries around the world, Britain's health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on Friday 4 June.
Hancock was speaking after health ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries met at the University of Oxford, where AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine was invented, and which comes before a leaders' meeting next week
The EU’s four biggest economies have raised the pressure for a landmark agreement to curb tax abuse by multinational companies to be reached at G7 meetings in London on Friday.
Sending a united message in a letter in the Guardian, the finance ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Spain said a critical moment had been reached to strike a blow against tax avoidance as governments around the world attempt to rebuild from the Covid-19 pandemic.
EU directive on Joe Biden’s proposal for 15% tax rate on multinationals would require unanimous support
Cyprus could veto the EU’s adoption of Joe Biden’s proposal of a global minimum corporate tax rate, the country’s finance minister has suggested.
A White House proposal of a 15% tax rate for multinationals applied to profits in all jurisdictions is expected to be endorsed in principle by finance ministers of the world’s seven largest economies, the G7, at an upcoming meeting in Cornwall.
In spite of green rhetoric, money has piled into aviation and car industries since start of pandemic, report finds
The nations that make up the G7 have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than they have into clean energy since the Covid-19 pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery.
As the UK prepares to host the G7 summit, new analysis reveals that the countries attending committed $189bn to support oil, coal and gas between January 2020 and March 2021. In comparison, the same countries – the UK, US, Canada, Italy, France, Germany and Japan – spent $147bn on clean forms of energy.
Study claims firms paid $96bn less in tax between 2011 and 2020 than the notional figures cited in their annual reports
The giant US tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of inflating their stated tax payments by almost $100bn (£70bn) over the past decade.
As Chancellor Rishi Sunak called on world leaders to back a new tech tax ahead of next week’s G7 summit in the UK, a report by the campaign group Fair Tax Foundation singled out Amazon, Facebook, Google’s owner, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft.
US pushing UK hard over minimum corporate tax and swift action on global Covid vaccinations
Boris Johnson is facing mounting pressure from Joe Biden and grass roots activists to be bolder at next month’s G7 summit amid signs that rows over vaccines and tax will dominate what the prime minister hoped would be a low-key event.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, kicks off two weeks of intense international diplomacy ahead of the June gathering of the leaders of major western economies in Cornwall when he hosts a virtual meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors on Friday.