Category Archives: World News

Johnson defends G7 deal amid criticism of final communique

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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.

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Boris Johnson closes G7 summit with vow to protect UK integrity – video

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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

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Jailing of Afghans for Lesbos migrant camp fire a ‘parody of justice’

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Lawyers criticise 10-year terms given to four asylum seekers, saying three should have been tried in juvenile court

Draconian prison sentences handed down to four Afghan youths found guilty of starting the fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year have been described as a “parody of justice”.

Defence lawyers called the penalties “unfair”, saying three of the accused were under the age of 18 at the time and should have been tried before a juvenile court. The asylum seekers received 10-year jail terms each.

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Jair Bolsonaro fined for not wearing mask at São Paulo biker rally – video report

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The Brazilian president led thousands of supporters through the streets of São Paulo on Saturday, and was fined for failing to wear a face mask in violation of local Covid-19 measures. The state government press office said a fine equivalent to about $110 (£78) had been imposed. Bolsonaro’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment

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Spanish right rallies against plans to pardon Catalan separatists

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Protest at Plaza de Colón in Madrid draws 25,000 people, including leaders of three rightwing parties

Tens of thousands of people, including the leaders of the three parties on Spain’s right, have rallied in Madrid to protest against the government’s deeply divisive moves to pardon the 12 Catalan independence leadersconvicted over their parts in the failed secession attempt almost four years ago.

The event on Sunday, held beneath the enormous Spanish flag in the capital’s Plaza de Colón, came almost two and a half years after a similar demonstration against the Socialist government’s handling of the Catalan independence crisis.

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G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma

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Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?

• G7 summit: latest news and reaction

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.

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Celebrity buzz: how stars’ bedroom toys have got us all talking about sex

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With famous users leading a rebrand, pleasure accessories lose their stigma in a £90bn health and wellness boom

Lily Allen has one. Cara Delevingne has one. Dakota Johnson has developed her own range. Is the celebrity sex toy 2021’s answer to the celebrity perfume?

For some, getting busy has been the last thing on the menu during the pandemic. Study after study, from India to Italy, has revealed that lockdown libido loss is real and that stress has killed the buzz in the bedroom. Sexual wellness, on the other hand, has reached a dizzying peak. Not only has the conversation around sexual pleasure changed for generation Z, but the industry attached to it – from apps to toys, herbal supplements to specialist oils – is also booming.

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‘I’ve never regretted doing it’: Daniel Ellsberg on 50 years since leaking the Pentagon Papers

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The former strategic analyst says the culture of official secrecy is worse today but urges whistleblowers: ‘Don’t wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying’

When the police arrived, a 13-year-old boy was photocopying classified documents. His 10-year-old sister was cutting the words “top secret” off each page. It seemed their dad, Daniel Ellsberg, had been caught red-handed.

But the officers were responding to a false alarm and did not check what Ellsberg and his young accomplices were up to. “It was a very nice family scene,” the 90-year-old recalls via Zoom from his home in Kensington, California. “It didn’t worry them.”

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Scott Morrison denied one-on-one with Joe Biden as Boris Johnson joins meeting

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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.

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The Observer view on Iran’s rigged presidential election | Observer editorial

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It is not only Iranians who will suffer if a hardliner wins, it could have profound consequences for world peace

Iran’s beleaguered voters do not have much of a choice in this Friday’s presidential election. The regime, dominated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a fiercely anti-western conservative, has cynically manipulated the contest to ensure that a like-minded hardliner, most probably Ebrahim Raisi, head of the judiciary, wins.

While the result is hardly a cliff-hanger, its impact may nonetheless be far-reaching – in Iran and internationally. The possibly negative consequences for talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear programme, for peaceful relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the west, for the wars in Syria and Yemen, for the geopolitical balance and for Iran’s own citizens are alarming.

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‘Mistrusted’ Johnson feels full force of EU fury as Brexit wrecks G7 summit

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European leaders made their feelings about the Northern Ireland protocol known to a PM desperate to score a PR victory

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”.

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Factory workers making goods for the west bear brunt of virus surge in south-east Asia

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Migrant labourers tell of being forced to isolate in brutal conditions as Covid wave grips region

It was around mid-May when workers at the Cal-Comp factory in Phetchaburi, central Thailand, heard a small group of their colleagues had tested positive for Covid-19. It soon became clear the virus had ripped through the production lines. A cluster associated with the electronics factory has since been linked to thousands of infections.

Hwan Htet Paing*, a worker from the factory, said he was not told the results of his Covid test, carried out on 19 May. Despite this, he was instructed to quarantine inside a vast hall at his workplace. The floor was covered with tarpaulin sheets and lined with rows of mosquito nets for each worker. Everyone was given a bucket and a cup, and bedsheets to lay across the floor. Fans were handed out to help ease the heat – until the vast numbers of people testing positive meant there were none left.

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Moria fire: Greek court jails four Afghan asylum seekers for 10 years

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Men were charged with arson over blaze that destroyed what was Europe’s largest migrant camp

Four Afghan asylum seekers have been sentenced to 10 years in prison in Greece for their part in a fire that destroyed the Moria migrant camp in 2020.

The men, charged with arson with risk to human life over the fire on the island of Lesbos last September, were found guilty after a court rejected a request by lawyers for three of them to be tried by a juvenile court because they were under 18 at the time.

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At least 18 die as hospital hit in shelling of Syrian city

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Children and hospital staff killed in attack on northern city Afrin, which is held by Turkish-backed rebels

Shelling of the rebel-held city of Afrin in northern Syria killed at least 18 people, many of them when a hospital was hit, a war monitor said.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a doctor, three hospital staff, two women and two children died at al-Shifaa hospital, which is held by Turkish-backed rebels, on Saturday.

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New Zealand’s campaign finance laws are broken. That can have enormous consequences | Pete McKenzie

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An increased appetite for political donations strengthens the political influence of the wealthiest New Zealanders

The spokesperson for Aotearoa New Zealand’s Green party was genuinely surprised. She had called after I informed them that a major donor to their 2020 election campaign had subsequently pleaded guilty to animal neglect. The spokesperson said the Greens had not known about the neglect when they took her money.

They nevertheless refused to donate it onwards. They argued the Incorporated Societies Act required them to hold on to it. As I later found out, that’s not quite true: returning the donation, or donating it to an organisation like the SPCA, seems to be possible according to their party’s charter.

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Opposition forces Orbán into U-turn over Chinese campus plan in Budapest

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With a general election due next year, Hungary’s government has put the divisive project in the capital’s heart on hold

Protests against the construction of a Chinese university in Budapest have energised the Hungarian opposition ahead of elections next year, and forced the government into a rare U-turn.

Outrage at plans to build a campus of Shanghai’s Fudan University became a rallying cry for the opposition, drawing thousands to protest in defiance of government regulations

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Brexit bust-up torpedoes Johnson’s bid to showcase ‘global Britain’ at G7

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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”.

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‘Americans are heaven for us’: the surge in US visitors throwing Greece a lifeline

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Country confounds post-Covid predictions as transatlantic holidaymakers flood in ready to spend

A fresh wind blows down Adrianou. Seated in front of his rug store on the street that cuts through the heart of ancient Athens, Theo Iliadis takes in the scene. At 47, he’s seen “a lot of bad stuff” in recent years. The global pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time for Greece, already gutted by prolonged economic crisis.

But barely a month after the tourist-dependent country opened its doors, the entrepreneur is in ebullient mood. There’s a glint in his eye and a lightness in the air of the carpet-stacked cavern behind him. “Americans are in town,” he smiles. “Business is good, the loom is good and I’ve got drinks on ice.”

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New Israeli coalition government seeks to put an end to the Netanyahu era

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The opposition-led administration will be sworn in on Sunday if it can prevail in a confidence vote in the Knesset

Benjamin Netanyahu is due to be ousted from office on Sunday by a new Israeli government formed with the primary aim of dethroning the country’s longest-serving leader.

A motley grouping of politicians, including former Netanyahu allies turned foes, have set aside bitter differences to put an end to the prime minister’s historic run in power. If successful, it will also break a political stalemate that has seen four snap elections in the country since 2019.

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Drop Covid vaccine patent rules to save lives in poorest countries, Britain and Germany told

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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.

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