Protesters turn out in support of a range of causes as the leaders of Group of Seven nations meet for the forum’s 47th summit in Cornwall
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Thousands march in support of Muslim family killed in Canada truck attack – video
Thousands of people have marched in Canada in support of a Muslim family run over and killed by a man driving a pickup truck. Police have described the incident last Sunday as a premeditated attack motivated by Islamophobia. Crowds in London, Ontario, marched five miles on Friday from the spot where the family was killed to a nearby mosque, the site close to where police arrested the attacker. Candlelight vigils were also held to honour the victims and protest against hatred
Continue reading...No joint news conference after Biden-Putin summit: White House
- Biden will speak to press alone after Geneva meeting
- Trump caused outcry by accepting Putin denials at Helsinki
Joe Biden will give a solo news conference after his meeting next week with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the White House has said.
Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.
Continue reading...Saudi Arabia bans foreigners from hajj over Covid concerns
Annual pilgrimage will be restricted to 60,000 vaccinated adults from within the kingdom
Saudi Arabia has announced that this year’s hajj pilgrimage will be limited to 60,000 vaccinated people from within the kingdom because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The kingdom ran a reduced pilgrimage last year, but still allowed a small number of people to take part in the annual event.
Continue reading...Covid live news: UK records a further 7,738 cases as Johnson cautious over lockdown easing; Vietnam approves Pfizer vaccine for emergency use
Honours for key UK figures in vaccine drive; MPs say Covid passports are discriminatory and should be scrapped
- Delay lifting Covid restrictions in England, experts urge
- Saudi Arabia bans foreigners from hajj over Covid concerns
- Most people in UK initially opposed to vaccine have had jab - study
- Lifting restrictions in England on 21 June: what are the alternatives?
- See all our coronavirus coverage
G7 leaders discussed the origins of Covid-19, including the theory it originated in a Chinese lab, WHO head Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“We believe that all hypotheses should be open, and we need to proceed to the second phase to really know the origins,” he told reporters.
Above all, at the root of the #COVID19 pandemic is a deficit of solidarity and sharing – of the data, information, resources, technology and tools that every nation needs to keep its people safe. @WHO believes the best way to close that deficit is with a #PandemicTreaty. #G7UK
A poll for the Observer shows more than half the British public support delaying the lifting of restrictions on social contact because of the rising number of Covid-19 cases, report Michael Savage and Ben Tapper.
With Boris Johnson poised to announce a delay to his plan to remove the remaining restrictions on 21 June, an Opinium poll for the Observer found that 54% think the move should be postponed, up from 43% from a fortnight ago.
It suggests that the public is taking a cautious view following the emergence of the Delta variant, first detected in India and thought to be 60% more transmissible than the variant previously dominant in the UK. The proportion of people who thought Johnson should push ahead with the unlocking has fallen from 44% a fortnight ago to 37% this week.
Related: Delay ending lockdown: majority of public back Boris Johnson
Continue reading...G7: Emmanuel Macron tells Boris Johnson UK-France relations need ‘reset’ – live updates
Leaders of the G7 industrialised countries are meeting in Cornwall this weekend to discuss vaccines, the pandemic recovery and the climate crisis
- Boris Johnson to face pressure from EU on Northern Ireland
- Calls for G7 spending restraint misguided, warns Lord Stern
- Boris Johnson appears to repudiate Tory austerity at summit opening
- See all our G7 coverage
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.
Mixing Britons’ food with politics invariably leaves a bad taste | Pen Vogler
The Brexit sausage war is nothing new: it follows an inglorious lineage that stretches all the way back to Hogarth’s Gin Lane
It’s summer at last! Time to gather a few neighbours round, start a fire, and throw another sausage war on to the flames. This one is about the complicated triangulation between the EU, Northern Ireland and Westminster over frictionless trade. Still awake? Let’s put it in terms “the public” can understand and, as former Brexit chief negotiator David Frost did, thunder about the right of “the shopper in Strabane” to get their favourite sausages or chicken nuggets. In fact, from Hogarth’s Gin Lane, right through to the pasty tax, politicians have scored political points around food, as a distraction from more important matters, such as whether children get fed.
If you were of telly-watching age in 1984, there might be a familiar whiff to Frost’s words. In Yes, Minister the not overly competent but endlessly fortunate minister, Jim Hacker, grappled with a rumoured proposal from Brussels to have the British sausage renamed the “emulsified high-fat offal tube”. Westminster is traditionally reluctant to get involved in our personal relationship with our shopping baskets and arteries. It still feels the pain of burnt fingers from the “hot pasty tax”; or Edwina Currie’s throwaway 1988 remark about the prevalence of salmonella in British egg production, which crashed consumer confidence overnight (it was reported that the industry had to slaughter four million hens). The knotty issues around processed meat products are delegated to food and health campaigners who would like Britons to eat a lot fewer, for the sake of our health, our waistlines and the welfare of the animals who end up in them.
Continue reading...‘We’re causing our own misery’: oceanographer Sylvia Earle on the need for sea conservation
‘Queen of the Deep’ says it is not too late to reverse human-made damage to oceans and preserve biodiversity
The world has the opportunity in the next 10 years to restore our oceans to health after decades of steep decline – but to achieve that, people must wake up to the problem, join in efforts to protect marine areas and stop eating tuna, according to the oceanographer and deep sea explorer Sylvia Earle.
“We are at the most exciting time maybe ever to be a human, because we’re armed with knowledge,” said Earle, also known as the Queen of the Deep and “her Deepness”. Earle has also set numerous records for deep sea diving, and was the first woman to serve as chief scientist of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Continue reading...Agnes Chow: activist leaves jail as China says Hong Kong ‘pawn in geopolitics’
Key figure in 2019 anti-government protests was imprisoned for more than six months under national security law imposed by mainland China
The Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow has been released from jail after serving more than six months for taking part in unauthorised assemblies during 2019 anti-government protests that triggered a crackdown on dissent by mainland China.
Chow, 24, was greeted by a crowd of journalists as she left the Tai Lam women’s prison on Saturday. She got out of a prison van and into a private car without making any remarks.
Continue reading...Finding fangs: new film exposes illicit trade killing off Bolivia’s iconic jaguar
Undercover documentary investigates the trafficking of Latin America’s big cat to meet demand in China
Elizabeth Unger was a 25-year-old biology graduate working as a PhD research assistant for big cat and climate projects in Latin America when she heard about the Bolivian authorities intercepting dozens of packages containing jaguar fangs sent by Chinese citizens to addresses in China.
“I was really blown away as [the story] was completely under the radar,” she says. Six years later, she is making her directorial debut with a film about the trade, which is contributing to a decline in the population of Latin America’s iconic big cat.
Continue reading...French soldiers kill Mali jihadist blamed for RFI journalists’ murder
Bayes Ag Bakabo was prime suspect in 2013 kidnapping and shooting of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon
French soldiers have killed a Malian jihadist suspected of being responsible for the kidnapping and death of two French journalists in 2013.
Florence Parly, the defence minister in Paris, said French forces in the Sahel region killed “four terrorists” during an operation in northern Mali on 5 June, including Bayes Ag Bakabo, the prime suspect in the deaths of Radio France International (RFI) reporters Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon.
Continue reading...Vladimir Putin says Biden ‘radically different’ after impulsive Trump
Russian ruler says relations with US at their lowest point in years as the two presidents prepare to meet in Geneva
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years, in an interview before his meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, next week.
Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.
Continue reading...Hello possum: the New Zealanders keeping invasive marsupials as pets
The animals have a bad reputation in Aotearoa, where they are regarded as pests – but some say they are scapegoated for human failures
Maurice likes to stay up all night. When he finally settles down at 5am, he makes sure everyone knows he’s there – then he curls up and sleeps all day.
“When he’s ready to go to bed, he gives us a good face wash to say ‘hi,’” Jo Little* says, laughing. “He’s got really, really cold feet, and he puts them all over your head. He licks every area of your face!”
Continue reading...‘My dream was buried’: the children of India orphaned by Covid
Officials and NGOs say orphans now face the double threat of neglect and being vulnerable to exploitation
Nitish Kumar will never forget the day he and his sisters buried their dead mother in the back garden.
Just 32, Priyanka Devi had died from Covid on 3 May. Neighbours and relatives refused to help with her burial, and all the family’s money had gone on hospital fees.
Continue reading...Johnson accused of hypocrisy over G7 girls’ education pledge
Announcement of £430m funding for 90 countries came only weeks after ‘inexcusable’ foreign aid cuts
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
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.
Continue reading...Covid live: UK reports 8,125 daily cases, highest since February, as doctors call for delay to lockdown-easing
UK also reports 17 deaths as infection rate rises; British Medical Association calls for delay to easing of remaining lockdown restrictions
- Delta variant causes more than 90% of new Covid cases in UK
- Rapid Covid tests used in mass UK programme get scathing US report
- Holidaymania strikes Germany as Covid travel restrictions ease
- Boris Johnson urged to keep English Covid rules in place beyond 21 June
- High risk of autumn surge in Europe, says WHO
The EU does not expect Johnson & Johnson will be able to deliver 55 million Covid-19 vaccine doses it had committed to shipping to the bloc by the end of June, an EU official has said.
Reuters reports that the bloc had previously said that it was confident the US pharmaceutical giant could meet its commitments. The position has changed after the European Medicines Agency, the European drugs regulator, said earlier today that J&J doses sent to Europe from a factory in the US would not be used out of precaution after a case of contamination.
The British Medical Association is calling for a delay to the easing of all remaining lockdown restrictions in England due to case numbers ‘rising rapidly’.
The BMA says the fourth stage of lockdown should not go ahead until there is “better understanding of the implications” of the reported rise in cases in recent days.
Continue reading...Party’s over: Amsterdam plans to keep tourists ‘in penis outfits’ away
As Dutch capital reopens post-Covid, city is taking ‘extra measures’ to discourage excess
Amsterdam has said it will not allow a return to the “nuisance and massive crowds” the city endured before the pandemic, sending a blunt warning that visitors “whose intention is to booze and misbehave, dressed like a penis” should go elsewhere.
As much of the EU prepares to open up to tourists who are vaccinated, have recovered from the coronavirus or can provide a negative test from 1 July, the Dutch capital’s city hall said in a statement it was taking “extra measures” to discourage excesses.
Continue reading...UN decries Myanmar ‘catastrophe’ as Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial looms
Human rights commissioner says junta is ‘singularly responsible for crisis’ ahead of ousted leader’s trial
Myanmar has descended into a “human rights catastrophe”, the UN’s top human rights official has warned in the run-up to the scheduled start of the trial of Myanmar’s ousted leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who faces criminal charges that could lead to decades in prison.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who previously spent a total of 15 years in detention at the behest of Myanmar’s generals and is widely revered as a symbol of the country’s yearning for democracy, is expected to appear in court in Naypyidaw on Monday.
Continue reading...G7 leaders in Cornwall – in pictures
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
Continue reading...Arlene Foster bows out with smiles and Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life
Northern Ireland’s first minister says goodbye at British-Irish Council summit in County Fermanagh
Arlene Foster made her swansong as Northern Ireland’s first minister much as she began it five years ago – with smiles, good wishes and upbeat sentiments.
She bowed out on Friday on a big stage – a British-Irish Council summit – in the Lough Erne resort in her native county, Fermanagh.
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