France's interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, has called on the US for increased security assistance in dealing with the ongoing threat posed by Islamist terrorism, particularly in advance of next year's Olympic Games in Paris. Darmanin warned of the risk of a Bataclan-style attack or stabbings at bakeries from operatives infiltrating France for terror attacks. He urged greater US-French collaboration on intelligence, cautioning that Sunni terrorism remains the "primary risk".
The Group of Seven (G7) summit held in Hiroshima this week has focused on the Ukraine crisis, as well as the growth of China and the associated rising threat to Taiwan. The discussions have incorporated a range of issues, including energy and economic security and supply chains. The attendance of nations such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia has ensured a focus on developing countries. Earlier this week, speaking at the summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that the creation of a system focused on food security, particularly for “marginal farmers” must be given priority, and suggested that there was a need to strengthen global “fertilizer supply chains” while curtailing “the expansionist mindset controlling fertilizer resources.” The summit has also covered artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons and non-proliferation, and climate change. It had been hoped that discussion of global health issues would also feature. The G7 comprises Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. The summit concludes today.
John Podesta, adviser to President Joe Biden and ex-adviser to President Barack Obama, is tasked with unravelling an obstacle to the US's transition to carbon-free electricity – a bureaucratic permitting process for renewable energy projects. Podesta argues that environmentalists will have to accept the need for oil and gas production in the short term, or risk slowing the pace of change. A recent Brookings Institution analysis of federal data found that transmission lines can take up to seven years to be permitted, while natural gas pipelines can take less than half that time. Biden's proposed $1tn infrastructure bill, which has yet to pass through the Senate, includes measures to shorten federal permitting times.
Negotiations between the White House and House Republicans over raising the borrowing limit came to a standstill heading into a weekend during which US President Joe Biden was attending a meeting of global leaders in Japan. The sides face a deadline as soon as 1 June to raise the spending limit, with Republicans demanding spending cuts the Democrats oppose. Talks briefly resumed on Saturday morning only to be interrupted later in the day. The market soured as negotiations hit pause, with experts warning that even the threat of a debt default could spark a recession.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was welcomed to Hiroshima for a visit to the G7 summit by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who said that the trip demonstrates how, despite Russian aggression, freedom and sovereignty will never succumb. Additionally, Joe Biden has allowed allies to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and Britain is due to begin training Ukrainian pilots to boost their combat air capabilities within the next two months. Russia has warned the West that if it supplies the jets, it will be taking "colossal risks".
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has caused China to delay its ambition to invade Taiwan. Speaking at the Financial Times Weekend Festival in Washington, Clinton offered assessments on a range of subjects including Joe Biden’s re-election, US-China relations and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Clinton warned that Donald Trump's re-election in 2024 would “spell the end of democracy” in the US and the “end of Ukraine”. She also described Putin as “complicated, Messianic, narcissistic authoritarian” whose intention was to pull the US out of NATO if Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Clinton added that she no longer believes China’s President Xi will make a move on Taiwan within three or four years as previously expected. Clinton urged voters to judge Biden on his record rather than his age. She also endorsed Biden’s penultimate move to push the Democratic National Committee and overhaul the party’s nominating process in the wake of the 2020 Iowa caucuses marked by delayed results due to a faulty vote-counting app.
Australian opposition leader Anthony Albanese was left to plan the G7 summit on his own after US President Joe Biden cancelled his scheduled appearance at the meeting. Biden cited negotiations with Congress over the US government debt ceiling as his reason for non-attendance. The late timing of the cancellation has drawn criticism from Albanese, and comedienne Zoe Coombs Marr, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, has used the event to highlight the importance of avoiding flakiness in business as well as in social settings.
The leaders of Japan and South Korea have laid flowers at a memorial for Korean atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima. This move follows steps by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to resolve the countries' disputes over Japan's 1910-1945 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula, in order to work more closely with the US to avoid threats from North Korea. Japan is seen as using the joint visit by Kishida and Yoon to acknowledge historical relations between the countries and highlight the devastating effects of nuclear war.
The White House and Republicans have engaged in mutual recrimination over proposals to raise the US debt limit, with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy claiming the White House has backtracked in talks. It is believed that agreement is needed this week for the government to keep making payments, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned payments could stop from 1 June. Stocks fell on Friday after the Republicans walked out of talks. McCarthy said he doesn't expect any progress until President Joe Biden returns in person from the G7 summit. The Democrats want to avoid making all of the spending cuts demanded by Republicans.
The King Island brown thornbill is one of the most likely Australian species to become extinct in the near future, according to a 2018 paper predicting which birds and mammals are at imminent risk of such an event. At present, just approximately 200 of the birds are thought to exist, living in scattered remnant areas of wet eucalypt forests on the island of their namesake, just south of Tasmania. The extent of any genetic diversity in the current population is unknown. Although in 2019 the Australian government pledged to prevent extinctions as part of its Threatened Species Action Plan, the rate of global extinctions is currently 1,000 times the background rate. The Australian eastern quoll was declared extinct due to climate change in 2016, and a recent study from the Australian National University suggested that scientists’ focus on very endangered birds that are difficult to observe, and which often occur in wild and rugged terrain, means that many other Australian species are on the brink of extinction.
US Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has said debt ceiling talks “cannot move forward until the president can get back in the country”, referring to Joe Biden’s return from the G7 summit in Japan late on Sunday. The limit on government borrowing must be raised by 1 June or Washington faces an unprecedented default on US debt, which could trigger economic disruption and global market turmoil. Republicans insist on deep spending cuts over 10 years to support such a rise, while Democrats would accept much more limited budgetary cuts over a shorter period.
The G7 summit in Hiroshima has ended with discussions focusing on the Ukrainian war and the dominance of China. They also focused on challenges facing developing economies, including Brazil, Vietnam, Comoros and India. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy made headlines during his time the summit. He was present in the session on Ukraine where it was revealed he had spoken with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. His itinerary for the rest of the day included visiting the Peace Memorial Park and the museum in Hiroshima to remember the atomic bombing of the city. Zelenskyy continues to make the rounds of G-7 leaders. Earlier on the second day of the summit, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the president on the margins of the summit for the first time since Russia's invasion of the Ukraine and shared images of their encounter to his Twitter page.
The final day of the Group of Seven (G7) summit has passed in Hiroshima, with delegates including Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelenskyy discussing the war, China’s dominance and the issues faced by the Global South. Joining the leaders were a number of key Asia-Pacific figures such as the Indian, South Korean, Indonesian and Australian prime ministers. The triennial met throughout the summit, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took some time off to visit Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park and Museum. President Joe Biden met with Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister for talks. The G7 laid out a common de-risking path on China, while India's Narendra Modi commented that he would “amplify concerns of the Global South” at the summit.
The G7 leaders accused China of economic coercion, military expansion, breaches of the Vienna Convention, human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine. The G7 devoted an entire section about China and mentioned it 20 times. In contrast, the Quad did not mention China at least once in its 3,000-word statement. However, the G7's focus on China demonstrates the Quad's success in achieving its objectives. The Quad countries have diverse interests, but they agree on managing the rise of China. The Quad's campaign has driven awareness of Beijing's ambitions since 2018.
Leaders from the Quad - the US, Japan, India, and Australia - caused the flagship dinner at the G7 summit to be delayed due to an important meeting among the leaders in Hiroshima. The Quad aims to contain China's ambitions, however, the strongest lines on Beijing of this year’s tandem summits did not come from the group, but from the G7. The Quad did not mention China once in its 3000-word statement, while the G7 devoted an entire section to Beijing and mentioned China 20 times, accusing China of distorting the global economy, human rights abuses, and enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine by not condemning it.
Detente seems to be in the air between China and America according to an opinion piece in Bloomberg. It describes several significant breakthroughs in meetings between Chinese and American officials, a far cry from the frosty silence of recent times. Perhaps most poignantly, President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently gave a speech at The Brookings Institute where he appeared to be intent on making Cold War II less chilly. Moreover, the opinion piece argues that the Chinese economy may not live up to its great expectations, showing some signs of headwinds with China’s dire demographic prospects and over-leveraged and depressed real estate sector.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has pushed for global unity and clear leadership in the face of Russia's aggression as he attended the G7 summit in Hiroshima. Using the opportunity to confront India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and Brazil's President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who have maintained diplomatic ties with Moscow, Zelenskyy raised his 10-point plan to end the Ukraine conflict. The US has been a significant backer of Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in 2014, with the Biden administration unveiling a new $375m arms package for Ukraine to aid it in its defence against Russian aggression.
The leader of a Russian mercenary group has claimed it captured Ukrainian city Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk-Oblast region, however, Ukraine continues to dispute this. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his private army captured the city on Saturday and that his soldiers would create the "necessary defence lines" before handing the city over to Russian soldiers in four days. Reports from the city yesterday indicated that Ukrainian forces were said to have partly encircled the city along the flanks and still part control of it.
Ukraine has denied claims by Russia that it has captured Bakhmut, a key battle city in Ukraine’s east, despite Russian president Vladimir Putin congratulating his troops on the alleged capture. Kyiv has denied the city had been captured, and it was suggested that there was confusion on 22 May amid reports that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared to have confirmed the city had been captured by Russia while speaking at the G7 summit, but his spokesman later clarified that he had not said so. Speaking alongside US President Joe Biden in Hiroshima, Japan, Zelensky said the Russians had destroyed "everything" in Bakhmut. "You have to understand that there is nothing," he added. "For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts. There is nothing in this place."
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had posed with fighters on Saturday after claiming to have captured the city. Ukraine denied the city had been taken but said the situation was “critical”. but warned that the situation was "critical". However, it has emerged that Ukrainian troops are partly encircling Bakhmut in the form of a semi-circle and still hold a part of the city, with its deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar saying that Ukrainian troops are continuing their advances along Bakhmut’s outskirts and are still defending industrial and infrastructure facilities in Bakhmut as well as a private sector of the city.
Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, with fighting breaking out in the east of Ukraine between Ukrainian troops and separatists backed by Moscow. Russian troops have been regularly accused of supporting the rebels in the conflict and tensions have remained high since a ceasefire was agreed in July 2020, with several border skirmishes taking place, a build-up of Russian forces near the Ukraine border and Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The Ukraine conflict was at the forefront of G7 meetings in Hiroshima, Japan, over the weekend. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among the invitees to the meetings, which discussed China's growing dominance and issues affecting the so-called "Global South." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed the need for a "resilient and diversified" approach to supply chains, while UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak commented on the summit's significance for consolidating peace. Meanwhile, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for the issue of nuclear weapons to be discussed openly, and said it was "historically significant" for the G7 leaders visiting the Peace Memorial Museum to publish a focus on nuclear disarmament – known as the Hiroshima Vision. The G7 summit heralded a number of warm bilateral meetings, concluding with talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on the conflict on Sunday afternoon.
