World leaders have arrived in Cornwall for this weekend’s G7 summit, as Boris Johnson looks to strike deals on COVID vaccines, girls’ education and the environment.
In one of the most high-profile moments of his premiership so far, the prime minister will chair meetings of the world’s leading democracies at Carbis Bay.
Although world leaders will enjoy some downtime during their stay – including a beach BBQ and toasted marshmallows over fire pits – their first in-person summit for almost two years will see them focus on the global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
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As well as hoping to sidestep any fresh turmoil over lingering Brexit disputes, Mr Johnson wants this weekend to see G7 nations commit to providing one billion doses of COVID vaccines to developing countries as part of a bid to vaccinate the entire world by the end of next year.
In an article setting out his agenda for the summit, the prime minister will also set out his ambition for a new global pandemic surveillance network, as well as an effort to accelerate the development of vaccines, treatments and tests for any new virus from 300 to 100 days.
Australia’s Scott Morrison, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and South Korea‘s Moon Jae-in will join the G7 talks on future pandemic preparedness as summit guests on Saturday, while India’s Narendra Modi will join discussions via video link.
Mr Johnson also wants the weekend to see G7 leaders commit to tackling the “moral outrage” of millions of girls around the world being denied an education.
“Our shared goal must be to get another 40 million girls into school by 2025,” he said.
“I will ask the G7 and our guests to contribute more towards the Global Partnership for Education’s target of raising $5bn (£3.5bn) for schools in the developing world.”
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What is the G7?
One subject on which Mr Johnson will be hoping to avoid headlines during the G7 summit is the continuing row over post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.
The prime minister is set to hold talks with the EU‘s Ms von der Leyen and Mr Michel on the sidelines of the summit, with the UK and the bloc remaining at a stand-off over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Ahead of the official start of the G7 summit, French President Emmanuel Macron pointedly shared an image of himself, Mrs Merkel, Mr Draghi and the two EU presidents sat at a table together.
“As always, the same union, the same determination to act, the same enthusiasm! The G7 can begin,” Mr Macron posted on Twitter.
On Thursday, Mr Johnson said he and Mr Biden were in “complete harmony” over Northern Ireland, despite earlier reports the US had lodged a formal diplomatic protest with the UK over the dispute.
Ahead of the UK hosting the COP26 climate change summit later this year, environmental issues will also be a large part of discussions over the weekend.
Prince Charles is hosting a reception on Friday for the G7 leaders and CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies to discuss how the private sector can work with governments to tackle the climate emergency.
And Sunday’s final talks will see leaders addressed via a pre-recorded video from Sir David Attenborough.
The prime minister wants G7 nations to promise to halve their carbon emissions by 2030, in order to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees.
Staff of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have been told to stay home for a further day, Sky News understands, as the carmaker struggles to recover from a cyber attack.
Employees of the British company have now been told to remain off work until Wednesday. Previously, workers were directed not to return until Tuesday.
A decision on whether to bring staff back or not is being taken day by day, Sky News understands.
Its retail activities were also impacted, but there was no evidence at the time that “any customer data has been stolen”, though JLR is reported to have flagged the risk of a data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Thousands of production staff at the UK’s largest car manufacturing sites in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands are still being paid.
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Jaguar Land Rover is the UK’s latest major company to face a cyber incident, after Marks & Spencer had its operations disrupted for months.
After an attack over Easter, the high street chain only resumed click and collect services in August.
Attacks on the Co-op and Harrods were detected more swiftly, and had less of an impact.
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Jaguar Land Rover paused shipments to the US in April in response to President Trump’s new tariffs. A US-UK deal was subsequently agreed.
Reporting from The Sunday Times said JLR operations could be disrupted for “most of September” or worse.
On Wednesday, a group of English-speaking hackers claimed responsibility for the JLR attack via a Telegram platform called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an amalgamation of the names of hacking groups Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.
Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks.
JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off staff, impacting roughly 6,000 workers.
A spokesperson for JLR said on Monday: “We continue to work around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner.
“We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists and alongside law enforcement.
“We are very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused. Our retail partners remain open and we will continue to provide further updates.”
The boss of Nvidia, the chipmaker which has become the world’s most valuable public company, is among the corporate chiefs lining up to accompany President Donald Trump on next week’s state visit to the UK.
Sky News has learnt that Jensen Huang, the Nvidia chief executive who has presided over the stratospheric rise in its valuation to more than $4trn, is expected to attend a state banquet at Windsor Castle hosted by King Charles III during the trip.
Sources said on Monday that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI; Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive of asset management behemoth BlackRock; and Stephen Schwarzman, the boss of private equity giant Blackstone, were also expected to be among the attendees.
Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, has also been invited and may attend the state banquet, the sources added, while Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan chief, is understood to be unable to make the trip to Britain because of existing diary commitments.
The attendance of figures such as Mr Huang and, potentially, Mr Altman, will fuel expectations that a wave of corporate deals and investments in the UK will be unveiled during President Trump’s unprecedented second state visit.
Closer collaboration between the two countries’ nuclear power industries is expected to be one of the main focal points of trade-related discussions during the three-day trip, as well as artificial intelligence and the broader technology industry.
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President Trump’s visit will, however, come amid tensions over his tariff regime, with continuing uncertainty about the impact on British manufacturing sectors, including steel.
There are also continuing tensions between the UK government and major drugmakers over pricing, with the US administration pressuring pharmaceutical companies to slash the price of prescription medicines in the US.
An Nvidia spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on our executives’ travel schedules.”
BlackRock, Blackstone, Apple and JP Morgan declined to comment, while OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Once upon a time if folks wanted to pinpoint the most economically-vulnerable country in Europe – the one most likely to face a crisis – they would invariably point to Greece or to Italy.
They were the nations with the eye-waveringly high bond yields, signalling how reluctant financiers were to lend them money.
Today, however, all of that has changed. The country invariably highlighted as Europe’s problem child is France.
Indeed, look at the interest rates investors charge European nations and France faces even higher interest rates than Greece.
And these economic travails are central to understanding the political difficulties France is facing right now, with one prime minister after another resigning in the face of a parliamentary setback.
It mostly comes back to the state of the public finances. France’s deficit is among the highest in the developed world right now.
Everyone spent enormous sums during the pandemic. But France has struggled, more than nearly everyone else, to bring its spending back down and, hence, to reduce its deficit. Successive budget plans have been announced and then shelved in the face of political resistance.
France’s government spends more, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other developed economy.
The government’s most recent budget plans called for what most people would see as relatively minor spending cuts – barely more than a couple of percentage points off spending, after which France would still be the third biggest spender in the world.
But even these cuts were too controversial for the French people, or rather their politicians.
Yet another prime minister looks likely to fall victim to an unsuccessful bill. Deja vu all over again, you might say.
A deeper issue is that the latest worsening in France’s public finances isn’t just a sign of political resistance, or indeed of a nation that can’t bear to take the unpalatable fiscal medicine others (for instance Greece or the UK) have long been ingesting.
For years, France could rely on a phenomenon many other developed economies couldn’t: strong productivity growth.
The country’s people might not work as many hours as everyone else, but they sure created a lot of economic output when they were at their desks.
However, in recent years, French productivity has disappointed. Indeed, output per hour growth in France has dropped well below other nations, which in turn means less tax revenue and, lo and behold, the deficit gets bigger and bigger.
All of which is why so many people, including Prime Minister Francois Bayrou himself, have warned that France is at risk of a market meltdown.
In a recent speech, he pointed to the example of Liz Truss and her 2022 mini-Budget. Beware the market, he said. You never know how close you are to a crisis.