Good morning,
G7 Britain
President Biden will meet with G7 leaders today in Cornwall England for the G7 leaders meeting, which will see the leaders of Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and UK gathering in person for the first time since the pandemic.
Yesterday the U.S. President and P.M. Boris Johnson signed a new version of the 80-year old “Atlantic Charter” on Thursday, using their first meeting to redefine the Western alliance and accentuate what they said was a growing divide between battered democracies and their autocratic rivals, led by Russia and China.
Johnson played down discussions which took place over N. Ireland and a trade issues that have emerged after Brexit. But Johnson has tried to wiggle out of an agreement with the EU to protect the Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland, and there are real concerns from the likes of French President Macron, that Britain wants to break the long negotiated Northern Ireland protocol which was designed to protect seamless trade between Northern Ireland, no longer in the EU, and Ireland which is.
The French president last night ramped up the pressure on Boris Johnson over the Northern Ireland protocol by insisting “nothing is negotiable” as the G7 summit of world leaders risked being overshadowed by the protocol issue.
Meantime the G7 is to announce it will ramp up vaccine distribution to supply 1 billion vaccines to nations around the world.
What' seems paramount on the Biden agenda is to show unity with the G7 and then with NATO, all leading to his meeting with President Putin next week.
Navalny
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption group vowed Thursday to fight on after a court branded it an "extremist" organization and ordered its closure.
How it can do that is another matter because most of its offices across Russia have been closed by Putin’s regime and many of Navalny’s organizers have been arrested.
Western countries and the European Union were quick to condemn Wednesday's late-night ruling, but Russian officials doubled down, describing Navalny as an agent collaborating with Washington.
FBI Calls Capitol Riot “Domestic Terrorism”
FBI Director Christopher Wray told a House Judiciary Committee his agency views the attack on the Capitol an act of domestic terrorism and more charges are on the way.
The agency is investigating the attack through its Joint Terrorism Task Force, and “I would expect to see more charges, and some of them may be more serious charges”, Mr Wray said.
The director said of Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen presidential election. “We did not find evidence of fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election” and he would not say if charges are expected against Trump himself.
Ethiopia Famine Looms
There have been several horrible famines in Ethiopia all of them because of conflict. More than 350,000 people in embattled Tigray are gravely threatened by famine, with most of the province's 5.5 million people in need of food aid,
This crisis is said to be the worst since the famine that gripped Somalia from 2010 to 2012 killed more than a-quarter-of-a-million Somalis — more than half of them children.
The UN is saying 2 million people could easily starve without aid.
In the early 90’s as a reporter for CTV Canada, I covered the famine in Somalia when President Clinton deployed U.S. marines to open up the food lines blocked by warlords who demanded money at check points across the country, or people with no food be damned. This is a dire situation and in the pandemic will the UN be able to assist?
This is a quick write through this morning as I am watching the G7 meeting and will write more this weekend.
Please share this letter and help us grow! And have a good weekend.
Dana
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/world/europe/biden-johnson-atlantic-charter.html
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/10/macron-warns-johnson-nothing-is-negotiable-over-northern-ireland-protocol
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/10/capitol-attack-fbi-christopher-wray-congress
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/10/navalny-team-vows-to-fight-on-after-extremism-ruling-a74187
https://www.dw.com/en/un-says-350000-face-famine-in-tigray-millions-in-danger/a-57850781