G7

Joe Biden departs Washington early on June 9 on the first foreign trip of his presidency, launching an intense series of summits with G7, European and NATO partners before a tense face-to-face with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Biden, 78, heads from the White House first to Britain ahead of a G7 summit in a Cornish seaside resort from Friday to Sunday.

The economies of rich countries will shrink by twice as much as they did in the Covid-19 crisis if they fail to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions, according to research.

Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Friday in a critical display of Moscow's support for Lukashenko's regime, a day after the UN civil aviation agency announced it would investigate Sunday's diversion of a Ryanair plane and the arrest of a journalist on board.

More than 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered in at least 107 countries and territories, according to an AFP count based on official sources on Feb. 20.    

In total 201,042,149 doses had been given worldwide by 1000 GMT - a figure that does not include the latest data from China and Russia, who have stopped making their progress public in recent days.    

Germany is donating an additional 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) to boost the rollout of vaccines in the world's poorest countries, the finance minister said on Feb. 19, increasing an earlier contribution of 600 million euros.

The lower house of Italy's parliament voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to ratify former European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi as prime minister amid the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst economic slump since World War II.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on every country to declare a "climate emergency" on Dec. 12, as world leaders marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord made mostly incremental pledges relative to the scale of the crisis.   

Floyd is just one of many U.S. citizens who die each year during police action, and statistics show that U.S. police shoot, arrest, and imprison more people than in other developed countries.

Eurozone finance ministers hope to agree on Friday on the final details of credit lines from the ESM bailout fund for governments in need of cheap cash to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, so that the money can be available from June.

This pandemic has circled the earth in a very short period with unprecedented challenges for the health care systems as well as a dramatic socio-economic impact in Europe and the whole world.