US President Joe Biden said it was another reminder to Russia “that we’re not backing down”, but in Moscow President Vladimir Putin said the move was “theft” which would “not go unpunished”.

Also at the G7 summit in Italy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Mr Biden signed a 10-year bilateral security deal between Ukraine and the US, hailed by Kyiv as “historic”.

The agreement envisages US military and training aid to Ukraine – but it does not commit Washington to send troops to fight for its ally.

According to the White House, the security deal means Washington and Kyiv will work to build and maintain Ukraine’s defence and deterrence capability, bolster the country’s defence industrial base, and support economic recovery and energy security.

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cllldqyg19ro#

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Italy took over the rotating presidency of the Group of Seven (G7), which includes the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy, at the start of January.

It will host numerous ministerial meetings throughout the year, including a leaders’ summit in June.

However, Meloni said she wanted to hold a special session before June focused on AI.

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Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2024/01/africa-ai-top-priorities-in-g7-summit-for-italy-meloni/

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Promoting safe, secure, and trustworthy AI worldwide

The G7’s guiding principles have a clear mission: to promote the safe, secure, and trustworthy development of AI on a global scale. While recognizing the tremendous potential for innovation that AI offers, the G7 emphasizes the importance of ensuring that these technologies do not undermine democratic values, facilitate terrorism, or pose substantial risks to human rights.

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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/g7-unveils-guiding-principles-for-ai/

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Russia is exporting “more oil than ever” despite Western attempts to cut off one of Moscow’s economic lifelines and despite new tools and technologies that make it harder to hide energy shipments, according to analysts and observers.  Some governments, it seems, are determined to buy Russia’s oil even if they don’t support its war on Ukraine.

Robin Brooks and his colleagues at the Institute of International Finance, or IFF, built a database to track the movement of oil tankers out of Russian ports. That’s not as easy as it sounds because those tankers “are registered and flagged all over the place,” to hide their actual ownership, according to an August 25 briefing note from the association obtained by Defense One. “We trace the ultimate owner through shell companies as needed, which provides some perspective on who has been helping to ship Russian oil around the world,” the note says. “The conclusion from this work is that tanker capacity out of Russia has been robust overall.”

Brooks, the IIF’s chief economist, put it more directly on Twitter: “Russia is exporting more crude than ever.”

That may come as a surprise. Many Western oil companies ditched Russian crude after the Kremlin launched its illegal offensive on Ukraine in February. Energy prices soared past $120 a barrel; many speculated that the price could hit $150 by year’s end.

But the global benchmark price for crude oil has fallen back to $90 a barrel—and Russia is selling it for about 20 percent less. China, India, and even NATO member Turkey are buying more Russian oil than ever. Now U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is pushing G7 nations, which together comprise about 30 percent of the global economy, to place a price cap on Russian oil, which she says would squeeze Moscow and keep global energy prices in check.

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Source: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2022/09/russian-oil-exports-rise-governments-and-shipping-companies-play-cat-and-mouse/376720/

The post As Russian Oil Exports Rise, Governments and Shipping Companies Play Cat-and-Mouse first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Western sanctions already had the perverse effect of increasing the energy profits financing Russia’s war in Ukraine — and the G7’s new plan to fix that by capping prices on Russian oil could also backfire.

On Tuesday leaders of the world’s advanced democracies put forward an idea that looks good on paper: Convince countries which so far haven’t been willing to boycott Russian oil to at least gang up and agree to only buy it at rock-bottom prices.

Moscow gets less cash, willing buyers still get cheap crude, and the overall global oil supply doesn’t shrink, meaning energy prices don’t spike.
G7 heads insist the price cap will punish Russia for invading its neighbor.

“We are working to make sure Russia does not exploit its position as an energy producer to profit from its aggression at the expense of vulnerable countries,” the G7 statement reads.

But such a scheme would be complicated to set up and onerous to enforce.

The idea is to allow Russia to earn enough to continue exporting, but too little to fund its war machine. Price cap proposals range from a few dollars above the so-called “break-even price” it costs Russia to produce a barrel of oil — which averages around $42, but for certain oil fields is as low as $10 — to using an average of last year’s global oil price of around $70 per barrel.

For comparison, the global benchmark Brent crude is currently around $112 per barrel, while Russian Urals crude trades at a $35 discount.

Making the cap work isn’t as simple as setting a price — it would involve dealing with insurance markets, oil distribution chains and a hefty dose of diplomacy with big buyers like India and China.

There’s also the risk of unintended consequences. Over the past four months, Western leaders have discovered that declaring Russian barrels off-limits — or just threatening to do so — has caused crude prices to skyrocket in anticipation of reduced global supply, leading to economic pain for countries respecting the ban.

Meanwhile, less-scrupulous buyers — notably India and China— have gotten the benefit of a discount on the shunned Russian barrels, while Moscow raked in record profits by selling less oil but at a higher overall price.

A cap could even make authorized cheap Russian oil a more highly sought-after commodity, which runs counter to the idea of shunning Moscow until it pulls out of Ukraine.

“Once you put a cap on Russian oil then you’re actually saying it’s not illicit, it’s legal, there’s no consequences for buying Russian,” said Brenda Shaffer, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and energy professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. “And if the price is lower, it’s the most attractive in the market and suddenly Russia is the darling of the ball everyone wants to dance with.”

Targeting tankers
It wouldn’t be enough to require open energy exchanges to sell Russian crude at the mandated price, because buyers and sellers could simply transact for Russian crude privately via confidential contracts.

That’s why G7 leaders are focusing on a “comprehensive prohibition of all services, which enable transportation of Russian seaborne crude oil and petroleum products globally, unless the oil is purchased at or below a price to be agreed in consultation with international partners,” the statement reads.

A senior EU official said the measure would target the finance, insurance and transportation of oil.

That would mean forbidding shipping insurers, the vast majority of which are in the EU and U.K., from extending protection to Russian oil cargoes.

“The way these crude purchases are transacted is that typically, a buyer doesn’t shell out $100 million for a cargo purchase — they put down a bit of a deposit themselves but the rest is provided by a bank in the form of a credit note,” said Ajay Parmar, senior oil market analyst with ICIS.

Banks won’t issue that credit note if the cargo isn’t fully insured.

“And if you go to London for insurance and they say, ‘Oh it’s Russian crude, I can only insure it by X amount,’ a buyer is not going to be willing to pay above the price per barrel that it can get insurance on because otherwise it is at massive financial risk,” Parmar added.

Simone Tagliapietra, senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels, warned of the possibility of a black insurance market, where the insurer “gets a piece of paper corresponding to the cap, but in reality the buyer pays the Russians into a separate bank account somewhere to get the oil.”

Market meddling
But even if all goes well, there’s still the matter of allocating the heavily discounted oil.

“Let’s say there’s this price cap of X, and it actually works — which buyers get access to this cheap Russian crude and which buyers have to go off and still pay the market price? How does that get decided?” asked Laurent Ruseckas, executive director at S&P Global Global Commodity Insights. “Or, if you’re selling this capped crude oil at the price that’s still being set by the market, that’s a huge margin and a lot of money. Who’s going to make a lot of money? I just think it doesn’t fit easily with normal market principles.”

There has been talk of using such profits to set up an aid fund for Ukraine — but a major obstacle to the price cap’s success will be getting buyers of Russian crude — notably India and China— to participate in the scheme.

The senior EU official acknowledged the price cap only “works under certain conditions: if it’s applied globally, if it’s comprehensive, if you have those who control the markets [on board] … China is quite an important actor.”

Parmar said India appears more willing to play along, but China “has not been willing to engage so far, and is obviously pretty unlikely to be joining in on any agreement with the West.”

That would lead to a three-tier marketplace, according to the Atlantic Council’s Shaffer. Buyers would choose between the normal global benchmark price, a low authorized Russian crude price, and what Shaffer called a “gray market” price for illicit Russian barrels at an intermediate price, delivered and paid for using subterfuge tactics perfected by Iran and Venezuela to obscure the origin of the oil.

David Herszenhorn and Victor Jack contributed reporting.

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/g7-olaf-scholz-germany-summit-russia-ukraine-war-to-cap-the-price-of-russian-oil/

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces new lockdown measures in the UK parliament. Photo: House of Commons/PA Wire

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson put England on notice that the national lockdown will continue for at least another six weeks, with schools staying closed and new border quarantine rules coming into force.

A day after the British death toll passed 100,000, Mr Johnson said his government will review the impact of pandemic measures and the effectiveness of the vaccine programme in mid-February.

But the soonest restrictions could begin to be eased and schools fully reopened is March 8, he said, and some rules will be tightened.

In an attempt to stop dangerous mutant strains of the virus entering the UK, new 10-day hotel quarantine measures will be imposed on all passengers arriving from Covid hot spots such as South America, South Africa and Portugal.

‘It wasn’t bad luck’: Labour leader Keir Starmer. Photo: House of Commons/PA

“Everyone yearns to know how much longer we must endure these restrictions, with all their consequences for jobs, livelihoods and most tragically of all, the life chances of our children,” Mr Johnson told Parliament. “We will not persist for a day longer than is necessary, but nor can we relax too soon.”

“We have one of the highest death rates in the world,” said Labour Party and opposition leader Keir Starmer. “The truth is this was not inevitable, it wasn’t just bad luck. It’s the result of a huge number of mistakes by the prime minister during the course of this pandemic.”

Mr Johnson rejected a call from Tory colleague Steve Brine to consider opening some schools before March 8. “This is about as fast as we think we can prudently go,” the prime minister said. While the lockdown appears to have curbed the spread of infections, “we do not yet have enough data to know exactly how soon it will be safe to reopen our society and economy,” he said.

The UK is three weeks into its third national lockdown, with tens of millions of workers ordered to stay home. Since then, the government has committed almost £300bn (€340bn) to emergency support for the economy.

Britain has suffered the fifth-highest death toll in the world and the heaviest economic hit of any G7 nation.

In recent weeks, Mr Johnson’s administration has focused on a mass vaccination programme that aims to provide shots to the 15 million most vulnerable people and carers by February 15. Once that goal has been achieved, ministers will consider if and how restrictions can safely begin to be eased.

“We remain in a perilous situation,” Mr Johnson said. The spread of a more contagious and potentially more deadly new strain had set back the government’s ambitions for reopening the economy in the spring, he said.

Ministers have been debating border measures including quarantining all arrivals in hotels. In the end, the prime minister announced a more limited policy aimed at arrivals from specific countries thought to be most at risk of carrying a new variant of the disease.

Extra police will be stationed at ports and airports to stop Britons leaving the UK to go on holiday or for any other non-essential reason, Home Secretary Priti Patel said. “Anyone who does not have a valid reason for travel will be directed to return home.”

Source: https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/uk-death-toll-hits-100000-as-johnson-locks-down-to-march-40020883.html

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Quebec City (CNN)President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia should be reinstated to a leading group of industrialized nations ahead of his visit to the G7 summit this weekend.

CNN’s Elise Labott, Matt Wells, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Hilary McGann contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/politics/russia-g7/index.html

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