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    Energy crisis: Britain leans on gas shipments from Qatar to ease supply squeeze

    Britain has tapped Qatar as an informal natural gas supplier of last resort in the face of soaring gas prices, The Independent has learned, after foreign secretary Liz Truss visited the Gulf nation in October.Pressure to ensure gas supply has mounted as prices have risen at record rates across the EU and UK. Pandemic production disruption, lack of UK storage capacity and slimmer stores in major EU economies have left many countries scrambling to top up supplies of natural gas this winter.Energy suppliers this week described soaring gas prices as a “national crisis” and industry estimates suggest that consumers could face a doubling of energy bills when the price cap is reviewed in April. The business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, along with the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) and energy suppliers, was set to continue crisis talks this week after failing to reach a solution.Two sources familiar with the talks have suggested nothing short of a radical intervention – such as scrapping VAT or green levies – will be enough to mitigate the hit to households. The Europe-wide energy crunch has seen Serbia curb supplies to consumers, and last week, Kosovo’s distribution system operator announced it would introduce rolling two-hour blackouts to conserve energy from Thursday. Major European economies France and Germany are also grappling with energy price spikes while the UK faces a twin problem of cost and safeguarding supply. Against a backdrop of diminished capacity to store gas domestically, the UK brokered an informal arrangement with Qatar to keep gas deliveries flowing, as it prepares for a full strategic partnership agreement in 2022.The government has denied that Qatar is performing a “formal” role as a supplier of last resort. But sources familiar with shipments into the Isle of Grain terminal near London, and the QatarEnergy co-owned South Hook LNG terminal in Wales, believe there has been an increase in shipments since MsTruss visited the gulf state for talks in October.The sources say these shipments are in addition to those agreed by contracts in place earlier in 2021.This effort is aimed at reducing dependence on Norway and the US. “It avoids putting our eggs in too few baskets,” according to a source with knowledge of the Qatar talks. Existing commercial relationships between Qatar and UK-based buyers, such as Centrica, make it easier for the government to encourage greater supply without saying that it has directly requested additional shipments, The Independent understands.Mr Kwarteng is also understood to have been party to some discussions with Qatari counterparts in recent months. A government spokesperson said: “Qatar continues to be a supplier of liquefied natural gas to UK buyers but is not a formal supplier of last resort and we have not requested or secured any additional shipments from the Qatari government.” Britain’s gas supply remains “absolutely secure” with enough delivery capacity to meet demand, the spokesperson insisted.Centrica declined to comment, while the government of Qatar did not respond to a request for comment. More

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    More countries ‘trying to coerce women to have more children’, report finds

    More countries are adopting policies that coerce women into having more children, a report has found.Around three in ten nations across the globe now have pronatalist policies that encourage citizens to have more children, according to charity Population Matters.Researchers, who examined data from the United Nations, noted a substantial rise from the ten per cent of nations that enacted such policies in 1976.The paper highlighted examples of pronatalism being pursued in countries such as Turkey, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Iran and China.However, it also warned politicians in the US and Germany are beginning to champion parallel policies.Monica Scigliano, the report’s author, said: “When people think of coercive population policy, their minds often go to examples like China and India, in which leaders wanted to limit population growth by forcing women to have fewer children.“Now, however, with birth rates declining and in some cases emigration reversing population trends, that has changed.“As people continue to choose smaller families, more governments across the world are resorting to coercive tactics, depriving people of their reproductive rights in order to increase their populations.”Ms Scigliano, a policy adviser, said nationalism can spawn a “toxic brand of pronatalism” which signifies an “almost inevitable threat to sexual and reproductive health and rights”.Researchers warned nationalist governments are infringing on women’s reproductive and sexual freedom rights – suggesting “right-wing, populist and nationalist administrations are stigmatising women who choose to have smaller families as unpatriotic”.The proponents of pronatalist policies sometimes believe in the deeply racist and xenophobic “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory which maintains Christian and European populations and their culture will be eradicated due to immigrants from Muslim countries relocating overseas to escape human rights abuses.The report noted Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, has proposed “a comprehensive agreement with Hungarian women” to bear more children. The leader promotes debt-free education for women but only if they have at least three children.He has also pledged that women who give birth to four or more children need not ever pay income tax again.“We want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender,” Mr Orban has previously said.Researchers also drew attention to pronatalist policies in Poland where a near-total abortion ban was enacted last October – further tightening the nation’s already highly restrictive abortion laws and triggering the largest protests in the country since the collapse of communism.Under the new laws, it is now illegal to have an abortion in cases where there are foetal defects. Before that, although terminating a pregnancy has long been illegal in Poland, foetal abnormalities were one of the exceptions where an abortion was permitted, along with cases of rape, incest, or where the mother’s life is at risk.Before the stringent new abortion rules were rolled out, some 98 per cent of the tiny number of legal abortions which occurred in the predominantly Catholic nation were cases of foetal defects.Campaigners have blamed the new for the recent death of a 30-year-old pregnant woman, named only as Izabela, who died after she was blocked from having an emergency operation as doctors said they had to wait until they could stop hearing her baby’s heartbeat.Antonina Lewandowska, an abortion rights campaigner who is one of the report’s authors, said anti-abortion campaigners in Poland forced doctors into “such a state of fear” that they preferred to let Izabela “go into septic shock” than provide her with an abortion earlier on and therefore “save her life”.She said: “They are terrified of prosecution and stigma, as the pro-natalist anti-choice movements would probably eat them alive. On the other hand, there is a group of medical professionals that are rather comfortable with the current situation.“As it lets them argue that medical negligence happens due to that ‘freezing effect’ of an abhorrent law rather than their own incompetence, mistake or deliberate choice to not provide their patients with necessary medical care – an abortion – due to their personal beliefs.“In both cases, it is clear – aggressive, fundamentalist pronatalism paved the way for violating human rights in Poland.”The report is titled Welcome to Gilead, a reference to The Handmaid’s Tale – a 1985 dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood, which is set in a fervently patriarchal, totalitarian state where women are forced to bear children for a governing class of men.Robin Maynard, director of Population Matters, said: “Coercive pronatalism is not simply a manifestation of patriarchy or misogyny but can be a product of political and economic forces entirely indifferent to women, for whom they exist simply as productive or non-productive wombs.“These regimes are instrumentalising women’s bodies to serve nationalistic, economic and patriarchal interests. Violating sexual and reproductive health and rights is never justified. It is imperative we all defend them, wherever they are threatened, and for whatever reason.”The report warned world leaders are anxious women deciding to have fewer children will impede their “economic and political goals”.“Pronatalism is often linked to a restrictive, patriarchal ‘pro-family’ agenda and the promotion of ethnic nationalism, based frequently on religious orthodoxy and hostility to multiculturalism and immigration,” researchers added. More

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    Amid pessimism and mistrust, Iran nuclear talks resume in Vienna after lengthy gap

    After a five-month delay, Tehran and world powers returned to Vienna on Monday to resume talks  to restore the imperiled 2015 deal that limited Iranian nuclear capabilities but were  subsequently torpedoed by Donald Trump.Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Saied Khatibzadeh said Tehran was “firmly determined” to salvage the deal, with US State Department spokesman Ned Price saying last week that Washington sought “a mutual return to compliance” in what will be a seventh round of talks.“We are serious about negotiations and reaching an agreement,” Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a video posted online on Sunday.“Let’s get back into the deal,” US lead negotiator Robert Malley told National Public Radio on Friday. “Let’s do it by closing the remaining issues that were left open in June after six rounds of talks. But let’s hurry up because time is not on our side.”Behind the scenes though, many are sceptical that the deal can be revived.“The Iranians would like the Americans to show goodwill and make accommodations and the Americans would like Iranians to show goodwill,” said Sanam Vakil, Middle East and Iran specialist at Chatham House. “But this five-month pause has widened the misperceptions of each other and this has created a very pessimistic environment.”In the months since Iran, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union last met in the Austrian capital to discuss restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that held the Iranian nuclear programme in check, the ground has shifted significantly.The government in Tehran has changed, with the new hardline administration of President Ebrahim Raisi likely making any negotiations tougher. Iran has upped its programme, expanding its output of nuclear material while stonewalling inspectors seeking more information and access to its sensitive facilities.Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated earlier this month that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was nearly 2,500 kilograms, more than enough to fuel a nuclear warhead or two if Iran were to break out of its treaty obligations and attempt to assemble a bomb.The delay has emboldened the JCPOA’s long-standing opponents. Over the weekend, the regime launched a violent crackdown on farmers and environmental activists peacefully protesting the drying out of a beloved and historic river in the city of Isfahan, highlighting Iran’s grim human rights record and the reputational risks of dealing with the country.American Republicans maintain their staunch opposition to the deal thwarted by their standard-bearer, Trump.  Since the last round of talks, the US administration of President Joseph Biden has grown weaker, with poll numbers sagging and hawkish Republican opponents smelling blood.“The domestic climate in both Iran and the United States can muddy swift progress,” said Ms Vakil.Israeli Prime Minister Lapid was in the United Kingdom on Monday to lobby the government of Boris Johnson to take a tough stance  on Iran and will visit France to press President Emmanuel Macron later this week. Israel worries that the administration of President Joseph Biden could remove some of the crippling sanctions put in place by Trump in exchange for an Iranian suspension of enrichment.“Israel is very disturbed by the willingness to lift the sanctions and allow billions to flow into Iran in exchange for insufficient restrictions in the nuclear sphere,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was quoted as saying during a Cabinet meeting on Sunday.Iran has grown more paranoid, following repeated attacks on its nuclear facilities, presumably by Israel. On Sunday, Mr Lapid and UK foreign secretary Liz Truss penned a joint piece in a UK newspaper declaring a united front against Iran, prompting a furious response from Tehran.“The British foreign secretary writes a joint article on the night ahead of the Vienna talks together with a party that from the very beginning put all efforts to prevent the signing of the JCPOA and its revocation and today, too, is the main opponent to the Vienna talks and the revival of the JCPOA,” Mr Khatibzadeh said. “You come to see that at least some European countries are not coming to Vienna with the will needed for lifting the sanctions.”Adding to the sense of mistrust, the Iranians have refused to meet directly with American counterparts, instead communicating through European intermediaries, while conferring with their Russian and Chinese patrons. Ms Vakil said a lack of direct contacts was complicating the talks. More

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    UK trade talks risk ‘lending legitimacy’ to Brazil’s far-right regime, TUC claims

    The UK risks lending legitimacy to Brazil’s far-right regime in its pursuit of closer trade ties with the country, trade union chief, Frances O’Grady has told the Independent. The warning comes as the UK launched a new export strategy Wednesday. The self-styled “ambitious” plan is aimed at encouraging exports to non-EU markets. It follows reports that show significant costs of new red tape for British traders doing business with the bloc, the UK’s single largest export market.Yet efforts to increase international opportunities for British businesses to compensate for greater trade friction with the EU must not come at the price of ethical standards, said Ms O’Grady, general secretary at the Trades Union Congress (TUC).“Ministers have rushed into trade deals with some of the worst regimes in the world for working people, like Colombia and Turkey. And now it looks like they will do the same with Brazil. “It’s vital our government does not legitimise the far-right Bolsonaro with trade talks on the global stage, especially in the year of an election,” she said, adding: “It’s time for ministers to do the right thing and make it clear that trade talks are off the table while Bolsonaro is still in power.” A new 50-page study from the TUC published Wednesday detailed a host of concerns with Brazil’s government, led by president Jair Bolsonaro. It notes that since the leader took power, four trade unionists have been murdered and strikes have been “violently repressed”.Meanwhile, British officials confirmed to the Independent that the country is currently listed among nations due to commence trade talks with the UK in 2022. The south American country is the eight largest economy in the world, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.The TUC’s report includes research on the numbers of murders within vulnerable groups who have clashed with the Bolsonaro regime. It details 29 murders of environmental activists in 2019, 129 murders of transgender people in 2020 between January and September as well as numerous “political” murders” the TUC said. “The government has published a list of journalists, activists, and social media influencers that it considers hostile to its agenda, and has encouraged its supporters to attack them online,” the report said. It added that trade union leaders face death threats and arbitrary arrest.According to a British government factsheet Brazil is the UK’s 33rd most important trade partner with bilateral trade worth around £5.6bn in the four quarters up to June 2021. While COVID-19 may have warped trade data, official figures suggest that the trade surplus the UK had with Brazil has shrunk over the same period. The UK sold £369m more in goods and services to Brazil than it bought from the country compared to a surplus of £948m in the four quarters to the end of June 2020.The debate over how to align the UK’s commercial interests with environmental and labour standards has become increasingly heated as it moves from securing deals that replicate EU trading terms, towards fresh agreements.“Trade deals can be a vehicle to improve workers’ rights and protections, while providing new jobs and investment for communities that need it most,” Ms O’Grady said. “But the UK government’s trade policy has not put working people first – whether home or away.”The TUC study also comes after environmental groups have also criticized and agreement to halt and reverse deforestation in Brazil and other nations at the UN COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this month. Environmental concerns have also been cited by EU member states who have refused to greenlight the EU’s trade deal with the Mercosur trade bloc of South American countries which includes Brazil.A Government spokesperson said: “We continue to engage with Brazil regularly on trade and we have been clear that more trade will not come at the expense of human rights or the environment.“The UK works to support human rights issues in the Amazon through a variety of mechanisms, including diplomatic channels and programmes to support communities and indigenous peoples.”They added: “We have engaged extensively with Brazil on COP26 and our climate commitments, including on deforestation. We have also worked to secure important net zero commitments from 11 Brazilian states, covering over 60% of Brazil’s emissions.”Environmental campaign group Greenpeace suggested that the lack of a binding timetable for the deforestation measures agreed at COP26 meant it had little value. Carolina Pasquali, executive director at Greenpeace Brazil, said: “There’s a very good reason [president] Jair Bolsonaro felt comfortable signing on to this new deal. It allows another decade of forest destruction and isn’t binding.”She added: “Meanwhile the Amazon is already on the brink and can’t survive years more deforestation. Indigenous peoples are calling for 80 per cent of the Amazon to be protected by 2025, and they’re right, that’s what’s needed. The climate and the natural world can’t afford this deal.” More

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    Merkel’s legacy: A defender of the rule-based international order

    Former president Barack Obama slightly squinted and bit his lip in characteristic fashion as he said: “Now she is all alone,” to his adviser. He had spent three hours alone with Angela Merkel in Hotel Adelon in Berlin. It was late November 2016. Donald Trump had just been elected the 45th president of the US and Obama was worried as he prepared to leave office. Only one individual, he thought, could keep the liberal world order alive while America was taking leave of its geopolitical senses. And that person was the German chancellor.But Merkel had decided not to seek another term after the German federal elections in September 2017. Obama was in the German capital to make her change her mind. He succeeded. Merkel was persuaded that it was her duty to carry on the baton of liberal internationalism, free trade and democracy. At least for the next four years.“I noticed a tear in her eye as we left,” Obama’s speechwriter Ben Rhodes later noted when he recounted the rendezvous between the two leaders. At least, that is the story as told in a fly-on-the-wall account by the editor of newspaper Die Welt. In the next four years, it was Merkel who sought to salvage the Paris climate accord and it was she who maintained the geopolitical pressure on Vladimir Putin when Trump did the opposite.If anything is Merkel’s legacy, it is her custodianship of the liberal world order. Angela Dorothea Merkel (nee Kastler) is, above all, a pragmatic foreign politician. Whereas her immediate predecessors – her mentor, the Christian democrat Helmut Kohl (1982-98) and the social democrat Gerhard Schroeder (1998-2005) are primarily remembered for domestic policies, Merkel was a foreign-policy politician. Kohl presided over German unification and Schroeder reformed the welfare state. Merkel’s legacy, now that she really is standing down, has been international.Evidence, deliberation, expertsMerkel used state intervention on a massive scale to rescue the world economy after the 2008 financial crash. She embraced anti-austerity policies to save the euro. She was always pragmatic. As she told me in 2008: “I want as much market economics as possible, with as much state intervention as necessary.” When reminded that this was reminiscent of socialist politics from the 1960s, she just smiled and shrugged, “Yes, and, so what if it works?” More

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    Boris Johnson tells vaccine-sceptic Brazilian president Bolsonaro to get jabbed

    Boris Johnson said he was “delighted” to meet Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro but urged the vaccine-skeptic right-wing populist to get jabbed against Covid-19.Joined by the new foreign secretary, Liz Truss, at the British Consulate General’s residence in New York, the prime minister said he had promised to come to Brazil before the “bummer” of the pandemic.Mr Johnson added: “But we’re working together on the vaccines. AstraZeneca it’s a great vaccine. I have AstraZeneca.”As the press were ushered out of the room at the end of the bilateral meeting, Mr Johnson told them: “Thanks everybody, get AstraZeneca vaccines.”He turned to Mr Bolsonaro and said: “I’ve had it twice.”Mr Bolsonaro, who has made strange claims about vaccines including that they could turn people into crocodiles, pointed at himself and wagged his finger.“Not yet,” he said through an interpreter, before laughing. Both men were maskless throughout the exchange.They discussed their own fights against coronavirus infections, before Mr Bolsonaro bragged he had developed ”excellent“ immunity to the disease. Mr Bolsonaro, who has courted publicity over his anti-vaccine stance, arrived in New York on Sunday ahead of the 76th United Nations General Assembly, when he was pictured eating a slice of pizza on the street with Brazilian ministers and aides – reportedly after falling foul of local rules for unvaccinated diners. He has been condemned in Brazil for falling ill with Covid after his own resistance to many public health measures to control the virus, which has seen Brazil among the worst hit by Covid in South America and around the globe.Separately, Mr Johnson told world leaders he is growing “increasingly frustrated” that their commitments to tackle the climate crisis are “nowhere near enough”.The prime minister warned during the UN meeting that the gap between what industrialised nations have promised and what they are actually delivering remains “vast”.Mr Johnson had been expected to challenge Mr Bolsonaro, a notorious climate change sceptic, on deforestation during the New York trip. More

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    US abortion law: A conservative-leaning supreme court doesn’t bode well for women

    The US Supreme Court’s failure to block a new law from entering into force in Texas means that abortions after six weeks are effectively banned in that state, even in cases of rape or incest. In the Whole Woman’s Health v Austin Reeve Jackson case, a five-four majority of the court denied the application to block Senate Bill 8 (SB 8) in Texas.From 1 September, SB 8 “makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they detect cardiac activity on an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity”. This is around six weeks after a woman’s last period, much sooner than many women find out that they are pregnant.Fierce debate has taken place over women’s sexual reproductive rights since the US Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision inRoe v Wade when the court ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to abortion due to her “right to privacy”, guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. This was hailed as a momentous step towards the protection of women’s rights.Yet anti-abortion campaigners have been fighting to restrict a woman’s right to choose, most notably through the case of Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1992. In this case, the Supreme Court upheld Roe, but allowed states to place restrictions on first-trimester abortions, such as government-mandated delays between consultation and abortion, so long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on the woman. Previously states had been banned from introducing restrictions on first-trimester abortions.Allowing the Texas abortion ban to take effect is an attack on women’s rights and will have a devastating impact on women in Texas. It will undoubtedly galvanise other states to further restrict abortions too, with the ultimate goal of these restrictions being a complete overruling of Roe v Wade. This would effectively ban abortions across the US. The likelihood of this happening has increased due to the current politics of the US Supreme Court.The politics of the US Supreme CourtA key role of the Supreme Court is to rule on points of constitutional and federal law. It hears around 100 cases per year on a range of constitutional issues from administrative law to criminal justice. Some decisions of the court, such as in Roe v Wade, can bind the entirety of the US. More

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    Queen hosts leaders as Boris Johnson accused of ‘empty promise’ over aid plea

    Queen Elizabeth joins G7 leaders for family photoBoris Johnson has been accused of an “empty promise” after urging the G7 to get the world’s poorest children into school – despite slashing aid funding for education by 40 per cent.The prime minister came under fire after he said it was “a source of international shame” that youngsters “bursting with potential” are denied lessons, simply because they are girls or deprived.He announced £430m for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and urged fellow world leaders to match the UK’s commitment to “get more girls into the classroom”.But aid groups protested that the cash was all but cancelled out by the UK swiping around £390m of funding for improving education over two years – part of £4bn-a-year overall aid cuts.Rose Caldwell, chief executive of Plan International UK, said: “Covid-19 has created the biggest education emergency of our lifetime. Yet this pledge follows shameful cuts to overseas aid.“The reality is that, without adequate funding, today’s targets and the flagship Girls’ Education Declaration will be nothing but empty promises.”This evening, the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are at the Eden Project for a reception with the G7 leaders.Show latest update

    1623447917We’re wrapping up our coverage of the G7 summit for today.Join us again in the morning for all the latest updates from Cornwall.Good night and thanks for reading.Matt Mathers11 June 2021 22:451623394197Hello and welcome to The Independent’s rolling coverage as the G7 summit gets underway in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Sam Hancock11 June 2021 07:491623394514Macron attacks UK’s failure to implement Brexit deal ahead of G7 showdownEmmanuel Macron has launched an angry attack on the UK’s failure to implement the Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, branding the PM’s attempt to reopen the legal protocol governing trade across the Irish Sea as “not serious”, saying: “Nothing is renegotiable.”The attack – ahead of a face-to-face meeting with Mr Johnson in Cornwall – came after the US issued the UK with an extraordinary diplomatic rebuke for putting the Northern Ireland peace process in jeopardy.Joe Biden’s top diplomat in London warned David Frost, the Brexit minister, that the government is “inflaming” tensions by refusing to introduce checks at ports, revealed in a memo which No 10 did not deny.Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick reports:Sam Hancock11 June 2021 07:551623394865PM hails ‘indestructible relationship’ between US and UKBoris Johnson has hailed the alliance between the US and the UK as the “indestructible relationship”.In an interview with the BBC Mr Johnson said he and Joe Biden were enjoying “terrific” talks at the G7 summit, which begins later with vaccines and climate change on the agenda.Mr Johnson insisted the US president had not rebuked him over post-Brexit tensions in Northern Ireland. However, Mr Biden is said to have “deep concern” over the situation.The two men met in Carbis Bay, Cornwall on Thursday ahead of the start of the G7 summit, 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.Speaking to the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Johnson said the UK and US shared a belief in human rights, the rules-based international order and the transatlantic alliance.He said he thought of the association as “an indestructible relationship” or the “deep and meaningful relationship”.“It’s a relationship that has endured for a very long time, and has been an important part of peace and prosperity both in Europe and around the world,” he said.Sam Hancock11 June 2021 08:011623394999Biden ‘engaged’ in case of Harry Dunn, Johnson claimsJoe Biden is “actively engaged” and “extremely sympathetic” in the case of teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn, Boris Johnson has said.The leaders of the US and UK discussed the 19-year-old, who was killed when a car crashed into his motorbike outside a military base in Northamptonshire, ahead of the G7 summit of world leaders in Cornwall.The death, in August 2019, sparked an international controversy after Anne Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf. She has since been charged with causing the death of the teenager by dangerous driving.Mr Johnson was asked if there had been any progress made on the case following his discussion with his American counterpart and said he understood there were “limits” to what Mr Biden could do.“You should really – when you get the chance – put your question to the president because he is actively engaged in the case,” the PM said in an interview with the BBC. “As you know, he has his own personal reasons for feeling very deeply about the issue. And he was extremely sympathetic, but this is not something that either government can control very easily because there are legal processes that are still going on.”The Dunn family said they were pleased to see the case raised at the “first available opportunity”.Sam Hancock11 June 2021 08:031623395410Nandy tells Johnson he ‘absolutely must deliver’ global vaccine aidShadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said this morning there was a moral, economic and health case for Britain to help vaccinate the world against coronavirus.She told BBC Breakfast on Friday that Boris Johnson’s pledge ahead of the G7 summit to donate at least 100 million surplus vaccine doses to some of the world’s poorest countries was a “welcome agreement” but there needed to be a plan not just an ambition.“What we need over the next 48 hours is not just ambitions to get the world vaccinated but an actual plan,” she said. “That would be in Britain’s interest as well, the International Monetary Fund says that this would represent the biggest return on investment in modern history for wealthier countries because of the economic fallout if we don’t deal with this.”She added that the “the prime minister absolutely has to deliver this”. More