France rebukes Australia after U.S. submarine deal, Biden holds virtual MEF climate meeting, Apple and Google remove Russian opposition voting app
Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita breaks down today's top stories from around the world.
Video transcript
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AKIKO FUJITA: In our World View today, French officials in Washington have canceled a gala planned for tonight, pointing to a growing rift between the US and France in response to a new security partnership announced earlier this week. That partnership called for Washington and London to help Canberra develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to counter China in the region. That came, though, at the expense of France, with Australia ending a long-standing submarine contract with the country. Paris has expressed outrage over its exclusion from this partnership. The canceled event at the French embassy was set to commemorate the 240th anniversary of the Battle of the [? Caves. ?]
President Biden is urging world leaders to join the US and the EU in a pledge to cut methane emissions ahead of the UN climate summit this fall. The virtual meeting of the Major Economies Forum comes five months after the White House hosted a historic climate summit. This gathering was much smaller in scale, with leaders from Argentina, Bangladesh, South Korea and Mexico among those attending. The US has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half from 2005 levels by the end of this decade, but it has struggled to get similar commitments from developing nations most affected by global warming.
And Google and Apple are under some scrutiny in Russia after both companies removed a voting app from its app stores ahead of the parliamentary elections. The app, named after jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was developed to rally support behind critics of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The removal comes after the Kremlin accused Apple and Google of meddling in the country's parliamentary elections. Navalny's supporters say the removal amounts to political censorship. The ruling United Russia Party, no surprise, is expected to win the three-day vote.
