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Fast Company
a day ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Trump will attend the G7 summit in Canada. What to know about the site, the attendees, and more
U.S. President Donald Trump will arrive Sunday for a Group of Seven summit in a country he has suggested should be annexed and as he wages a trade war with America's longstanding allies. Trump's calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won his office by pledging to confront the U.S. president's increased aggression, now hosts the G7 summit. Carney asserted this week that Washington no longer plays a predominant role on the world stage, imposing tariffs for access to its markets and reducing its contributions to collective security. Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a lengthy joint statement, or communiqué, at the summit's conclusion as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the G7 summit in France in 2019. The document typically outlines the consensus reached by leaders on summit issues and provides a roadmap for how they plan to tackle them. Trump roiled the 2017 meeting in Italy over the climate change passage in that summit's final statement. He then withdrew his support from the 2018 communiqué after complaining he had been slighted by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host that year. The leaders of the world's richest countries begin arriving Sunday in the resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. Who will attend The Group of Seven comprises Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain. The European Union also attends as well as other heads of state who are not part of the G7 but have been invited by Carney. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their contentious Oval Office encounter, which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the U.S. president. Other world leaders will be meeting with Trump both in a group setting and for bilateral talks, which are often precarious as foreign leaders must navigate between placating and confronting him. 'Anything could happen. The Canadians would be crazy not to anticipate something. We can't tell. That's Trump stock and trade. He likes to keep everyone guessing,' said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations. 'It all depends what kind of theater he's going to want to have,' he said. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend and said she expects to have her first in-person meeting with Trump. On his way to Canada, Macron is making a notable stop in Greenland, the semi autonomous Danish territory that the U.S. president has also suggested annexing. Among the other newcomers are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Starmer will meet with Carney on Saturday in Ottawa before flying to Alberta. Carney also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite accusations from Canada's national police force that agents of Modi's government were involved in 'widespread' violence in Canada. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was invited but will not attend. Will Trump upstage this G7 too? The 2018 G7 summit in Quebec was thrown into disarray after Trump called Trudeau 'dishonest' and 'weak,' while complaining that he had been blindsided by Trudeau's criticism of Trump's tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference. Trump pulled out of the G7 group statement just as it was released. 'We weren't too happy because we thought we managed to pull off a pretty good summit,' said Peter Boehm, Canada's deputy minister for the Quebec summit.' The reaction — and I was with Mr. Trudeau at the time — was a bit of disbelief.' Boehm expects a chair's summary from Carney this year instead of a joint statement from the leaders. During the Quebec summit, Trump also insisted on Russia's readmission to the elite group, from which it was ousted in 2014 following President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea. 'Trump raised that at the foreign policy dinner,' Boehm recalled. 'It was a bit awkward because British Prime Minister Theresa May was there and some British citizens had just been killed by Russian operatives using a toxic agent.' Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were targeted in a nerve agent attack a few months before the Quebec summit in the English city of Salisbury. Looming tariffs U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said that Carney has been quietly holding direct talks with Trump about a trade deal in the lead up to the summit. Separately, top Canadian cabinet ministers have also been in Washington for negotiations in recent weeks. Trade tensions may be unavoidable. The United States runs trade deficits with all G7 countries except the United Kingdom. In an effort to balance what he describes as America's lopsided trade relations, Trump has imposed 10% import taxes — tariffs — on almost every country in the world. He also announced bigger tariffs, then suspended them, on countries that sell more to the United States than they buy. 'The big X Factor (is) the looming tariffs,' said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'The G7 is supposed to provide global economic governance. And the way the Europeans see it right now is that the country that's the source of major instability in global economic affairs is the United States.' Trump's trade wars are already threatening the world economy. The World Bank on Tuesday sharply downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year, citing 'a substantial rise in trade barriers.' A prelude to NATO summit NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will attend the G7 meeting ahead of this month's NATO summit and has said most U.S. allies in the alliance endorse Trump's demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs. Carney said this week Canada would meet NATO's current 2% target but seemed to suggest he would not support 5%, saying his goal is to protect Canadians, and not to satisfy NATO accountants. Why such a remote location Law enforcement overseeing security expect large protests but say protesters won't be able to get anywhere near Kananaskis, as access roads to the summit will be closed to the public. The Mounties say there will be designated G7 demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff, Alberta that will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the summit. Kananaskis also hosted a G8 summit in 2002.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Science
- Hindustan Times
Master of disguise: Meet the inventor of a state-of-the-art invisibility cloak
In some ways, he is himself the stuff of science-fiction. For thousands of years, dating to ancient Greek and Welsh myths, then sci-fi and the worlds of HG Wells and Harry Potter, storytellers and scientists have toyed with the idea of the invisibility cloak. Wells, who foresaw the aircraft and army tank, atomic bomb and Wikipedia, wrote of a scientist committed to invisibility in The Invisible Man (1897). This scientist learnt how to change the way light reflected off his body. In Canada, George Eleftheriades has done something similar. He can't erase himself from view, but he has so far been able to hide large, bulky objects from radar, using just a thin layer of rather magical antennae. It's a bit like noise-cancelling headphones, he says, with remarkable modesty. (It isn't that simple at all.) But before we get to how it works, a bit about who he is. Eleftheriades, 60, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto. Growing up in Cyprus, he was obsessed with science as a child. He had chemicals bubbling over in his room, microorganisms squirming under microscopes, and burn marks on the wooden floor, he says, with a laugh. He was fascinated by radiowaves, which felt a bit like magic. As he grew, he had his imagination sparked by the way ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Heraclitus, viewed scientific concepts. (Heraclitus, of course, famously expressed the idea of constant flux by noting that one can't step into the same river twice.) Following where his heart led, Eleftheriades studied electrical engineering in Athens, after which he moved to the US for a Master's and PhD from University of Michigan. He worked on ultra-sensitive radiowave receivers in Switzerland from 1994 to '97, and has been at University of Toronto ever since. A decade ago, he became something of a 'stealth' agent. In 2015, the Canadian military reached out to ask if he could take the work done so far on stealth technology, and build on it. He has now won the prestigious IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Electromagnetics Award for his work on metamaterials and metasurfaces, and the creation of an 'invisibility cloak'. *** How does the cloak work? Well, we 'see' an object, as Eleftheriades points out, when light hits it and scatters. Based on how the rays are scattered and reflected, we perceive shapes, colours, depth and distance. His cloaking device emits waves of its own that cancel out the scattering as it occurs. (In this way, it is a bit like noise-cancelling headphones, which emit soundwaves to counter soundwaves.) His device does this through the use of metamaterials, which are manmade materials designed to behave in ways that normal materials cannot. Fundamentally, they are built to control the flow of waves — radio, sound, light — in unprecedented ways. The world's first metamaterial was created in the US in 2001, and research has sped up since. Key applications include lenses that can see more clearly, more refined diagnostic scans, vastly improved antennas and sensors… and 'invisibility cloaks'. In the case of this last one, early efforts required bulky 3D structures, and though they did deceive radar they did not do it as effectively. Eleftheriades's 'cloak' is a relatively elegant network of antennae, something like a circuit board, that sits on the surface of an object to be rendered invisible. As it interferes with incoming light waves, it forces them to bend or scatter differently, creating the impression that the object simply isn't there. 'We tried this first with a flat object and then with a cylinder,' he says. 'Both 'disappear' in that they cannot be seen by any radar system.' *** There's a lot the 'cloak' can do beyond hiding stealth weapons. Metamaterials have already been used to make lenses that, for the first time in history, are flat and homogenous. Eleftheriades and his team have used such lenses to make super-microscopes that are 10 times as powerful as existing equivalents. He and his team also recently developed a metasurface that could be placed along walls, to reflect radiowaves from cellphones and wi-fi routers in ways that magnify their strength and quality. What about making something actually vanish from sight? The closest he has come to doing this is when he put the 'cloak' on a car and had it zoom past speed sensors. It left no impression on the doppler-wave detectors at all. To the observer, of course, the car was moving past in plain view. Any chance that may change? 'The stuff you see in Star Trek, where something disappears behind a shield and is just gone… we're not there yet,' he says. 'That is worlds more complicated.' Seeing is still believing, then… at least offline, and at least for now.
France 24
a day ago
- Politics
- France 24
Trump makes G7 summit return in Iran crisis
The G7 summit starting Sunday in the Canadian Rockies town of Kananaskis marks the first major global gathering of Trump's second term, in which he has been even more brash in shattering diplomatic norms. Looking to avoid a dust-up, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had set the agenda on largely uncontroversial themes such as building global supply chains for critical minerals. That agenda could now be upended as Israel launched a massive military campaign against Iran on Friday, saying it was taking pre-emptive action against its adversary's contested nuclear program. The Trump administration has closely aligned the United States with Israel, taking aim even at close allies who criticize its offensive in Gaza. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly defied Trump, who hours earlier had called for a diplomatic solution and whose friend and roving envoy Steve Witkoff had been due to hold new talks with Iran on Sunday just as the G7 opened. A senior Canadian official said there would be no attempt at the G7 to reach consensus on a joint communique on the issues of the day and that leaders instead would be asked to endorse "short, action-oriented statements." "Of course it would be desirable for a summit statement to be issued, but as the summit is being held in a very complex international situation, I believe that the unity of the G7 should be given the highest priority," Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said. New leader in '51st state' The last time Trump attended a G7 summit in Canada in 2018, he stormed out early and took to social media to disassociate the United States from the statement and brand then-prime minister Justin Trudeau as "dishonest and weak." The bad blood never ended, and Trump on returning to office mockingly said Canada should be the 51st US state. Trudeau handed over the premiership in March to Carney, a former central banker who told Trump firmly in the White House that Canada was "never for sale." Like Trump, "Trudeau liked being the center of attention," said John Kirton, founder of the G7 Research Group at the University of Toronto. Trudeau at least at first was seen as "young, handsome and -- I'm quoting others -- hot. Carney is none of these things," Kirton said. Carney has instead patched up with Trump through his analytical skills and competence, Kirton said. Trump also has an incentive to keep the peace in Kananaskis -- the United States will lead the G7 in 2027. "He doesn't want to kill the G7 golden goose before he can produce the 'biggest, best summit ever' for the whole world stage two years from now," Kirton said. 'America First' The G7 club of major industrial democracies -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States -- was formed in the 1970s to coordinate economic policy and grew in scope to take on some of the world's security hotspots. Trump since returning to the White House has upended the global economic system by imposing tariffs and has sought to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine -- an issue that will also figure prominently when he heads to a NATO summit in The Hague a week after Canada. The US president can be expected to push back in Kananaskis if allies seek to moderate him, said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "He does not view these organizations as ways to deepen and expand American power and influence. He sees these fora as constraining America," she said. Europeans will observe Trump at the G7 to see how he treats their alliance, said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Our allies and partners in Europe are really questioning the US commitment and they are asking themselves, is this a relationship that is going to be maintained?" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plans to attend the G7 and hopes to meet Trump. The two clashed bitterly at the White House on February 28 but Trump since then has voiced frustration at Russia's reluctance on peace overtures. In a key step distancing himself from Trudeau, Carney has also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Relations sharply deteriorated after Trudeau publicly accused India of masterminding the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada. © 2025 AFP
a day ago
- Business
What to know about the Group of Seven summit in Canada that Trump will attend
TORONTO -- U.S. President Donald Trump will arrive Sunday for a Group of Seven summit in a country he has suggested should be annexed and as he wages a trade war with America's longstanding allies. Trump's calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state have infuriated Canadians, and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won his office by pledging to confront the U.S. president's increased aggression, now hosts the G7 summit. Carney asserted this week that Washington no longer plays a predominant role on the world stage, imposing tariffs for access to its markets and reducing its contributions to collective security. Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a lengthy joint statement, or communiqué, at the summit's conclusion as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the G7 summit in France in 2019. The document typically outlines the consensus reached by leaders on summit issues and provides a roadmap for how they plan to tackle them. Trump roiled the 2017 meeting in Italy over the climate change passage in that summit's final statement. He then withdrew his support from the 2018 communiqué after complaining he had been slighted by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host that year. The leaders of the world's richest countries begin arriving Sunday in the resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. The Group of Seven comprises Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain. The European Union also attends as well as other heads of state who are not part of the G7 but have been invited by Carney. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their contentious Oval Office encounter, which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the U.S. president. Other world leaders will be meeting with Trump both in a group setting and for bilateral talks, which are often precarious as foreign leaders must navigate between placating and confronting him. 'Anything could happen. The Canadians would be crazy not to anticipate something. We can't tell. That's Trump stock and trade. He likes to keep everyone guessing,' said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations. 'It all depends what kind of theater he's going to want to have,' he said. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend and said she expects to have her first in-person meeting with Trump. On his way to Canada, Macron is making a notable stop in Greenland, the semi autonomous Danish territory that the U.S. president has also suggested annexing. Among the other newcomers are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Starmer will meet with Carney on Saturday in Ottawa before flying to Alberta. Carney also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite accusations from Canada's national police force that agents of Modi's government were involved in 'widespread' violence in Canada. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was invited but will not attend. The 2018 G7 summit in Quebec was thrown into disarray after Trump called Trudeau 'dishonest' and 'weak," while complaining that he had been blindsided by Trudeau's criticism of Trump's tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference. Trump pulled out of the G7 group statement just as it was released. 'We weren't too happy because we thought we managed to pull off a pretty good summit,' said Peter Boehm, Canada's deputy minister for the Quebec summit." The reaction — and I was with Mr. Trudeau at the time — was a bit of disbelief." Boehm expects a chair's summary from Carney this year instead of a joint statement from the leaders. During the Quebec summit, Trump also insisted on Russia's readmission to the elite group, from which it was ousted in 2014 following President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea. 'Trump raised that at the foreign policy dinner," Boehm recalled. 'It was a bit awkward because British Prime Minister Theresa May was there and some British citizens had just been killed by Russian operatives using a toxic agent.' Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were targeted in a nerve agent attack a few months before the Quebec summit in the English city of Salisbury. U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said that Carney has been quietly holding direct talks with Trump about a trade deal in the lead up to the summit. Separately, top Canadian cabinet ministers have also been in Washington for negotiations in recent weeks. Trade tensions may be unavoidable. The United States runs trade deficits with all G7 countries except the United Kingdom. In an effort to balance what he describes as America's lopsided trade relations, Trump has imposed 10% import taxes — tariffs — on almost every country in the world. He also announced bigger tariffs, then suspended them, on countries that sell more to the United States than they buy. 'The big X Factor (is) the looming tariffs,' said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'The G7 is supposed to provide global economic governance. And the way the Europeans see it right now is that the country that's the source of major instability in global economic affairs is the United States.'' Trump's trade wars are already threatening the world economy. The World Bank on Tuesday sharply downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year, citing 'a substantial rise in trade barriers.'' NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will attend the G7 meeting ahead of this month's NATO summit and has said most U.S. allies in the alliance endorse Trump's demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs. Carney said this week Canada would meet NATO's current 2% target but seemed to suggest he would not support 5%, saying his goal is to protect Canadians, and not to satisfy NATO accountants. Law enforcement overseeing security expect large protests but say protesters won't be able to get anywhere near Kananaskis, as access roads to the summit will be closed to the public. The Mounties say there will be designated G7 demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff, Alberta that will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the summit. Kananaskis also hosted a G8 summit in 2002.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
What to know about the Group of Seven summit in Canada that Trump will attend
Carney has decided to abandon the annual practice of issuing a lengthy joint statement, or communiqué, at the summit's conclusion as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the G7 summit in France in 2019. Advertisement The document typically outlines the consensus reached by leaders on summit issues and provides a roadmap for how they plan to tackle them. Trump roiled the 2017 meeting in Italy over the climate change passage in that summit's final statement. He then withdrew his support from the 2018 communiqué after complaining he had been slighted by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host that year. The leaders of the world's richest countries begin arriving Sunday in the resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta in the Canadian Rockies. Who will attend The Group of Seven comprises Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and Britain. The European Union also attends as well as other heads of state who are not part of the G7 but have been invited by Carney. Advertisement Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend and is expected to meet with Trump, a reunion coming just months after their contentious Oval Office encounter, which laid bare the risks of having a meeting with the U.S. president. Other world leaders will be meeting with Trump both in a group setting and for bilateral talks, which are often precarious as foreign leaders must navigate between placating and confronting him. 'Anything could happen. The Canadians would be crazy not to anticipate something. We can't tell. That's Trump stock and trade. He likes to keep everyone guessing,' said Robert Bothwell, a University of Toronto professor of Canadian history and international relations. 'It all depends what kind of theater he's going to want to have,' he said. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum will attend and said she expects to have her first in-person meeting with Trump. On his way to Canada, Macron is making a notable stop in Greenland, the semi autonomous Danish territory that the U.S. president has also suggested annexing. Among the other newcomers are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Starmer will meet with Carney on Saturday in Ottawa before flying to Alberta. Carney also invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, despite accusations from Canada's national police force that agents of Modi's government were involved in 'widespread' violence in Canada. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, was invited but will not attend. Will Trump upstage this G7 too? The 2018 G7 summit in Quebec was thrown into disarray after Trump called Trudeau 'dishonest' and 'weak,' while complaining that he had been blindsided by Trudeau's criticism of Trump's tariff threats at a summit-ending news conference. Trump pulled out of the G7 group statement just as it was released. Advertisement 'We weren't too happy because we thought we managed to pull off a pretty good summit,' said Peter Boehm, Canada's deputy minister for the Quebec summit." The reaction — and I was with Mr. Trudeau at the time — was a bit of disbelief." Boehm expects a chair's summary from Carney this year instead of a joint statement from the leaders. During the Quebec summit, Trump also insisted on Russia's readmission to the elite group, from which it was ousted in 2014 following President Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea. 'Trump raised that at the foreign policy dinner,' Boehm recalled. 'It was a bit awkward because British Prime Minister Theresa May was there and some British citizens had just been killed by Russian operatives using a toxic agent.' Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were targeted in a nerve agent attack a few months before the Quebec summit in the English city of Salisbury. Looming tariffs U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said that Carney has been quietly holding direct talks with Trump about a trade deal in the lead up to the summit. Separately, top Canadian cabinet ministers have also been in Washington for negotiations in recent weeks. Trade tensions may be unavoidable. The United States runs trade deficits with all G7 countries except the United Kingdom. In an effort to balance what he describes as America's lopsided trade relations, Trump has imposed 10% import taxes — tariffs — on almost every country in the world. He also announced bigger tariffs, then suspended them, on countries that sell more to the United States than they buy. Advertisement 'The big X Factor (is) the looming tariffs,' said Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'The G7 is supposed to provide global economic governance. And the way the Europeans see it right now is that the country that's the source of major instability in global economic affairs is the United States.'' Trump's trade wars are already threatening the world economy. The World Bank on Tuesday sharply downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year, citing 'a substantial rise in trade barriers.'' A prelude to NATO summit NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will attend the G7 meeting ahead of this month's NATO summit and has said most U.S. allies in the alliance endorse Trump's demand that they invest 5% of gross domestic product on their defense needs. Carney said this week Canada would meet NATO's current 2% target but seemed to suggest he would not support 5%, saying his goal is to protect Canadians, and not to satisfy NATO accountants. Why such a remote location Law enforcement overseeing security expect large protests but say protesters won't be able to get anywhere near Kananaskis, as access roads to the summit will be closed to the public. The Mounties say there will be designated G7 demonstration zones in Calgary and Banff, Alberta that will have live audio and video feeds, which will be broadcast to G7 leaders and delegations at the summit. Kananaskis also hosted a G8 summit in 2002. Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.
