It has been a week of diplomacy. And Italy’s Giorgia Meloni was at the centre of it all. World leaders descended upon Italy for the Group of Seven summit.
Meloni welcomed several dignitaries with a namaste – in what many said was a nod to her friendship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the power corridors in Italy, the Indian leader’s encounter with Meloni went viral . Modi also met the Pope, French president Emmanuel Macron, US president Joe Biden, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and UK’s Rishi Sunak.
Hi friends, from #Melodi pic.twitter.com/OslCnWlB86 Biden grabbed headlines for a series of embarrassing gaffes at the G7 Summit in Italy.
In the EU elections, Meloni’s party won in Italy with a strong 28 per cent of the votes, boosting her leadership at home and consolidating her kingmaker role in Europe. A far-right surge in the bloc has left leaders in France and Germany rattled. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United States have let a deal that has stood for decades lapse this year.
And New Zealand’s citizens are fleeing in droves. A tragedy stuck in Kuwait. A fire in an apartment building killed 49 people including several Indians.
All this and more in our weekly roundup of explainers from around the world: 1. More than three dozen Indians perished in the fire that consumed the building in Kuwait’s Mangaf on Wednesday. The Gulf nation is home to lakhs of Indians who work there and send money home to their families.
Most are employed as unskilled.
