The coming days

The week ahead

World leaders gather for G8 and G20 summit meetings

Jas

• LEADERS of the G8 group of rich countries gather in Muskoka, a Canadian holiday resort, for a two-day summit starting on Friday June 25th. The meeting overlaps with the two-day G20 summit that begins the next day in Toronto. Both get-togethers will give the opportunity to world leaders to discuss global financial regulation, reforming international financial institutions and responses to the crisis in the euro zone. The Canadian hosts have been criticised at home for the vast cost of the summit, in particular on the creation of a huge artificial lake for the media centre in a country with more real lakes than anywhere else in the world.

• ANXIETY in Britain is likely to be high as George Osborne, the country’s new chancellor (finance minister), unveils details of a tough emergency budget on Tuesday June 22nd. The new budget will set out the overall trajectory of spending, which is likely to be sharply downward. Mr Osborne’s colleagues have been making scary speeches about the parlous state of public finances. And gloomy independent forecasts for growth and the public finances from the new Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggest that hefty spending cuts and tax rises are inevitable.

• AMERICA'S president, Barack Obama, will take off some time from castigating BP for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to welcome Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, to Washington on Thursday June 24th. Relations between the two powers are improving: Russia sided with America at the UN over the issue of sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme. The pair also signed a new START nuclear arms reduction treaty earlier this year. And they may agree to co-operate more fully in their response to ethnic conflict in Kyrgyzstan, where both countries have military bases. Mr Medvedev also intends to visit Silicon Valley to see if Russia can learn from America’s high-tech boffins how to jump-start its own technology cluster.

• VOTERS in Guinea, a west African country rich in minerals, are set to vote on Sunday June 27th to elect a civilian president. Recent years have seen general strikes, popular uprisings, military crackdowns and a coup in the country. But General Sékouba Konaté, Guinea’s interim president, is so keen to make the election runs smoothly that he has appointed a 16,000-strong military and paramilitary task-force to keep order during the polls and has kept a promise that no members of the interim government may stand for office. Guinea’s parties draw support mainly from ethnic and regional bases, so a contentious result could open divisions across the country.