The Latest: UK's Johnson slammed for taking plane, not train

PLYMOUTH, England (AP) — The Latest on the Group of Seven nations meeting being held in England and the meetings between British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden.

—-

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being criticized for flying to the Group of Seven summit meeting in Cornwall, rather than taking the train, as he presses world leaders to do more to fight global warming.

Environmental activists bombarded Johnson’s Twitter feed with suggestions that the prime minister should practice what he preaches after he posted a photo of himself climbing off the plane accompanied by a call to make the world “better, fairer and greener.”

“This is how serious Boris Johnson is about combating the climate emergency: He flew to Cornwall,” Zarah Sultana, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, tweeted in response.

According to figures posted on the U.K. government website, domestic flights generate about six times more greenhouse gases than rail travel. A train journey to Cornwall takes about five hours, compared with less than 90 minutes for a flight.

Johnson is hosting leaders from the world’s seven richest democracies during this weekend’s summit at the Carbis Bay resort in Cornwall. The agenda includes talks on climate change, the global response to COVID-19 and the taxation of multinational corporations.

___

LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the nations of the world must set aside the “beggar my neighbor” attitude that led to squabbling over medicines and treatments for COVID-19.

Johnson said Thursday that Group of Seven leaders meeting this weekend in Carbis Bay, southwest England, will commit to vaccinating the world by the end of 2022.

The British leader wrote in The Times of London that it was time for wealthy countries should “shoulder their responsibilities and to vaccinate the world.”

But he faces criticism because the U.K. has yet to send any doses abroad and has cut its international aid budget, citing the economic blow of the pandemic.

Johnson said Thursday that Britain would donate “millions” of doses from surplus stocks -- though he didn’t say when.

Johnson also noted that the British government helped fund the development at Oxford University of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which accounts for 1 in 3 vaccine doses around the world.

President Joe Biden is announcing Thursday that the U.S. will buy 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine to share with poorer countries over the next year.

___

BRUSSELS — Top European Union officials are joining calls to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, ramping up the pressure on China to be more open about the virus, ahead of the Group of Seven summit.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday that “we have to know where it did come from in order to draw the right lessons and to develop the right tools to make sure that this will never happen again.”

Von der Leyen says “the investigators need complete access to whatever is necessary to really find the source of this pandemic.” She said Europe had responded reasonably well to the heavy economic impact of virus restrictions because it had drawn the right lessons from the 2008 financial crisis.

European Council President Charles Michel says “the world has the right to know exactly what happened.”

Last month, President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.