Portrait of the week | 20 June 2013

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On the eve of the G8 summit, at a press conference with David Cameron, the Prime Minister, President Vladimir Putin of Russia bluntly opposed British proposals to aid the Syrian opposition: ‘People who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their entrails in public before the cameras. Are these the people you want to support?’ At the summit, in a golfing hotel protected by the waters of Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh, none of the leaders wore a tie. A joint statement on Syria did not call for the removal of President Assad. Before the summit, Mr Cameron made British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies agree to inform on investors to the tax authorities. This initiative was adopted by the G8, together with an ambition that ‘companies should know who really owns them’. Mr Cameron announced that negotiations had begun for a trade agreement worth £100 billion to the European Union and £80 billion to United States. France insisted on its film industry being exempted. President Barack Obama of the United States, in a speech to schoolchildren, attacked religious schools, labelling them as ‘segregated’.

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Among the 1,180 awards in the Queen’s birthday honours, Anish Kapoor, the sculptor, and Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP, were knighted and Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat politician, and Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, were appointed Companions of Honour. The Duke of Edinburgh left hospital 11 nights after being admitted for exploratory abdominal surgery. David Warner, the Australian cricketer, was fined £7,000 and barred from playing until the Ashes, after punching the England player Joe Root, who was wearing a green and gold wig as a beard in the early hours at the Walkabout pub in Birmingham. All 31 passengers were rescued when a commercial amphibious vehicle known as a Yellow Duckmarine sank in a dock in Liverpool.