"We have to stay together," Biden told Scholz at a meeting ahead of the G7 summit in the German Alps.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus convened a committee of experts on Thursday to advise him whether to sound the UN health agency's strongest alarm over the outbreak.

The summit takes place against a darker backdrop than last year when the British, Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese and US leaders met for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic and vowed to build back better.

"War has to be stopped and global food supply chains need to be reactivated," Jokowi said before leaving for Germany to attend the G7 summit on Monday.

The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) was detected this month in a polar seagull found dead in the archipelago's capital Longyearbyen, the governor's office said in a statement Thursday.

"We face an unprecedented global hunger crisis," Guterres told the meeting in Berlin via video. "The war in Ukraine has compounded problems that have been brewing for years: climate disruption; the COVID-19 pandemic; the deeply unequal recovery."

Her successor Olaf Scholz, hobbled in domestic opinion polls and of modest global stature, may struggle to match that convivial atmosphere when leaders gather again from Sunday.

Kyiv's ambassador to Ankara said in early June that Turkish buyers were among those receiving grain that Russia had stolen from Ukraine, adding he had sought Turkey's help to identify and capture individuals responsible for the alleged shipments.

The one-day meeting, being held in private, was due to start at 1000 GMT, with a statement on the outcome likely to be issued on Friday.

For sure, Biden will tout the success of a monumental effort to rally the West and breathe new life into NATO -- a "high water mark in transatlantic solidarity in the post-Cold War period," according to a senior US official.

President Joe Biden leaves Saturday to meet with other G7 leaders in southern Germany before heading to Madrid for a summit where NATO is expected to announce plans to expand its forces in eastern Europe and Washington will lay out steps to strength European security.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has "chosen not to stay silent" in the face of continued conflict, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi has said, as he plans to push for peace between Ukraine and Russia.

Speaking on France 2 television, he said there was no doubt there was once again an upsurge of the pandemic in the country, adding he was personally in favour of reinstating mandatory face mask wearing on public transport.

Retno confirmed during a news conference the intention of Jokowi to visit Kyiv in addition to Moscow, which had been reported in Indonesian and Russian state media.

The bloc's executive arm last week proposed taking the symbolic first step to put Ukraine on the years-long path towards EU membership in a strong sign of support as Kyiv battles Russia's military onslaught. 

Macron was due to host far-right leader Marine Le Pen and other political party chiefs for rare talks at the Elysee as he seeks solutions to an unprecedented situation that risks plunging his second term into crisis two months after it began.

This year's meetings of the Group of 20 major economies have been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, with Indonesia struggling to keep the group united as some Western countries threaten to boycott the summit and push for Russia's exclusion.

Picket lines appeared at dawn and will be lined by some of the more than 40,000 rail workers who are due to strike on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, bringing the network to a standstill. The London Underground was also shut due to the strike.

The war in Ukraine has overshadowed G20 meetings this year, with current chair Indonesia struggling to keep the group united and resisting pressure from Western members to exclude Russia.

While Macron's "Ensemble" grouping secured the largest number of lawmakers in the 577-seat National Assembly, it fell short of an absolute majority in a vote on Sunday that saw a leftwing alliance and the far-right perform strongly.

Britain last week approved the Australian's extradition to the United States, where he could face life in prison over publishing secret military files.

Making a rare trip outside Kyiv, where he is based for security reasons, Zelensky travelled to the hold-out Black Sea city of Mykolaiv and visited troops nearby and in the neighbouring Odessa region for the first time since the Russian invasion.

The weekend's soaring temperatures were the peak of a June heatwave in line with scientists' predictions that such phenomena will now strike earlier in the year thanks to global warming.

Trumping lobbies from pharmaceutical companies, the trade forum passed the deal on a partial IP waiver to allow developing countries to produce and export COVID-19 vaccines, an issue that had the WTO nations divided for nearly two years.  

"GRTgaz remains vigilant for the coming winter and calls on shippers to continue to fill their national storage facilities as much as possible," the grid operator, a unit of France's main gas supplier Engie, said in a statement.

Maxar's images showed two Russian-flagged bulk carrier ships docked in the Russian-controlled Crimean port of Sevastopol in May and being loaded with grain, the company said.

French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian premier Mario Draghi arrived in Ukraine by train and headed to the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, scene of fierce battles early in the brutal war.

The UN health body already announced on Tuesday that it would hold an emergency meeting next week to determine whether to classify the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern.

"The Ukrainian President and his officials will have to negotiate with Russia," said Macron, while on a visit to Romania and Moldova.

The combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia-Ukraine war and cost-of-living crisis have led to declining interest in the news, a survey by the British research group found.