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Trump-Xi accord on Iran elusive as US president’s China trip winds down

Donald Trump has claimed that the US and China “feel very similar” about ending the war in Iran but offered no details about a possible breakthrough. The US president was speaking alongside Xi Jinping of China at the Zhongnanhai garden in Beijing on the second and final day of the leaders’ summit. “We did discuss Iran,” Trump said. “We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open.” He added: “We want them [Iran] to get it ended because it’s a crazy thing there, a little bit crazy. And it’s no good, it can’t happen.” There is much speculation about how much pressure the US is putting on China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, to use its leverage with Iran to encourage the country to reopen the strait of Hormuz. And there is a question mark over whether or not Beijing would be willing to accede to that pressure. US trade representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday that the Chinese “don’t want to be on the wrong side” on the Iran issue. “It’s really important for China to have the strait of Hormuz open,” Greer said. Earlier, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the US hoped “to convince [China] to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf”. But in an interview with NBC News on Thursday he downplayed the idea that the US was seeking support from Beijing. “We’re not asking for China’s help. We don’t need their help,” Rubio said. China’s foreign ministry on Friday again called for a ceasefire in Iran and said the strait of Hormuz should be opened “as soon as possible”. About half of China’s crude oil passes through the waterway, but the bigger threat for the Chinese economy is if the conflict in the Middle East causes a global recession that dents demand for its exports. But many in Beijing feel that the crisis in Iran is not China’s responsibility. Zhou Bo, a retired senior army colonel and a senior fellow in the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, said: “On Iran, China definitely wants to help but I read what Rubio said: he actually seems to shift the burden to the Chinese side. In China, we have a saying: it is like, ‘Why should I clean your shit?’” The White House readout of the more than two hours of talks between Trump and Xi on Thursday said the leaders “agreed that the strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy” and that “President Xi also made clear China’s opposition to the militarisation of the strait”. But Trump raised eyebrows during a TV interview when he suggested that finding Iran’s enriched uranium was primarily for show after Israel demanded it as a goal. “I just feel better if I got it, actually, but it’s – I think, it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else,” the US president told Fox News host Sean Hannity. The Chinese readout of Thursday’s meeting just made a brief reference to the “situation in the Middle East”. Chinese state media rapidly published a flurry of articles echoing the language of “constructive strategic stability” that was part of the Chinese government’s readout of Thursday’s meeting. The Xinhua news agency said that the term meant “harmony without uniformity and seeking common ground while reserving differences”. The concept is “full of wisdom and demonstrates responsibility”, Xinhua said. Trump, for his part, has revelled in Chinese hospitality and flattery. He was heard saying on his way into the tea room at the Zhongnanhai garden that Xi was giving him roses for the Rose Garden, according to a White House pool report. “This has been an incredible visit,” he said as the men sat together in an opulent wood-panelled room with a huge golden carpet. “I think a lot of good has come of it. We’ve made some fantastic trade deals – great for both countries … we’ve really done some wonderful things, I believe.” Trump added: “We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve.” He told Fox News that China agreed to buy US oil, soybeans and 200 Boeing planes. But on key issues including Taiwan, there seems to have been little by way of concrete agreement. Instead, Xi and Trump spent Friday morning “pausing to admire the ancient, vigorous trees and colourful roses in the garden” of Zhongnanhai, Xi’s residence, according to the official Chinese readout. The readout said the two sides “reached important consensus on maintaining stable economic and trade relations”, but it did not elaborate. “The two sides also exchanged views on some regional hotspots,” the readout concluded. Julian Gewirtz, a former director for China on the national security council during the Biden administration, said the new Chinese formulation about US-China relations was about “locking in this current phase of strategic stalemate for the remainder of Trump’s term and ideally beyond”. “Xi Jinping has been working for years to be ready for this moment, to bring an American president to Beijing as a peer, widely acknowledged as such around the world. And now it is happening,” Gerwirtz said. Wu Xinbo, a professor of international studies at Fudan University and a Chinese government adviser, said the balance of power between the US and China was “shifting towards greater parity”. “In the past, it always seemed as though the United States held the upper hand, constantly exerting pressure on China and taking the offensive. Now, however, it’s fair to say that the two countries have reached a new point of equilibrium,” Wu said. At a busy intersection near Trump’s hotel, the crowds that gathered to catch a glimpse of the presidential motorcade were thinner on Friday morning than on Thursday evening, with the heavy police presence encouraging people not to loiter. Many grumbled about the inconvenience caused by the repeated road closures. Asked for their views on Trump, the word that came up again and again from Beijingers was “unpredictable”. “What he says isn’t necessarily what it means,” said one Trump-watcher, who declined to give his name. Additional research by Yu-chen Li

At least 24 killed in Kyiv in one of deadliest Russian attacks since start of war – Europe live

Back to Ukraine, 36 countries and the European Union have backed plans for the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. It looks like the tribunal, long in the making, is now getting closer to being actually established. During a Council of Europe meeting in the Moldovan capital of Chişinău, ministers “expressed their intention to join a new Enlarged Partial Agreement,” which is diplospeak for “want to join the thing.” Alain Berset, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said that the tribunal “represents justice and hope” and “the time for Russia to be help to account for its aggression is fast approaching.” “The path ahead of us is one of justice – and justice must prevail”, he said.

Trump China visit live: US president says a lot of problems ‘settled’, as he meets with Xi on final day of summit

The Chinese markets have fallen after the US-China summit that took place in Beijing, despite Donald Trump touting new business deals between the two countries. China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index and the Shanghai Composite Index each fell more than 1%, while The Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 1.6%. Big deals between the two superpowers had been expected, but the only agreements that came out of Trump’s two day trip were arrangements for US oil and soybean, as well as unconfirmed deal for China to purchase 200 Boeing jets.

The Netherlands is confronting its history of Nazi occupation – but many stolen objects remain unreturned

Several months ago the Dutch art detective Arthur Brand was amazed to be contacted by a man who had recently made an uncomfortable discovery about his family’s wartime past: that he was a descendant of Hendrik Seyffardt, a Waffen-SS general and one of the highest-ranking Dutch collaborators. Not only that, said the man, but he had found out something else: a painting by the Dutch artist Toon Kelder, which had been looted by the Nazis from the famed collection of the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, was still in the possession of the Seyffardt family. Kelder’s Portrait of a Young Girl was hanging in the hall of his relative’s house near Utrecht, he told Brand. The man told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he felt “deep shame” about his family history, but was also “furious” about the years of silence. The story made waves; the family, who had changed their name after the second world war, handed over the painting to Brand soon after the story was published in the Dutch media on Monday. The owner was quoted as saying she had inherited the painting from her mother and had no idea that Goudstikker’s heirs wanted it back. Brand told the Guardian he was now in touch with them on “how to proceed”. The moral outrage of the man who only recently discovered his family’s past reflects a mood of growing openness in the Netherlands to confronting the country’s history of occupation, during which three-quarters of the Jewish population was murdered by the Nazis, thousands collaborated with the regime and Jewish property and homes were confiscated. Since 2020, an approach of “humanity and goodwill” has been applied to restitution requests from Dutch national collections, while major art auction houses refuse to sell disputed or looted art. Emile Schrijver, general director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter in Amsterdam – who opened a new Holocaust Museum in 2024 – said younger people may have more distance from previous generations and be able to see injustices more clearly. Whether those injustices related to a painting or a smaller – but no less loved – family possession was of no matter. “Not everybody owned great art, but not every piece of looted property has to be great art in order to be important to relatives,” he said. “A descendant who gets a silver spoon that was used in the Friday night soup for his great-grandfather – that might be more valuable than a painting that he doesn’t like. “It has as deep a meaning as a Kandinsky because it’s part of the same system: the eradication of a culture. That’s why this looting is connected so strongly to emotion.” Gert-Jan van den Bergh, legal expert in art restitution at Bergh Stoop & Sanders, said he had seen a shift in recent years, suggesting moral accountability was beginning to weigh more heavily. “For decades, many families approached these cases primarily as private property matters,” he said. “Today, younger generations often see them more as ethical questions connected to memory, identity and the legacy of occupation.” The Jewish Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden explored some of this in her Booker-shortlisted debut novel, The Safekeep, set in the Netherlands of the early 1960s. “I wanted to explore questions around complicity and how easily people might become perpetrators,” she told the Observer last year. “I wanted to look at how we remember and what we choose to forget, which narratives we prioritise and which ones we ignore. “It’s something I have spent a long time thinking about as a teacher of comparative literature: how do you create fiction that forms a national understanding of what happened?” New generations can be both more forgiving of their ancestors and sharper about their actions, according to Dutch journalist Sheila Sitalsing, who wrote the award-winning book Waar ik voor me schaam (My shame) after discovering her grandfather’s collaboration in her mother’s deathbed note. “On one hand, they are more detached and sometimes more forgiving,” she told the Guardian. “On the other, they can also be crystal clear (‘Nazi? Wrong!’).” But why have so many stolen paintings and objects still not been returned? Eight decades after the liberation from the Nazis, Jewish property is still sitting quietly in Dutch family homes, pinned there by loaded silence, shame and a legal system that struggles to deal with this historic theft. The answer might lie in a concept the Dutch call het zwijgen (“the silence”), the loaded omertà that grew around what happened during the second world war – and one of the reasons why an archive of legal dossiers on 425,000 people formally investigated after 1945 is still not fully open. The war haunted the children of collaborators, according to Anne Marthe van der Bles, a senior researcher at the ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre, which has researched the family impact of collaboration. “The war always sat at the dining table,” she said. “Children knew: we are not allowed to mention this, because Mum or Dad gets angry, sad, frightened. It is not just not talking about it. It is heavier and more loaded than that.” Younger Dutch people, though, appear less weighed down, and more compelled to right the wrongs of the past. Experts warn they do not have for ever to act, and that thousands of stolen pieces risk being lost to fading family memory and fragmented archives if they are not returned soon. Schrijver urged people to understand what such objects mean: all he has of his own great-grandmother and great-grandfather is a brick in a commemorative wall of names and a “stumbling” stone. “Before these two things were there, I had nothing,” he said. “The truth is, we have to do justice to the people who are looking for looted objects from their family history. It’s almost never the monetary value. It’s the connection.”

Friday briefing: Is there any way Keir Starmer can keep hold of his job?

Good morning. The mutiny has begun. Yesterday afternoon, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, resigned from government, declaring he no longer has faith in the leadership of Keir Starmer. His announcement – widely believed to be a precursor to making a run at Downing Street – followed days of intense speculation around the prime minister’s position after last week’s disastrous local elections. Hours later, Labour backbencher Josh Simons dramatically announced his resignation from his Manchester constituency, with the expressed desire of Andy Burnham taking up his seat in a byelection, returning to parliament and contending for No 10. Burnham confirmed he will seek to run in the byelection but, like Streeting, stopped short of openly gunning for the top job. Despite the pressure on him to resign, Starmer insists he is (for now) not going anywhere – and exactly how many Labour MPs really want him to go is unclear. The prime minister has an automatic right to contest any leadership contest under party rules, and appears intent on exercising it. For today’s First Edition, I spoke with Alexandra Topping, Guardian political correspondent, about Starmer’s chances of remaining in No 10, and our economics editor, Heather Stewart, about whether – despite the headwinds – his government’s economic programme might be showing early signs of success. But first, the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Almost every critic of Keir Starmer has accused the prime minister of not being sufficiently “bold” in his policy choices. But what would his possible replacements actually do differently? Politics | Nigel Farage bought a £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. US news | China’s president, Xi Jinping, has warned of “clashes and even conflicts” with the US over Taiwan after meeting Donald Trump in Beijing. Social media | Google has denied breaching the Online Safety Act by promoting a “nihilistic” suicide forum associated with 164 deaths in the UK where it is supposed to be banned. Ukraine | Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukraine for a second day, almost continuously, with Kyiv bearing the brunt of the assault. In depth: ‘Big ideological moves aren’t really the Keir Starmer way’ Thursday should have been a good day for the government. Two separate announcements showed the economy grew more than expected, and that waiting lists fell in the NHS. Instead, the civil war brewing inside the Labour party boiled over. Wes Streeting, from the Blairite side of the party, finally publicly confronted the prime minister over his future by resigning from the government. He stopped short of announcing his own campaign to replace Starmer, instead calling for a leadership contest with “the best possible field of candidates”. So far, no contest has formally started. Few Labour MPs, at least publicly, still appear to support Starmer’s leadership, but there is no consensus on who should replace him. In the vacuum, chaos reigns: clusters of journalists stake out Downing Street demanding to know what is going on, and when. Away from the eyes of the public, their phones buzz with speculation from sources and politicians about who could follow Streeting. Some commentators interpret the health secretary’s resignation as a strategy to get Starmer to step down, compounded by his apparent lack of the 20% of Labour MPs needed to support his candidacy in any leadership election. But Starmer, less than two years into the job, is defiant. His approach, essentially “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” tactic, is to dig in – and there are some figures to back it up. Survation polling for LabourList shows that Starmer would easily win a head-to-head election contest against Streeting. He would lose narrowly to Angela Rayner (who on Thursday was cleared by HMRC following an investigation into her tax affairs), but the prime minister would beat many other candidates, according to the numbers. The only candidate who would present a major challenge? A returning Andy Burnham. Furthermore, despite everything, Ipsos figures indicate that the country would still prefer to be led by Starmer than the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage. So could the prime minister cling on? *** The economic case Many Starmer supporters argue that his government has delivered far more than it is given credit for. On Thursday, figures from the ONS showed that the UK economy unexpectedly grew 0.3% in March – beyond what economists expected – despite the shock of the US-Israeli war against Iran. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was quick to say that a challenge to Starmer’s leadership would put that progress at risk. “The GDP figures were fairly strong, although they are far from a boom. But they support the argument that Rachel Reeves makes on the economy that things were heading in the right direction before the war in Iran,” says Heather Stewart. “The chancellor also took action in the budget to cut inflation, which meant markets were predicting interest rate cuts at the start of the year. That’s helpful for people with mortgages, businesses wanting to borrow, credit card bills. There was a feeling that we were turning a corner.” But all of that momentum has been lost with the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, which sent UK energy prices surging once again despite the Starmer government doing all it can to stay out of the conflict. Raising the minimum wage, scrapping the two child benefit policy, improving the performance of the NHS, strengthening workers’ rights, and successively managing to hold off the worst instincts of the US president, Donald Trump, are other achievements, say supporters. But for many MPs and members of the public, this has not been enough. *** Quiet success on immigration There has been progress on issues important to the public that the government appears less keen to shout about, says Alexandra Topping. Annual net migration is expected to be close to zero this year – down from around a million in the wake of the pandemic. The number of small boat crossings in the English channel has fallen modestly, and there has been a drop in the backlog in processing asylum seeker claims. But this rarely features in government rhetoric. “Regardless of whether you think it should or shouldn’t be, immigration is a significant concern to the electorate. Voters care about it but we aren’t hearing much boasting at all about this,” says Alexandra. “It’s interesting that Nigel Farage isn’t talking about it now because the numbers are falling. But it’s something that the Labour party itself feels deeply uncomfortable with – and that hampers people at the top of the party from talking about it. “The government really lacks confidence to be able to trumpet the stuff that it has done.” *** Starmer holds on If, somehow, Starmer manages to weather the storm, he will need to make a fresh pitch to the country to win back support. At the start of the week, the prime minister said that it was no longer a time for incrementalism – a major push on closer relations with the EU has been rumoured, which could see a deal that creates a new customs union with the bloc and a removal of trade barriers. But Alexandra thinks this could further inflame divisions within the Labour party. “It’s hard to see what Starmer could actually do that would satisfy the party. Remain MPs would want to see him make promises to go back into the customs union or the single market. That would cause absolute havoc with the ‘red wall’ MPs looking over their shoulders at Reform.” Other potential leadership candidates are likely to pitch a bold vision if there is a contest. But Alexandra says we should not hold our breath. “Ultimately, big ideological moves aren’t really the way Starmer works,” she says. “Unless he’s going to have a personality transplant and completely change the way he does things, I don’t think we are going to get them.” What else we’ve been reading Award-winning journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman have teamed up to co-host the Guardian’s new flagship US video podcast, Stateside. The first episode kicks off with former Georgia legislator Stacey Abrams talking about the state of voting rights. New episodes will drop every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Yassin El-Moudden, newsletters team Do not miss the latest On the ground report from Matthew Cassel for Guardian video. This time, he is reporting on the fallout of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. It’s gripping, as always. Patrick Against the backdrop of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Unrwa’s concerted efforts to prevent the erasure of archival documents gave rise to a secret mission, as retold here by Jason Burke. Yassin Today, we are releasing the top 40 to 21 of our 100 best novels of all time. There is also a special event at Conway Hall in London on 19 May to discuss the list – livestreaming tickets are also available. Patrick Despite bans from leading film festivals and its reputation for slop, recent advances in AI filmmaking are even beginning to captivate the attention of heavyweight names from Hollywood. Yassin Sport Football | The English Football League has indicated that Southampton could be kicked out of the playoffs and that the date of the Championship playoff final may be delayed if the club is found guilty of breaching regulations. Golf | Defending champion Scottie Scheffler was in a seven-way share of the lead after the first round of the US PGA Championship, while Rory McIlroy struggled, finishing on four-over after four straight bogeys. Tennis | Jannik Sinner reached the semi-finals of the Italian Open on Thursday after seeing off Andrey Rublev and establishing a new record of consecutive wins in Masters 1000 tournaments. The front pages “Burnham bids to topple Starmer, but he must win byelection first”, is the Guardian’s splash today. The Times runs with “Burnham makes move” and the Telegraph writes “Burnham launches bid for No10”. The i Paper says “Streeting and Burnham start leadership battle to force out Starmer”, and the FT’s top headline is “Starmer’s battle begins as Burnham handed route back to Westminster”. The Mirror says “And so it begins”, the Sun splashes “Burn to run” while Metro, above a picture of the challengers, sums it up as “Rivals”. The Daily Mail writes “Labour’s great pretenders”, and the Express says “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum”. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now TV Wrestling With Trump | ★★★★☆ In this punchy documentary, satirist Munya Chawawa steps into the ring to trash-talk Trump’s obsession with apeing the world of WrestleMania. The result? A bodyslam. Chawawa speaks to Maga folk who can call Trump a “blue collar billionaire” without batting an eyelid – a sign of the astonishing power he has to warp the senses, collapse contradictions and reconstruct a reality that suits him better. Just as in some wrestling matches, nothing is true except what you are told you see. Lucy Mangan Stage Lenny Henry: Still at Large | ★★★★☆ In this new standup show – his first tour since 2010 – Lenny Henry says he generally turns down reality TV offers. He said yes to Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters (no, me neither) because he wanted to pay for an extension. At first one wonders what home improvements Still at Large might be funding: it is difficult to get a handle on its purpose. There is some new material but also old ground being re-trodden, and then you realise this show is a victory lap showing just how far he has come and how long he’s been doing this. Nick Ahad Music Kevin Morby: Little Wide Open | ★★★★☆ Badlands isn’t so straightforward. It’s driven by big, punchy, slightly distorted drums, but the music that plays over them is strangely laid back. On the one hand, the lyrics talk about “the big disaster we call home”, but on the other suggest that “heaven is a place on Earth beneath the golden sky”. It sets the tone for an album that, in the best way, can’t quite work out what it thinks, conjuring a series of grey areas. But a sense of equivocation seeps into everything. Alexis Petridis Film The Christophers | ★★★★★ A vision of haughty Englishness up there with Gosford Park and Phantom Thread as Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel pair up in the double act of the year. McKellen plays an irascible, dyspeptic old painter called Julian Sklar, living solo in a chaotic bohemian townhouse in the capital’s Bloomsbury district. Opposite him, Coel is at the top of her game as Lori Butler, a charismatically self-controlled former art student fallen on hard times and hired as Julian’s assistant by his grasping adult children. Her job: to find a series of much talked-about paintings that Julian once showed while he was still a big name, but then withdrew from sight. Radiating mystery, she may be his worst enemy, worst assistant, biggest fan or closest ally. Peter Bradshaw Today in Focus Labour, u ok hun? Guardian columnist Rafael Behr talks through a tumultuous day for Labour and Keir Starmer – following the resignation of health secretary Wes Streeting, and the renewed possibility of a Westminster comeback for Andy Burnham. Cartoon of the day | Stephen Lillie The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad This story of a former teacher finding herself ruling the roost at the world’s only continental king penguin colony is a wonderful dispatch from Douwe den Held and Anastasia Austin in Chile. Assisted by her daughter Aurora, 72-year-old Cecilia Durán Gafo spends her days patrolling the beaches of Useless Bay to protect the birds from people and predators alike. The colony reemerged in 2010 as a handful of penguins nested the land, and the population has since grown to nearly 200. It is one of more than 15,000 private protected areas and Durán’s approach appears to be paying off – “last year, 23 chicks survived – a record”, she says. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until Monday. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

Ukraine war briefing: Putin escalating war, not seeking an end – Merz

Russia’s heavy bombardment of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, showed Moscow was “banking on escalation rather than negotiation”, Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said on Thursday. Peter Beaumont writes that Kyiv bore the brunt of the day’s almost continuous heavy attacks on Ukraine. Emergency services said at least 16 people, including two children, were killed in the capital. The mayor, Vitali Klitschko, declared Friday a day of mourning. Russia had launched 1,567 drones since the start of Wednesday, said the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. At least 22 civilians were killed over Wednesday and Thursday, officials said. It comes after Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, said on Saturday that the war was “coming to an end”. Zelenskyy said on Thursday: “These are definitely not the actions of those who believe the war is coming to an end.” “Kyiv and its partners are ready for negotiations aimed at a just peace,” said Merz, the German chancellor. “Russia, for its part, is continuing the war.” While Ukraine and Europe “want to help end this terrible war as quickly as possible”, the Russian attacks “speak a different language” to that of Putin’s suggestions the war could be nearing an end. In what sounded like a very pointed rejection of Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that a former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, could act as a mediator between Russia and Europe, Merz said: “We Europeans decide for ourselves who speaks for us. No one else.” More than 1,500 rescue workers were deployed across Ukraine to deal with the aftermath, including nearly 600 in Kyiv. Zelenskiy said 180 facilities had been damaged including more than 50 residential buildings. A UN vehicle came under fire from drones during a humanitarian mission in Kherson city. In Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, 28 people, including three children, were wounded and civilian infrastructure was targeted, said Oleh Syniehubov, the regional governor. Ukraine’s energy ministry said electricity supplies in 11 regions had been disrupted. The strikes also targeted port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region and railways, officials said. Latvia’s prime minister has resigned after her government collapsed over the issue of Ukrainian drones straying into Latvian territory from Russia. Jon Henley writes that Evika Siliņa lost her governing coalition majority after forcing out her defence minister, Andris Sprūds, who resigned after Silina said the defence sector had “failed to fulfil its promise of safe skies over our country”. MPs from Sprūds’s party then quit the coalition and collapsed the government. Ukraine says the drones – intended for Russian targets – are driven over the border into Latvia by Russian electronic warfare. The UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday warned of “intensified” military activities near several Ukraine nuclear sites that posed significant safety risks. The IAEA named the Khmelnitsky, Rivne and South Ukraine operational nuclear plants and the Chornobyl disaster site. There had been “a major increase in drone activity with more than 160 UAVs recorded flying in the vicinity of the sites”, the IAEA said, and “director general [Rafael] Grossi expressed deep concern about such military activities”. Grossi urged “all parties to exercise maximum restraint”. Ukrainian drone attacks killed one person and injured three on Thursday in Russia’s Belgorod border region, a frequent target of Ukrainian strikes aimed at military sites. The region’s general headquarters said a drone hit a private house in the town of Graivoron near the border, killing a man. A second man was injured. In a second incident, a drone detonated in a village near the border, injuring two people, authorities said. The governor of Belgorod region was one of two regional officials to leave their posts on Wednesday. Vladimir Putin appointed Alexander Shuvaev, a highly decorated veteran, as acting governor. Ukraine’s anti-corruption court on Thursday ordered the arrest on money-laundering charges of Andriy Yermak, a close ally of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former head of his administration. The court set bail at 140 million hryvnias (US$3.19m), which would allow Yermak, who has denied the allegations against him, to be released pending a final ruling in his case.

Israel says it will sue New York Times over article on sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, have threatened to sue the New York Times for defamation over the publication of an essay by Nicholas Kristof detailing allegations that Palestinian women, men and children have been raped and sexually abused in Israeli military detention. “Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times,” Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “They defamed the soldiers of Israel and perpetuated a blood libel about rape, trying to create a false symmetry between the genocidal terrorists of Hamas and Israel’s valiant soldiers,” Netanyahu added in a statement to Reuters. “We will fight these lies in the court of public opinion and in the court of law. Truth will prevail.” “This threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative,” Danielle Rhoades Ha, a New York Times spokesperson, said in a Thursday statement. “Any such legal claim would be without merit. “Nick has covered sexual violence for decades, and is widely regarded as one of the world’s best on-the-ground journalists in documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones,” the statement continued. The paper has repeatedly defended Kristof’s reporting over the last few days. Kristof’s interviews with 14 men and women “were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in – that includes family members and lawyers”, said Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, in a statement posted on Wednesday. “Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts further cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys and in one case, with U.N. testimony. Independent experts were consulted on the assertions in the piece throughout reporting and fact-checking.” It is not clear in which jurisdiction Israeli officials would bring the lawsuit or whether defamation claims could even be filed by a government. “There is no chance a US court would countenance such a case,” said David A Logan, a professor emeritus at the Roger Williams School of Law and media law expert. There is a legal consensus, he added, that the first amendment bars lawsuits or prosecutions of critics of government brought by the government. Mark Stephens, an expert in international media law, called the idea of Israel suing the Times “ludicrous”. “Libel is about hurt feelings, being shunned and avoided and isolated as a human (sentient) being,” he said in an email. “This is as much about politics as it is about law – and courts are alert to the difference.” Kristof’s piece, which was published in the Times’ opinion section on Monday, details allegations of sexual abuse, including rape, at the hands of Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators, and sometimes involving dogs. In the piece, Kristof wrote that he found the victims he interviewed by asking around among lawyers, human rights groups, aid workers and “ordinary Palestinians”. He noted that while he was able to corroborate many of their stories, in some cases “it was not possible, perhaps because shame left people reluctant to acknowledge abuse even to loved ones”. He notes that “there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes” and extensively quotes Israeli officials’ rejection of the story’s allegations. The Guardian has also published accounts of sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli custody, and recently reported that Israeli soldiers and settlers were using sexual assault as a tool to force Palestinians out of their homes in the occupied West Bank. Allegations of sexual assault of detainees in Israeli detention have also been documented by Israeli and international human rights groups such as B’Tselem and Save the Children, among others. But Kristof’s story prompted furious backlash against the Times from Israel supporters. “Have they – the NY Times – no sense of decency and journalistic responsibility?” wrote Deborah Lipstadt, a former envoy to combat antisemitism under the Biden administration. Earlier this week, Israel’s foreign ministry accused the Times of purposely having published Kristof’s piece the night before the publication of an official Israeli report alleging systematic sexual violence by Hamas on and following 7 October 2023. The statement prompted the Times to issue a public response rejecting the allegations. The paper also publicly rejected allegations of internal discussions at the Times about “source credibility and lack of evidence”. “There is no truth to this at all,” Stadtlander said then. It is not the first time Israeli officials have threatened to sue the Times. Last year, Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News that the Times “should be sued” over its coverage of starvation in Gaza. “I’m actually looking at whether a country can sue the New York Times,” Netanyahu said at the time. “And I’m looking into it right now, because I think it’s such a – it’s such clear defamation. I mean, you put a picture of a child that’s supposed to then represent all these supposedly starving children, yet they put in this picture of a child who has cerebral palsy.” Israel did not follow through on that threat. A spokesperson for the Times said at the time that “attempts to threaten independent media providing vital information and accountability to the public are unfortunately an increasingly common playbook, but journalists continue to report from Gaza for the Times, bravely, sensitively and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war.”

Tape shows Bolsonaro son asking jailed banker for $26.8m to fund film on father

Flávio Bolsonaro, Brazil’s leading rightwing presidential hopeful, has been caught on tape asking a banker accused of corruption for $26.8m (£20m) to fund a film about his father, the former president Jair Bolsonaro. The leaked voice memos and text messages were published on Wednesday by the Intercept Brasil, and later acknowledged by Flávio Bolsonaro, a far-right senator who is tied in polls with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of October’s election. The incident was already being seen as the most serious blow since the senator announced his candidacy as his father’s representative, since the former president is under house arrest after being convicted over an attempted coup. In the recordings, Flávio Bolsonaro can be heard asking for R$134m ($26.8m) towards a “heroic” biopic in which Jair Bolsonaro is played by Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson’s 2004 Passion of the Christ. The requests were made to the banker Daniel Vorcaro, who is currently in prison and at the centre of what many consider the country’s largest banking fraud and one of the biggest corruption scandals in recent history, with total losses estimated at R$60bn. In the messages, which were sent before his arrest – but when many of the accusations against him were already widely known – Flávio refers to the banker as “brother” and presses him for payment to ensure Caviezel and director Cyrus Nowrasteh were paid. “We’re at a very decisive moment for the film and, as there are a lot of outstanding payments, everyone is tense … Imagine us defaulting on someone like Jim Caviezel, or Cyrus … It would be very bad,” the younger Bolsonaro can be heard saying. The revelations triggered a significant backlash, even among the far right. Romeu Zema, the governor of Minas Gerais who is a presidential hopeful but has largely avoided criticising the Bolsonaros, called the recordings “a slap in the face to decent Brazilians”, while a conservative congressman suggested it might be better to replace Flávio on the ticket with Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle. “The blow to Flávio’s campaign is brutal – by far the worst news for his campaign so far,” said the sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros. “Flávio’s anti-establishment credentials, which helped him draw level with Lula, could quickly erode,” added Barros. Vorcaro was the majority shareholder in the small private Master Bank, and is accused of defrauding many of its 800,000 clients out of hundreds of millions of pounds by offering returns far above market rates. To cover losses and keep expanding, he allegedly paid millions in bribes to public officials and politicians. Vorcaro denies all the allegations and is awaiting trial in prison. The scandal has rattled Brazilian society from football, religion, politics and the judiciary – and first touched the Bolsonaro family last week, when police accused senator Ciro Nogueira, a former senior member of the ex-president’s cabinet, of having received monthly bribes of up to R$500,000 to act in the banker’s interests. Nogueira denies the allegations. When Flávio’s messages to Vorcaro were revealed on Wednesday, he initially denied the story, but later admitted it, saying it was “a son seeking private sponsorship for a private film about his father’s story”. In the messages, he invites Vorcaro to a private dinner with Caviezel and Nowrasteh in São Paulo, and the banker responds by suggesting it be held at his home. Caviezel and Nowrasteh are not accused of wrongdoing; neither man responded to a request for comment. Bolsonaro did not respond to requests for comment and, in his social media post, did not say whether he ultimately received the money. However, an advertising executive reportedly hired to broker the deal told the newspaper O Globo that at least ($12m) had been paid, and documents submitted to tax authorities and mentioned by the newspaper reportedly show that part of the funds was indeed transferred to an intermediary company. The sum is far above the budgets of two internationally successful Brazilian films: I’m Still Here, which won the Oscar for best international feature in 2025 with a budget of $8.9m, and The Secret Agent, nominated for best picture in 2026 with $5.6m. Some have drawn comparisons between the unusually high budget for Brazilian standards and the $40m plus $35m spent on marketing by Amazon for a documentary about the US first lady, Melania Trump. In Bolsonaro’s case, the film’s production company and its executive producer and screenwriter – a former Bolsonaro minister – denied that the project received any funds from Vorcaro or his bank. Barros said: “The budget is completely out of step with a national production, and the foreign participants are not top-tier. The way this money was raised still needs to be investigated … The producers say the money never reached them. So where did it go?”