Chinese PR boss says sorry after glorifying work-till-you-drop culture

In a crisis of her own making, Qu Jing also threatened Baidu staff who dared to question her management style

The head of public relations at China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, has apologised after creating her own PR crisis with a series of videos glorifying the country’s work-till-you-drop culture.

Qu Jing, who is also vice-president at the company, said she would not take responsibility for her staff’s wellbeing “as I’m not your mother” in the videos posted over the May bank holiday on Douyin, the most popular short-video app in China. In another she said: “If you work in public relations, don’t expect weekends off.”

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Students across Europe hold Gaza war protests in run-up to UN vote on Palestinian statehood

Police arrested dozens of people in Amsterdam, with university occupations continuing in Netherlands, Belgium and Spain

Thirty-two people were arrested as Dutch police broke up a Gaza war protest at the University of Amsterdam, in a second day of unrest over the conflict. Police said the offences included public violence, vandalism and assault.

Video captured by Reuters appeared to show officers in riot gear striking protesters and police knocking down makeshift barricades of desks, bricks and wooden pallets that seemingly had been used to set off fire extinguishers in hopes of pushing them back. The footage appeared to also show police dragging several students away as hundreds shouted: “Shame on you!”

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Russia-Ukraine war: Zelenskiy replaces special operations chief for second time in six months – as it happened

Move comes after deputy prime minister and agriculture minister dismissed by government

South Korea’s position remains it will not supply lethal weapons to any country, president Yoon Suk Yeol said on Thursday, when asked if Seoul was prepared to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

Yoon also said his government intended to continue managing relations with Moscow to “pursue economic cooperation and mutual benefits” even though the two countries’ ties have become “uncomfortable” since the start of the war in Ukraine.

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Trump hush-money trial: Stormy Daniels to continue testifying – live

Adult film star, whose brief alleged affair with Trump has been subject of much salacious questioning from prosecutors, faces further cross-examination

Trump’s New York criminal case is the first of four such cases to reach a jury, while the other three have been hit by serious delays that could prevent them from starting before November’s presidential election.

Also on Tuesday, the federal judge in the case alleging Trump retained classified documents at this Mar-a-Lago club in Florida indefinitely delayed setting a trial date after ruling the case was nowhere near ready to face a jury.

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Boeing supplier regularly shipped parts with defects, whistleblower alleges

Santiago Paredes says he raised concerns over defects on fuselages leaving Spirit AeroSystems factory

A former employee of Boeing’s largest supplier has alleged that key aircraft parts regularly left the factory with serious defects.

Santiago Paredes, who worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas between 2010 and 2022, said he was used to finding “anywhere from 50 to 100, 200” defects on fuselages – the main body of the plane – that were being shipped to Boeing, and he felt threatened for raising his concerns.

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First Thing: ‘I’m not supplying the weapons’ if Israel assaults Rafah, warns Biden

WHO says southern Gaza hospitals are running out of fuel. Plus, Bernie Sanders reveals bill to tackle $220bn in US medical debt

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Good morning.

Joe Biden publicly warned Israel that the US would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces launch a major assault on Rafah – the last remaining city in Gaza that has not been razed in the Israeli offensive.

What pressure is the US applying on Israel? US diplomacy appears to have failed to stop a Rafah invasion, so Biden is now speaking publicly. In an analysis, the Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, writes that the decision “sends a message to Netanyahu that the US dog is beginning to regain control of its tail”.

What is the humanitarian toll of the war? After Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 200 hostage on 7 October, Israel’s onslaught on Gaza has killed almost 35,000 people – mostly civilians – and displaced about 80% of the 2.3 million population. Northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown famine”, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Will this really make a difference? The IDF do not need new bombs to invade Rafah. They have more than enough stockpiles to reduce it to rubble. But US officials are talking of this as a hinge point in the US-Israel relationship, Julian Borger reports from DC.

What do prosecutors allege? That the money paid to Daniels was therefore an election expense and was deliberately entered wrongly in Trump’s business documents – with that act being the crime, rather than anything to do with the actual payment of hush money to cover up the alleged affair.

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Drukkje min broderѕ blod! Why the best Eurovision songs are no longer in English

While Europe’s lingua franca remains dominant, there has been a definite shift since a Portuguese song triumphed in 2017

There was a time when in order to win Eurovision you had to “fly on the wings of love”, “take me to your heaven” or “sail into infinity while reaching for divinity”. This year, however, there’s a fair chance the winner will estar comiendo el mundo (be eating the world), ridere in queste notti bruciate (laugh in these burnt nights), or even drukkje min broderѕ blod (drink my brother’s blood).

The metaphors may have been mixed, but for the first two decades of the 21st century, the English language reigned supreme at the Eurovision song contest. In the run-up to the millennium, the so-called language rule restricted English songs to countries that counted it among their official languages, such as Britain, Ireland and Malta. But when the rule was scrapped in 1999, the floodgates opened.

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Malaysia plans to give orangutans to countries that buy palm oil

‘Orangutan diplomacy’ strategy aims to ease concern over environmental impact of palm oil production, says minister

Malaysia plans to give orangutans as gifts to countries that buy its palm oil as part of an “orangutan diplomacy” strategy to ease concerns over the environmental impact of the commodity.

The south-east Asian country is the world’s second biggest producer of palm oil, which is found in more than half of supermarket packaged goods – from pizza and biscuits, to lipstick and shampoos. Global demand for palm oil has been blamed for driving deforestation in Malaysia and neighbouring Indonesia.

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Western military trainers could go to Ukraine, Lithuania minister says

Gabrielius Landsbergis also backs David Cameron and Emmanuel Macron on standing up to Putin

Lithuania’s foreign minister has raised the prospect of an ad hoc coalition of western countries sending military training personnel into Ukraine backed by ground-based air defence, days after Russia took an increasingly strident tone against what it sees as the threat of deeper western involvement in the war.

Speaking to the Guardian after meeting his British counterpart, David Cameron, in London, Gabrielius Landsbergis also backed the British foreign secretary for saying that Ukraine could use British-made weapons against Russia; remarks that alongside Emmanuel Macron refusing to rule out western troops in Ukraine prompted the Kremlin to threaten UK assets and order a tactical nuclear training exercise.

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Children ‘piled up and shot’: new details emerge of ethnic cleansing in Darfur

As El Fasher stands on the ‘precipice of a massacre’, rights groups call for sanctions after new testimony describes atrocities carried out by RSF paramilitaries in Sudan

Gruesome new testimony details one of the worst atrocities of the year-long Sudanese civil war – the large-scale massacre of civilians as they desperately tried to flee an ethnic rampage in Darfur last summer.

Witnesses describe children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they attempted to escape the regional capital of El Geneina in June last year during a bout of ethnic violence in which thousands of civilians were killed.

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US will stop supplying some weapons to Israel if it invades Rafah, Biden warns

US president publicly warns that his administration will not provide the weapons for an offensive on Rafah

Joe Biden has issued a blunt warning to Israel that his administration will stop supplying bombs and artillery shells if its military pushes ahead with an offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, in what could mark the start of a turning point in relations between the two countries.

The US president delivered the warning in a television interview in which he brushed aside Israeli and Republican complaints and made clear his administration would not provide the weapons for an offensive on Rafah, which the US, the UN and other aid agencies warn would trigger a humanitarian disaster.

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Shohei Ohtani interpreter to plead guilty to stealing millions from MLB star

  • Ippei Mizuhara faces long jail sentence after admission
  • Plea deal will absolve Ohtani of any wrongdoing

Ippei Mizuhara, the former interpreter for Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani, will face up to 33 years in jail when he pleads guilty to stealing millions of dollars from his former friend.

Mizuhara has admitted to one count of bank fraud and one count of subscribing to a false tax return. As well as a length jail term, he must also pay $16,975,010 in restitution to Victim A, assumed to be Ohtani. Mizuhara will enter his guilty plea in the coming weeks and is set to be arraigned on 14 May, prosecutors said.

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Trinity College Dublin agrees to divest from Israeli firms after student protest

Five-day encampment in university grounds that caused the college major loss of income ended in victory for campaigners

Students at Trinity College Dublin have ended a five-day encampment after the university pledged to cut ties with Israeli companies.

Student leaders claimed victory on Wednesday night for a US-style campaign that had disrupted the campus and blocked access to the Book of Kells.

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Nicaragua cancels Chinese plan for controversial canal 10 years on

Critics said proposal to build canal linking Atlantic and Pacific would endanger environment and rural communities

Nearly a decade after it broke ground on a controversial plan to build a canal linking the Atlantic and the Pacific, Nicaragua has canceled a concession granted to a Chinese businessman to complete the project which critics said would endanger the environment and displace rural communities.

Despite a symbolic “ground-breaking” in 2014, no work was done on the canal that was to link Nicaragua’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. At one point, crews broke ground on access roads near the canal but digging the waterway never started.

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Biden seeks to pull rank in US-Israel relationship – a trial of strength beckons

The decision to place a weapons shipment on hold sends a message to Netanyahu that the US dog is beginning to regain control of its tail

In placing a hold on a shipment of US-made bombs to Israel, and warning there could be more restrictions to come, Joe Biden is sending a message to Benjamin Netanyahu that his administration is no longer prepared to be a dog wagged by its own tail.

Netanyahu’s repeated defiance of US warnings not to pursue an offensive on Rafah had been based on an assumption that curbing the US weapons supply could inflict more political damage on Biden than on the Israeli prime minister, and that Netanyahu could cause havoc for the president at home at the height of an election year.

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US signals to Israel more arms shipments could be paused over Rafah offensive

Move would mark significant pivot in relations as pressure builds on Israel to pull back from attack

US officials have signalled to Israel that more arms shipments could be delayed if the Israeli military pushes ahead with an offensive in Rafah, Gaza, in what would mark the start of a major pivot in relations between the two countries.

Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, confirmed on Wednesday that the Biden administration had paused the supply of thousands of large bombs to Israel, in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the city.

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David Miliband condemns ‘absurd’ lack of cooperation between EU and UK

Former foreign secretary to call for next government to seek much closer ties with bloc on foreign policy and defence issues

David Miliband will on Wednesday urge British ministers to forge closer links with the EU and condemn the “absurd” lack of cooperation between London and Brussels on foreign and defence issues.

The former foreign secretary will give a speech at the Irish embassy in London in which he will criticise the Conservatives for their attitude towards the EU and call on the next government to seek much closer ties.

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Rafah hospitals in danger of being overwhelmed, say Gaza doctors

Patients said to have been moved on donkey carts from evacuated hospital, in situation described as ‘catastrophic’

Hospitals in Rafah risk being overwhelmed by a wave of sick and injured people if the fighting there intensifies and routes into Gaza remain impassible, doctors and medical officials in the city say.

Medics and patients hastily evacuated the Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital, one of the few remaining functioning hospitals in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Tuesday after the Israeli army seized the nearby border crossing with Egypt in a dawn raid.

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Model seeks legal advice after Salvini’s party uses image for anti-Islam poster

Anna Haholkina tells of shock and says no one from deputy Italian PM’s League sought her permission

A woman whose photograph was used in a poster campaign by Italy’s far-right League, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition, has said she will consult lawyers, describing the images as “racist”.

Anna Haholkina, a Ukrainian-Italian model who lives in Rimini, said she was shocked to see her face on the posters that have sprung up in Milan in recent weeks as the League, which is led by the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, intensifies its anti-Islam stance in the run-up to next month’s European elections.

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UK officials under fire for congratulating ‘repressive’ new chief of Uganda’s army

Activists call move ‘absurd’, as Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of President Museveni, is accused of torture and abusing critics

Senior British government officials have congratulated the newly appointed head of the Ugandan army, a man accused of torture, in a move that has been called “absurd” and “disappointing”.

Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s new chief of defence forces and son of President Yoweri Museveni, received a congratulatory letter from Britain’s most senior military officer, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, at a meeting with the British high commissioner, Kate Airey, and the British defence attache.

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