The Washington Post - Bryan Pietsch / Britain, Germany urge Israel to exercise restraint in response to Iran
 

• The top diplomats of Britain and Germany were in Israel on Wednesday, urging leaders there to avoid a wider regional conflict as they decide how to respond to last weekend’s Iranian retaliatory attack. 

• British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said it was “clear the Israelis are making a decision to act — we hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.” 

• German Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock said as she departed Israel that “the region must not step-by-step slide into a situation with a totally unpredictable outcome. Everyone must now act prudently and responsibly.” 

• She said she was “not talking about giving in,” but rather exercising “a wise restraint which is nothing less than strength.”

  
  Related article: Al-Jazeera - Giorgio Cafiero / Spain leads European push to recognise Palestine, risking Israel’s wrath

• Spain is on a mission. As Israel’s war on Gaza rages on for a seventh month, with almost 34,000 Palestinians killed, Madrid wants to recognise Palestine as a state by July and is encouraging its neighbours to follow in its footsteps. 

• Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a longtime supporter of Palestinian rights, sees recognition as a way of reaching a two-state solution and a possible key to ending the devastating conflict that began in October. 

• “The time has come for the international community to once and for all recognise the State of Palestine,” he said in November. “It is something that many EU countries believe we have to do jointly, but if this is not the case, Spain will adopt its own decision.” 

• In all, 139 out of 193 United Nations member states consider Palestine as a state. Those which do include European nations such as Iceland, Poland and Romania, as well as countries like Russia, China and Nigeria.

   

The Guardian - Joan E. Greve / Mike Johnson moves ahead with foreign aid bills despite threats to oust him
 

• The House speaker, Mike Johnson, is pushing ahead with his plan to hold votes on four separate foreign aid bills this week, despite threats from two fellow Republicans to oust him if he advances a Ukraine funding proposal. 

• Shortly after noon on Wednesday, the rules committee posted text for three bills that would provide funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. The text of a fourth bill, which is expected to include measures to redirect seized Russian assets toward Ukraine and force the sale of TikTok, will be released later on Wednesday, Johnson said in a note to members. 

• The legislation would provide $26bn in aid for Israel, $61bn for Ukraine and $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific. The Israel bill also appeared to include more than $9bn in humanitarian assistance, which Democrats had demanded to assist civilians in war zones like Gaza. 

• Johnson indicated final votes on the bills were expected on Saturday evening, interfering with the House’s scheduled recess that was supposed to begin on Friday. If the House passes the bills, they will then be combined and sent to the Senate to simplify the upper chamber’s voting process.

   

Financial Times - Joe Leahy and Thomas Hale / China warns west of ‘survival of the fittest’ as manufacturing boosts economy
 

• China’s first-quarter gross domestic product data has thrown into stark relief the effects of President Xi Jinping’s bet that a manufacturing boom can help the world’s second-largest economy overcome a prolonged slump in the property market. 

• The National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday reported a 6.1 per cent rise in industrial production and a nearly 10 per cent increase in manufacturing investment, which helped bolster a better than expected reading of 5.3 per cent GDP growth year on year for the first three months of 2024. 

• But with property sales falling by double digits, analysts questioned whether policymakers’ concentration on fuelling supply instead of domestic demand would prove a sustainable plan for an economy suffering from low consumer and investor confidence and deflationary pressures. 

• “The drivers are pretty clear — more production and exports helped along with more investment on the manufacturing front,” said Hui Shan, chief China economist at Goldman Sachs.

   

Bloomberg - Jasmina Kuzmanovic / Croatian Premier Plenkovic Suffers Setback in Tight Election
 

• Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic suffered a setback in a tight national election as he confronted a challenge from President Zoran Milanovic, who has derided military aid to Ukraine. 

• Plenkovic’s center-right Croatian Democratic Union, or HDZ, was on track to secure 60 seats in Croatia’s 151-member parliament, short of the majority needed to stay in power after the vote Wednesday, according to projections based on a tally of more than 90% of polling stations by the State Election Commission. The Social Democrats, which Milanovic wants to lead as the next prime minister, were behind with 42. 

• Both main parties said they would move ahead with cobbling together a majority, though the coalition math suggests that neither has an easy path to form a government. With a surge in turnout, the prime minister’s party lost ground compared with 2020. 

• At risk is European Union unity over aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia for its invasion. Croatia under Plenkovic has been a stalwart EU supporter of Ukraine, while Milanovic has denounced NATO’s expansion in response to the Kremlin’s invasion in 2022, a conflict he’s deemed “not our war.”

   

Our opinion reads for today:
 

• Politico - Karl Mathiesen, Barbara Moens, Giovanna Faggionato and Giorgio Leali / A new inconvenient truth: Europe’s global plans all require money no one has 
• Financial Times - Edward Luce / Biden’s polite Trumpism on China