Follow Stuart on Twitter | Send tips and insights to slau@politico.eu Hi, Stuart Lau here, co-author of POLITICO’s China Watcher newsletter. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has been found liable for sexually abusing author E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, but will that be enough to stop his reelection campaign? Read on. I’ll also tell you what you can expect from the upcoming G-7 summit. FIRST THING FIRST DONALD ‘SEX ABUSER’ TRUMP: A U.S. jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s. It’s a civil suit, meaning the man running again for the White House will not be held criminally liable. Ankush Khardori, an attorney and former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department, digs into how the trial went and what this means for Trump. Here’s the bill: The jury ordered him to pay $5 million in damages for having defamed her by calling her allegations a “con job.” Kyle Cheney takes a look at what’s coming next in Trump’s legal travails. G-7 TIME IN JAPAN HIROSHIMA HUDDLE: The Group of Seven leaders will attend their annual summit in a week. This time, Japan picked Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s hometown Hiroshima, quite an improvement in accessibility from the far-flung island of Kashiko the last time Tokyo took the helm in 2016. New additions: Two leaders are new to the club — namely, British and Italian Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Giorgia Meloni. Old faces: U.S. President Joe Biden, Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Charles Michel are no strangers to each other. And of course, the Japanese host himself. Also invited: India, South Korea, Brazil, Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cook Islands are invited to join this year, alongside Comoros on behalf of the African Union. NUCLEAR WORRIES: The choice of Hiroshima — which was hit by an atomic bomb in 1945 — as the host city is symbolic. The coming week will be crucial, as Russian forces have in recent days been evacuating people from the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, prompting the International Atomic Energy Agency to issue a warning of a “severe nuclear accident” in the region currently under Russian control. AND CLOSER TO THE REGION: Apart from a focus on Ukraine, Japan is also keen to draw the Western leaders’ attention to the worsening security situation in the Indo-Pacific (read: China in the Taiwan Strait), and to make economic plans to deal with the ramifications. MAKING FRIENDS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH: The inclusion of key countries in Africa, Latin American, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific illustrates what the G-7 nations see as a pressing need to engage the Global South, as China and even Russia are making inroads in trade and influence. Getting fed up with Beijing, pt. 1: EU Ambassador to China Jorge Toledo rebutted Beijing's narrative on the Ukraine war in his first Europe Day speech in China. "Those who say that the flaws in the European security architecture, or the expansion of NATO are the root causes of this tragedy, are fundamentally wrong,” he said. Getting fed up with Beijing, pt. 2: Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang was warned by his German counterpart during his trip to Berlin not to let Chinese companies sell arms to Russia. This comes as the EU is reportedly planning to sanction Chinese firms, for the first time since the Russian war started. “We expect all countries, and China as well, to exert appropriate influence on their companies in that sense,” Germany’s Annalena Baerbock said alongside Qin. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON, ITALY? Italian Prime Minister Meloni is expected to face calls from her G-7 counterparts to cut ties with China’s Belt and Road initiative. Officials from Italy, which has to make up its mind on whether to renew the memorandum by the end of this year, have signaled a willingness to quit — but cautioned it would take time for a new arrangement to be hammered out with Beijing. RISHI AND HIS £1B PLAN: Sunak is preparing to pledge £1 billion to the U.K.'s fledgling microchip industry during the G-7 meeting. Here’s our report. Now: Drop me an email if you’d like to meet for a little glass of sake (and share gossip) while in Hiroshima. UKRAINE LATEST: MAY 9 PARALLEL UNIVERSES EUROPE DAY VS RED SQUARE: Ukraine renewed its desire to join the European family on Europe Day Tuesday, rolling out the red carpet for European Commission chief von der Leyen. “The time has come to take a positive decision on the opening of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “The aggressor has already dramatically failed,” von der Leyen declared, standing alongside him. “Ukraine has been fighting for the ideals of Europe that we celebrate today, to create lasting unity and peace.” On the same day, his nemesis Russian President Vladimir Putin — flanked by leaders from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia — staged a one-tank band to for the V Day parade at Red Square. Instead of a long line of advanced battle tanks rumbling through the streets toward the Kremlin as in previous years, the procession was led by one single, Soviet-era T-34 tank, the kind used in action against the Nazis on the Eastern Front. Gabriel Gavin has more. EU AMMO PLEDGE: European parliamentarians overwhelmingly backed a move to speed up legislation to boost the manufacture of 1 million rounds of ammunition for Ukraine. Eddy Wax has the details. Is he alright? Belarus’ long-time dictator Alexander Lukashenko had to be driven a short distance to an event during the Moscow celebrations and skipped a lunch hosted by Putin, sparking speculations online about his health. Reuters has the story.
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