Rush hour on Air Force one as Melania director Brett Ratner joins Trump China trip

Brett Ratner, the director behind the Rush Hour movies and a documentary on Melania Trump, is accompanying Donald Trump to China for his summit with Xi Jinping. Trump is due to hold talks with the Chinese leader on Thursday and Friday over pressing economic and geopolitical issues, including Iran and Taiwan. The US president was accompanied on Air Force One by CEOs and top executives from major US tech and finance firms, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk and BlackRock’s Larry Fink. Ratner was among the groups as well.…

Trump due in China for high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping, as Iran war looms over talks

Donald Trump is due to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran. Trump will bring tech leaders, including Elon Musk of Tesla and Tim Cook of Apple, and plans for headline-grabbing deals. He has said he expects China’s leader, Xi Jinping, would “give me a big, fat hug when I get there”. But the Middle East conflict that Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will…

Senate confirms Kevin Warsh to 14-year-term as Federal Reserve governor – US politics live

From 16m ago Senate confirms Kevin Warsh to Fed board, with Fed chair vote likely on Wednesday The Senate earlier confirmed Kevin Warsh to a 14-year term as Federal Reserve governor, marking an important step toward Trump’s nominee succeeding Jerome Powell as the US central bank’s next chair. The upper chamber is now expected to immediately move forward with the confirmation process for Warsh’s concurrent four-year term as Fed chair, and could approve him for the leadership post as soon as tomorrow. Powell’s tenure as chair ends on Friday. Warsh’s…

Trump heads to China to spread the gospel of American tech while emulating Xi Jinping on AI

Donald Trump is heading to China this week. If his guest list is any clue, he wants to discuss technology with Xi Jinping, though perhaps after the war in Iran. On Monday, news broke that outgoing Apple CEO, Tim Cook, as well as SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, would join the US president. Other guests from the tech sphere include Meta’s recently appointed president, Dina Powell McCormick; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of computer memory maker Micron; Chuck Robbins, CEO of longtime telecom giant Cisco; and Cristiano Amon, CEO of semiconductor…

Mayor of California city resigns over charges of being a foreign agent of China

Eileen Wang, the mayor of a southern California city, resigned suddenly on Monday after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced she had been charged with acting as an illegal foreign agent of China. Wang, 58, agreed to plead guilty to the felony count and could face a sentence of 10 years in prison. “Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy,” said Bill Essayli, an assistant US attorney. “This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland…

Looking for leverage: China keeps close eye on US politics after summit delay

The White House said on Wednesday that China had agreed to postpone Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, as war in the Middle East rages on, complicating the US president’s position at home and abroad. China has not yet commented on the delay to the highly anticipated trip, in which Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, will meet in person for the first time since October. Trump previously said he hoped to delay the trip, originally scheduled to run from 31 March to 2 April, for “five or six weeks”.…

Fears about nuclear war are reaching a fever pitch. Another grim sign of the times | Judith Levine

Intimations of world war three – the big one, nuclear Armageddon – didn’t arise yesterday. But they got more urgent when Donald Trump was elected the second time. In December 2024, Newsweek published a map of the “safest US states to live during nuclear war”. The article was not reassuring. “Nowhere is truly ‘safe’” from such consequences as “contamination of food and water supplies and prolonged radiation exposure”, said the senior policy director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Another expert noted that “even a ‘small’ nuclear war…

Amid Trump crackdown on Chinese students, one US university appears to block them altogether

Several universities have scrapped partnerships with Chinese institutions in recent months as a direct result of pressure from US legislators. But no university appears to have gone as far as Purdue University in Indiana. Students and faculty at the public university say that an unofficial policy is in effect to automatically reject students from China and a number of other countries altogether. The alleged shift in admissions practices at Purdue followed a letter sent last year to six universities by the US House’s select committee on the Chinese Communist party…

Amid Trump crackdown on Chinese students, one US university appears to block them altogether

Several universities have scrapped partnerships with Chinese institutions in recent months as a direct result of pressure from US legislators. But no university appears to have gone as far as Purdue University in Indiana. Students and faculty at the public university say that an unofficial policy is in effect to automatically reject students from China and a number of other countries altogether. The alleged shift in admissions practices at Purdue followed a letter sent last year to six universities by the US House’s select committee on the Chinese Communist party…