Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s trip to China and his mixed reception. Seth Meyers On Late Night, Seth Meyers noted that in Trump‘s first year of his second term his family made about $4bn, an “insane” figure that was “not even from doing anything” other than government contracts, shady crypto deals and memecoins. Recently, a 91-storey Trump tower on Australia’s Gold Coast was scrapped after it was decided that the Trump brand is “increasingly toxic” in the country. Meyers said that means a lot as “everything there is toxic”. He…
Tag: World news
Key points from the Donald Trump-Xi Jinping summit – video analysis
After a much-hyped US-China summit, the leaders of the world’s two biggest powers made no real breakthroughs on big issues, such as Iran, Taiwan and trade. The Guardian’s senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins, breaks down how Donald Trump and Xi Jinping focused on growing their personal rapport instead The Guardian
Men in the mirror: Trump and Xi’s suits put ‘chameleon effect’ to test in Beijing
When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met for a welcome ceremony in Tiananmen Square this week with the world’s gaze on them, they mirrored one another in strikingly similar suits. Both were blue, single-breasted with flap pockets. Both had two buttons with only the top one done up. Both wore red ties. They were surrounded by scores of other men in different suits: Stephen Miller had his customary pocket square, ditto Pete Hegseth, who along with Scott Bessent wore flamboyantly stripy ties; Elon Musk wore a green tie; there were…
Weather tracker: Furnace Creek sizzles as snow sweeps Siberia in a week of extremes
Extreme weather across several parts of the world this week has brought record-breaking temperatures to Honduras, North America and Indonesia. Honduras smashed its all-time May maximum temperature record earlier this month – only for it to be broken again on 13 May in Choluteca, known as the furnace of Central America. Temperatures climbed to 42.2C (107.9F), surpassing the previous record of 42.1C. With intense heat forecast to persist over the coming weeks, more records are expected to fall. In the western US, it soared to 46.7C in the aptly named…
Photo of US-China delegation criticized over absence of women: ‘masculine, militarized and exclusionary’
By the time Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday, the bilateral had featured all the expected pomp and pageantry: a meticulously choreographed display of Chinese soldiers, children waving American and Chinese flags, and rows of senior officials and the US’s top business executives. Conspicuously absent at the table, however, were women from either delegation – a stark visual that quickly drew criticism from observers who saw it as an unmistakable display of patriarchal power. In a tweet that has attracted over…
For anxious Taiwan, Trump’s silence after Xi talks is best possible outcome
Before this week’s summit between the Chinese and US presidents, Taiwan had been cast as the anxious bystander. Observers suggested that Taipei feared the unpredictable and transactional Donald Trump might overturn Washington’s longstanding support for the island democracy, which Beijing claims as a breakaway province, during Thursday and Friday’s talks. But while the US president hailed his “great” meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, when the leaders emerged on Thursday afternoon, he took an uncustomarily muted approach as he sidestepped questions on Taiwan. A White House readout of the…
Canadian officer accused of spying for China acquitted of charges
A retired police officer Canada accused of being an agent for China has been acquitted of national security charges after prosecutors failed to prove he acted illegally. William Majcher, who served in the RCMP’s financial crime unit, was charged in 2023 over allegations he had breached Canada’s Security of Information Act by helping Chinese police coerce a Vancouver-area real estate investor, accused of fraud, to return to China. On Wednesday, Martha Devlin, a British Columbia supreme court justice, found Majcher was not guilty of a charge under Canada’s Security of…
Trump delights in his deference to Xi, his strongman fantasy made flesh
Why does Donald Trump look so at home in China? The US president spent day one of his summit in Beijing basking in rigid pageantry, heroically managing not to offend his hosts and offering the verdict: “China is beautiful.” A man who has shown authoritarian yearnings in his own country – discrediting elections, cowing universities, accusing journalists of treason – visibly delighted in one where the strongman fantasy is made flesh. Not for the first time, he was far better behaved in one of the world’s most repressive regimes than…
Trump, Hegseth, Musk: Maga lands in Beijing – podcast
Late on Wednesday evening local time, Donald Trump landed in Beijing. And it wasn’t just the president arriving in China – alongside him were Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Elon Musk, Tim Cook and many more. As the Guardian’s senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins explains, Trump is in the country for a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping, in the first visit of a US president to China since Trump was last in Beijing in 2017. But what will they talk about, and how much is at stake? Annie Kelly hears…
Chinese court awards compensation to sacked worker replaced by AI
A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation. The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products. The company, which has not been named publicly, later said AI could do his job and offered him a demotion and a 40% pay cut. When he refused, the company fired him. Zhou…