Taiwanese president says ties with Washington ‘rock solid’, hours after leaders of US and China share first call since November
In their first call since November, Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned US president Donald Trump to be “prudent” about supplying arms to Taiwan, according to a readout of their call provided by China’s foreign ministry.
“President Xi emphasised that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” the readout said. “China must safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will never allow Taiwan to be separated. The US must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”
The 21-year-old, who is close to becoming the first European yokozuna or grand champion in Japan, is motivated by messages from his war-torn home
The swish of feet on clay and sand has a soothing, rhythmic feel, as wrestlers at a sumo stable in Tokyo propel themselves across the ring, their bodies low, eyes fixed on an imaginary foe. But by the time their morning training ends an hour later, all but one of the rikishi are bathed in sweat, gulping lungfuls of air, their strength waning with every shove.
Just one wrestler has spent all but the final minutes of the session at the side of the dohyo ring, guiding his stablemates with words delivered with economy and purpose. After the group bow to a miniature Shinto shrine on the back wall, they gather around their mentor in a communal expression of gratitude.
For me – and many other Black men – my experience of hair begins and ends in the barbershop. But as my two daughters get older, I’m determined to make ‘salon night’ pain free – and maybe even enjoyable
In the basement of Larry King’s salon in Marylebone, London, stylist and curly hair advocate Jennie Roberts is giving me a much-needed pep talk. “It’s all about education and making everything simplified,” she says, perhaps sensing my apprehension as I stand uneasily before her with a comb in hand.
“It’s not a big effort, it is not going to cost a lot of money. Managing curly hair, once you know how, is easy,” Roberts says. “It really is. It’s easier than trying to hide it anyway.”
At a party event in a school hall in Lewisham, people told me how disillusionment with Labour has led to this moment
“How many?”
On the end of the phone is a nice press officer for the Greens, head full from a long day in Gorton, Manchester, showing off their would-be MP. And now, as Friday’s sky turns indigo, I’m calling about reports from Lewisham, south London, that tomorrow they’re expecting a flood of 500 Green activists. This comes as a surprise to the party’s own news machine.
Huge release of files provides extraordinary detail on the extent of the disgraced financier’s network
Among the new trove of 3m files relating to Jeffrey Epstein released last week are a vast number of stories shedding light on his relationships with prominent figures in the US, the UK, and around the world. Inclusion in the files does not imply wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing – but a sampling of some of the details they include provides extraordinary detail on the extent of his network.
Many people are now opting for minimal contact with their parents and other relatives. But while this can provide time to think, it is fraught with emotional complexities
When her mum called her, stress would ring through Marie’s body like an alarm going off. So “I stopped answering the phone,” she says. She forms the words purposefully, as if reading from a script. This was one of the “boundaries” she discussed carefully with her therapist three years ago when she reached a point of crisis in managing her maternal relationship.
She has never explained her decision to her mother, but it followed a lifetime of what Marie, who is in her 40s, feels has been rejection, shaming and feeling like the “black sheep of the family”.Marie’s mother, she says, would always make everything about herself. “Everything I did was just … everybody has it worse. You know, I’d say, ‘I don’t feel very well’ and she’d reply: ‘Yes, well, I’ve got diabetes.’ I was scared to have a voice.”
Russia’s invasion forced Ukrainian men of all ages to the frontlines, most with no experience of combat. Tracy McVeigh spoke to five soldiers about how life in the army transformed them and their relationships
After his mother died when he was very young, Valentyn Polianskyi was raised in the Kherson region by his aunt and his grandmother.
Exclusive: David O’Sullivan says war-based economy may be nearing point of becoming ‘unsustainable’
Western sanctions are having a “significant impact” on the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions envoy has said, ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
David O’Sullivan, a veteran Irish official, said sanctions were “not a silver bullet” and would always face circumvention, but insisted that after four years he was confident they were having an effect.
Yes, migrants are key to Spain’s economic boom. But Pedro Sánchez’s decision to regularise 500,000 people should rather be applauded for its humanity
When I left New York for Madrid, starting a new life with my then boyfriend, I was definitely looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses. Despite being the daughter of migrants from the Caribbean, it seemed like a relatively easy choice to settle into undocumented status once my tourist visa expired, all in the name of love and adventure. I understood that my US passport conferred many privileges that would buoy me.
When the heartache of our breakup came, I suddenly realised what it meant to be more than 3,000 miles away from close friends and family. In a daze one winter morning, I lost my Manhattan street smarts just long enough to mope my way into a police raid on a group of manteros, people who sell counterfeit handbags on the street, often arriving in Spain from sub-Saharan nations.
Francheska Melendez is a freelance journalist based in Madrid
In a few isolated communities in central Nigeria, some babies are believed to be bad omens. Olusola and Chinwe Stevens run a thriving home for babies at risk. But what happens when the families want them back?
Esther Stevens’ life nearly ended as soon as it began. She was born in 2007, in a village on the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city. Her mother died giving birth to her, and in the eyes of some villagers, that meant the baby was cursed. According to tradition, there was only one way to deal with such a child. The villagers tied the newborn to her mother’s lifeless body and prepared to bury them together.
When word reached a Nigerian missionary living in the community, she rushed to the burial site and pleaded for the baby’s life. After the villagers and relatives refused, she appealed to the traditional priest who had been called on to perform the rite. “Finally, the priest agreed and said, let them give her the evil child and see what the child will become,” Esther said. “The child, that’s me.”
Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano and her mother released from Texas facility to head back home to reunite with her father
A 10-year-old Minnesota girl has been released from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after a month in detention in Dilley, Texas, school officials said, one of hundreds of children detained at the facility.
Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, a fourth-grader, and her mother walked free from the immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, on Tuesday night. Elizabeth is a student in the school district of Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, which is also home to five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was released from Dilley over the weekend amid widespread outrage about his detention.
No 10’s misjudgment over Mandelson has left Labour MPs increasingly aware of the fallibility of the PM and his team
The debacle of last summer, when Keir Starmer caved in over welfare changes after promised concessions failed to convince his mutinous backbenchers, was viewed as a low point for his government. Now, amazingly, it has happened all over again.
If the repetition of history was not already enough, with the ructions over releasing government documents about Peter Mandelson, once again Starmer has a certain Angela Rayner to thank, in part, for digging him out of a political hole.
Today show host acknowledges reports of alleged ransom letter and calls for safe return of 84-year-old mother online
Today show host Savannah Guthrie, along with her siblings Annie and Cameron, has published a video statement calling for the safe return of their 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie, who was reported missing on Sunday.
In a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday, the siblings said that their mother is in poor health and is without her medication. Savannah Guthrie also acknowledged reports about a reported ransom letter from alleged kidnappers.
This troubling documentary charts the events leading up to and surrounding Jackson’s 2005 trial for molesting 13-year-old Gavin Arvizo (of which he was found innocent) – and features newly released tapes of Jackson
In her 2019 essay Lost Boy, the Pulitzer-winning writer Margo Jefferson considered Michael Jackson’s legacy in the wake of Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland, the HBO/Channel 4 exposé that starkly and devastatingly laid out the testimonies of two men who alleged that they had been sexually abused as children by the singer. “We’ve long seen how charming and generous [Jackson] could be,” opined Jefferson. “Now we’ve also seen how calculating, selfish and gripped by demons he was.”
Leaving Neverland remains the most effective résumé of that apparent duality, and of how – in the case of Wade Robson and James Safechuck – their memories of the singer’s dream-like ranch would take on an infernal quality. Michael Jackson: The Trial isn’t as stylised nor as groundbreaking – many of the people here have been telling their stories for decades, be it in books, podcasts, blogs or otherwise. Yet where Channel 4’s latest series triumphs is in collating these accounts from both sides, and letting you decide what is more plausible, as well as spotlighting details that can’t easily be explained away. And, of course, there are the tapes: recordings of Jackson from 2000 and 2001, many of which have never been heard before. They’re not definitive proof of any wrongdoing, but they’re certainly alarming. In one clip, Jackson declares: “If you told me right now … ‘Michael, you could never see another child’ … I would kill myself.”
António Guterres urges two powers to quickly sign new deal as New Start expires
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has urged the US and Russia to quickly sign a new nuclear arms control deal, as the existing treaty expired in what he called a “grave moment for international peace and security”.
The last nuclear treaty between the two powers, the New Start agreement, ended on Thursday, formally releasing both Moscow and Washington from a raft of restrictions on their nuclear arsenals and triggering fears of a global arms race.
As I travel the world, I am reminded again and again that the health of a society is revealed not only in its laws or its institutions but in the way its people speak to, and about, one another. My father taught that nonviolence begins with language and the discipline to choose words that uplift rather than degrade, that clarify rather than distort and that build community rather than fracture it.
Last month in the United States, we marked the holiday that bears his name at a time when our own social cohesion is under immense strain. The rhetoric of public life has grown sharper, more cynical and more divisive. Too often, we speak as if our neighbours are adversaries rather than fellow citizens. But this erosion of respect is not unique to America. It is a global challenge and Australia is not exempt.
Cauchi, who lived with schizophrenia, killed six people in 2024 Westfield shopping centre stabbing before being shot dead by police inspector Amy Scott
It was a “major failing” for Joel Cauchi’s former psychiatrist not to recognise he had relapsed in the lead-up to the Bondi Junction stabbings in 2024, a coroner has found.
The state coroner, Teresa O’Sullivan, handed down her findings in a 837-page report on Thursday, having delayed its release after the Bondi beach terror attack in December.
Kyiv’s lead negotiator called the start of two days of US-led peace talks in Abu Dhabi “productive” on Wednesday. “The work was substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions,” Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, wrote on X. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said it was critical for the talks to lead to real peace and not offer Russia a new opportunity to continue the war. Ukraine’s partners, he said, had to exert more pressure on Moscow.
Zelenskyy also said Ukraine expected the talks to lead to a new prisoner exchange soon. The president, interviewed by French television channel France 2, said the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield as a result of the war with Russia was estimated at 55,000. He had previously cited a figure of more than 46,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed in an interview with US television network NBC in February 2025.
The Kremlin spokesperson,Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday that “the doors for a peaceful settlement are open,” but Russian forces would continue fighting until Kyiv made “decisions” that could bring the war to an end, underlining Moscow’s hardline stance even as negotiations resumed. Moscow has said it would not tolerate European troops on Ukrainian soil, a condition Kyiv sees as essential for credible security guarantees.
In a show of wartime alignment, Russian president Vladimir Putin held a video call on Wednesday with China’s president, Xi Jinping, with both leaders hailing the strength of bilateral ties.
The Kremlin also reacted to comments made by French president Emmanuel Macron that he was looking to resume contact with Putin on the war in Ukraine. According to Reuters, the Kremlin confirmed ongoing technical discussions between Russia and France, but provided no further details or indicated any dialogue between Putin and Macron. In Paris, diplomatic sources said French Macron’s most senior diplomat, Emmanuel Bonne, met Russian officials in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
Russia used cluster munitions Wednesday in an attack on a busy market in the eastern Ukraine town of Druzhkivka that killed seven and wounded 15 others, officials said. The attack darkened prospects for progress in the UAE, with Donetsk regional military administration chief Vadym Filashkin describing Russian talk of a ceasefire as “worthless.” Russia also launched 105 drones against Ukraine overnight, and air defenses shot down 88 of them, the Ukrainian air force said Wednesday. Strikes by 17 drones were recorded at 14 locations, as well as falling debris at five sites, it said.
The southern city of Odesa also came under a large-scale attack, regional military administration head Oleh Kiper said on Telegram, with strike drones damaging “civilian, residential and industrial infrastructure”. About 20 residential buildings were damaged, with four people rescued from under the rubble and one injured, he said.
Senior EU diplomats meeting on Wednesday approved a long-awaited €90bnloan for Ukraine, Jennifer Rankin reports from Brussels. The financial aid is a crucial lifeline for Ukraine, which has been enduring months of brutal Russian attacks damaging its energy and heating systems, while the country is in the grip of a bitterly cold winter.
Industry bigger than all but seven world economies, and accounts for more than third of China’s economic growth
China’s clean energy industries drove more than 90% of the country’s investment growth last year, making the sectors bigger than all but seven of the world’s economies, a new analysis has shown.
For the second time in three years, the report showed the manufacture, installation and export of batteries, electric cars, solar, wind and related technologies accounted for more than a third of China’s economic growth.
Armed with rubber gloves and cleaning supplies, helpers trek through the wilderness to spruce up remote huts dotted across the country
From two-person shelters to a 54-bunk fortress, New Zealand’s countryside is scattered with huts that offer weary hikers a safe place to rest. Some huts sit along the popular Milford and Routeburn tracks, others are perched in remote valleys in the wilderness, with views ranging from snowy peaks to flourishing bush.
But the publicly owned network is too vast for the government to maintain, so ordinary people in New Zealand are filling their backpacks with cleaning supplies and hiking into the hills to clean and maintain the huts.
The Puerto Rican singer’s highly anticipated Super Bowl half-time show has inspired non-Spanish speakers to study Puerto Rican dialect and slang
Bad Bunny is expected to perform the Super Bowl half-time show on Sunday entirely in Spanish – which has inspired fans to quickly learn the language.
In October, the Puerto Rican singer – born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio – kicked off the 51st season of Saturday Night Live expressing pride over the achievement in Spanish, after which he said in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn!”
By age 20 diagnosis rates for men and women almost equal, research finds, challenging assumptions of gender discrepancy
Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study.
Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37.
Singer was member of vocal group that scored 1960s hits with Up, Up and Away and Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In
Singer LaMonte McLemore has died. He was a founding member of the 5th Dimension, a vocal group whose smooth pop and soul sounds with a touch of psychedelia brought them big hits in the 1960s and 70s.
McLemore died on Tuesday aged 90 at his home in Las Vegas, surrounded by his family, his representative Jeremy Westby said in a statement. He died of natural causes after having a stroke.
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