US secretary of state to hold talks with Chinese counterpart and most likely with President Xi Jinping

Antony Blinken has landed in China amid a worsening rift between the worldas two most powerful countries that threatens to overshadow otherwise improving relations.

The US secretary of state arrives with a warning that the US and its European allies are no longer prepared to tolerate Chinaas sale of weapon components and dual-use products to Russia, which are helping Vladimir Putin rebuild and modernise his arms factories, enabling him to intensify his onslaught on Ukraine.

About 300 people were detained near Senate majority leader Chuck Schumeras Brooklyn home

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumeras Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

David Pecker testifies about meeting with Trump and Michael Cohen in 2015 to discuss how he could help presidential campaign

• Skeptical judge and National Enquirer deal: key takeaways
• Judge reprimands Trump lawyer but delays gag order ruling

A former tabloid publisher testified on Tuesday in Donald Trumpas hush-money trial that he promised to be the aeyes and earsa of the 2016 presidential campaign, helped to suppress harmful stories and even arranged to purchase the silence of a doorman.

David Pecker, the ex-presidentas longtime ally and ex-publisher of the National Enquirer a who prosecutors contend was integral in illicit, so-called catch-and-kill efforts to prevent negative stories about Trump from going public a was on the stand again as a prosecution witness after a brief appearance on Monday following opening statements.

A guide to Trumpas hush-money trial a so far

The key arguments prosecutors will use against Trump

How will Trumpas trial work?

From Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels: The key players

Metropolitan police say they are trying to locate the animals seen running near Aldwych

Two loose horses have been seen running around central London, one of which appeared to be covered in blood.

The animals, wearing saddles and bridles, were seen running in the road near Aldwych on Wednesday morning.

Ukraineas SBU security service drones struck two oil depots in Russiaas Smolensk overnight, according to a Ukrainian intelligence source. It came as the US Senate approved wartime foreign aid for Ukraine

Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:

Ukraineas SBU security service drones struck two Rosneft-owned oil depots in Russiaas Smolensk region in an overnight attack, according to a source in Ukrainian intelligence reports Reuters.

Longtime, legendary pastor of San Franciscoas Glide Memorial church was advocate for civil rights and social justice

Reverend Cecil Williams, the longtime head of a church that grew to international fame for being a safe haven for San Franciscoas most marginalized citizens, has passed away. He was 94 years old. He, alongside his wife and poet Janice Mirikitani, transformed Glide memorial church into an institution built on love and support for the cityas queer community and those struggling with homelessness and drug addiction. Mirikitani passed away in 2021 at 80.

Williams died Monday at his home in San Francisco surrounded by friends and family, Glide said in a statement. A cause of death was not given.

Petition filed on behalf of woman known as as Fausia, who underwent a forced pregnancy after being raped

Honduras is being taken to a global human rights body for the first time over its total abortion ban, which campaigners say violates womenas fundamental rights and the countryas international commitments.

The Center for Reproductive Rights and the Honduras-based Centro de Derechos de la Mujer (Center for Womenas Rights, CDM) filed a petition with the UN human rights committee this month on behalf of a woman known as Fausia, who underwent a forced pregnancy after being raped and denied an abortion under Hondurasa draconian laws.

Authorities in Greece warn the dust concentrations can reduce sunlight and visibility, while increasing levels of fine pollution particles pose health risks

Clouds of dust blown in from the Sahara covered Athens and other Greek cities on Tuesday, one of the worst such episodes to hit the country since 2018, officials said.

A yellow-orange haze smothered several regions after days of strong winds from the south, limiting visibility and prompting warnings from the authorities of breathing risks.

Nikki Haley got 21% despite not being on the ballot, indicating level of Republican discontent with Trump

Joe Biden and Donald Trump both won their primaries in Pennsylvania shortly after polls closed.

Pennsylvanians had gone to the polls on Tuesday to cast ballots in the stateas primary races a the results provide a window into where voters in the crucial battleground stand roughly six months out from the general election.

Retired Lawrence Hecker, 92, charged in New Orleans, has memory loss and should be re-evaluated at later date, report finds

A 92-year-old retired Catholic priest charged with strangling a teenager and raping him in a New Orleans church in 1975 has short-term memory loss that prevents him from assisting in his defense, according to a team of forensic psychiatrists whose findings could influence whether one of Louisianaas most prominent cases of clergy abuse is ever tried.

In a report which has not been publicly released but was reviewed Tuesday by WWL Louisiana and the Guardian, the psychiatrists said the priest a Lawrence Hecker a should not be tried for now on rape, kidnapping, crimes against nature and theft charges until he is re-evaluated later.

• Dance, yoga and work-out sessions to be held inside museum
• Move aimed at whipping up enthusiasm before Games begin

The Louvre museum in Paris is planning to organise yoga and sport sessions in its famed galleries as part of a city-wide cultural programme ahead of the Olympics.

The worldas biggest museum is to offer visitors the chance to take part in dance, yoga and work-out sessions with instructors and coaches while gazing upon its world-renowned paintings and sculptures.

Footwear from the regimeas concentration camps ended up at the Polish base, and campaigners want them to be salvaged

At the foot of a pine tree, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski bent to touch the black, moist shapes nestling amid the fungi and leaf mulch. aIave been monitoring this area now since 2015, and always hope I wonat stumble upon anything any more and that one day the entire area will have been cleared,a he said. This, however, was not that day.

The 39-year-old poet, scholar and rock musician was walking in the forest just metres from the perimeter fence of what was once the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp in the German-annexed territory of Poland, and is now a memorial site in Sztutowo, a village 24 miles (38km) east of GdaAsk on the Baltic coast.

American Lung Associationas State of the Air report states nearly 131 million people are exposed to ozone and particle pollution

Nearly four in 10 people in the US are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, a new report has found. Four of the five most polluted cities are in California, where wildfires, drought and extreme heat are driving the rise in hazardous air quality.

More than 131 million people are exposed to harmful ozone and particle (PM 2.5) pollution, according to the American Lung Associationas annual State of the Air report. That figure, which incorporates new, more stringent federal standards for particle pollution, represents an 11.7 million increase from the previous year.

From ancient olive groves to root vegetables, foreign pests introduced via the blocas open import system are causing damage worth billions a and outbreaks are on the rise

The plants slowly choke to death, wither and dry out. They die en masse, leaves dropping and bark turning grey, creating a sea of monochrome. Since scientists first discovered Xylella fastidiosa in 2013 in Puglia, Italy, it has killed a third of the regionas 60 million olive trees a which once produced almost half of Italyas olive oil a many of which were centuries old. Farms stopped producing, olive mills went bankrupt and tourists avoided the area. With no known cure, the bacterium has already caused damage costing about a!1bn.

aThe greatest part of the territory was completely destroyed,a says Donato Boscia, a plant virologist and head researcher on Xylella at the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Bari.

Samuel J Friedman Theatre, New York

The Oscar nominee is a captivating emotional anchor in this drama about a mother coping with her childas health problems

Alex, the two-year-old child at the center of Amy Herzogas excellent play Mary Jane, is a constant presence on stage, despite never showing his face nor saying a word. Alex canat, actually, vocalize anything a he was born with a paralyzed vocal cord, his endearingly peppy mother explains, along with other health conditions such as cerebral palsy, requiring round-the-clock care. We hear his machineas beeps and whirs, see his mountain of stuffed animals on a hospital bed, jolt and hurdle along his journey from medical hiccup to crisis. He canat communicate his pain or his joy. And yet, as Mary Jane a the titular mother so movingly, hauntingly embodied by Rachel McAdams a insists, he can understand her. She is the conduit, shield, giver.

Healthcare is a vast ecosystem of treatment, suffering and healing, of hospitals, bills and logistics. Itas often, rightly in the US, denigrated for its opacity, inequities and Kafka-esque absurdities. Itas a tricky system to capture in a tight play with a five-person cast and sparse, economical staging at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre, but itas one this Broadway edition, directed by Anne Kauffman, manages to wrangle through the nucleus of Mary Jane. Sheas the center of a network of women who help care for Alex, from contracted at-home nurses to emergency room doctors to supportive parents of fellow chronically ill children. Herzog based the play, in part, on her experience with her daughter Frances, who was born with Nemaline myopathy and died last year at age 11; the specificity of this work, from the dosages of anti-seizure medication to the type of generic coffee machine for a hospital lounge (scenic design by Lael Jellinek), feels born of experience a motherhood, and then a whole present shaped by intensive caretaking a that you can only ever truly imagine by going through it.

The biggest cities in the US are mourning animals who fostered a rare sense of connection. Art is preserving their legacies

Working near Central Park, one New Yorker regularly witnessed one of its most beloved residents: Flaco the owl, who became a celebrity after escaping the nearby zoo. The woman took the birdas message to heart, re-evaluated her life and decided to quit her job. Now, sheas one of dozens with a Flaco tattoo.

aTheyall be walking around the rest of their lives, that name and owl on their arm,a says Duke Riley, an environmental artist who spearheaded a special sale at his tattoo parlor this month. Customers flocked to East River Tattoo in Brooklyn, where, for $150, they could walk away with ink memorializing Flaco. The line stretched around the block, Riley says.

Full and part skeletons found in Mexico reveal body shape and anatomy of Ptychodus as well as its likely diet

Fossil experts say they have gained unprecedented insights into a type of enormous prehistoric shark, after finding complete skeletons of the creatures.

The specimens, discovered in small quarries in north-eastern Mexico within the last decade, belong to Ptychodus a a creature that roamed the seas from around 105m to 75m years ago.

Study reveals repurposing of ecologically vital land for homes or agriculture is happening particularly rapidly in Asia

Estuaries a the place where a river meets the ocean a are often called the anurseries of the seaa. They are home to many of the fish we eat and support vast numbers of birds, while the surrounding salt marsh helps to stabilise shorelines and absorb floods.

However, a new study shows that nearly half of the worldas estuaries have been altered by humans, and 20% of this estuary loss has occurred in the past 35 years.

Without the van, my husband and I had no urgent reason to live in Wellington. The short European adventure we had planned soon became much more

One evening in 2008, a group of joyriders stole our van, named The Colombian, from a street outside Wellington, New Zealand. My sister-in-law was the first to notice and she alerted her husband, Ant, who immediately drove off in search of it. When he spotted the van parked on the beach, he called the police, who then gave chase as it drove off. After running a few red lights, the joyriders lost control and smashed into a building. The front of the van was crushed in on both sides and the driveras door was ripped clean off.

We woke to an email from Ant titled aRIP The Colombiana, detailing the ordeal head been through the night before while my husband, Dave, and I slept peacefully in our flat in BogotA!, Colombia. The police caught the six joyriders a three girls in the front and three boys rattling around in the back. aNo criminals were hurt in the making of this dramaa were, thankfully, the last words of the email.

Rescued from Cashas low ebb in the early 1990s, this fun, lightweight song is a long way from the moody recordings with Rick Rubin he soon turned towards

In the great American saga of Johnny Cash, the early 90s are held to be among his lowest ebbs: the lull that made the triumphant final act of his career a the American Recordings series with Rick Rubin, critical acclaim, Grammy awards, platinum sales and all a seem all the more startling. Head been dropped by Columbia Records after 28 years and a brief and turbulent period with Mercury had yielded mixed artistic dividends and indifferent sales. One of country musicas Mount Rushmore figures was reduced to recording Christmas songs for a now defunct budget label called Laserlight Digital.

You might consider it an era in Cashas artistic life best forgotten, but posthumous retrospection has a way of recalibrating history: just as David Bowieas 1990s output has been significantly upgraded since his death, so a collection of Johnny Cash songwriting demos that no label wanted in 1993 emerges 31 years later, heralded as a major new release.

aBlanda or aabsolutely breathtakinga? Our readers are divided over Swiftas epically long, richly detailed new album

As someone who has been a Swiftie for over a decade, my initial impression is that this album is one of her best lyrically, but production-wise it can get a bit repetitive by the end. While Folklore, Evermore and Midnights were full of either fictional tales or vague reminiscences, The Tortured Poets Department is a clear return to her old style of extremely personal, confessional songwriting, but still retaining the poetic lyricism sheas acquired in recent years. Some critics might find the album boring or confusing, but I think the fans familiar with her past work will have an easier time understanding the little details and references, and will have a great time analysing them.
Elena, 23, Spain

The former Spice Girlas collection with the high street chain is likely to be a fruitful new venture

As a twentysomething Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham proclaimed that she wanted to be aas famous as Persil automatica. Now, as she enters her sixth decade, the pop star turned designer has eclipsed her goal.

On Tuesday, her debut designer collection for the high street chain Mango landed globally online and in select stores. By 8am in London a queue had formed outside the brandas store on Oxford Street as those inside grappled to get their hands on tailored pieces, evening wear and jewellery.

He wants his devotees to see the court case as trial by combat, with him as warrior. But the truth is more pathetic

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Donald Trump is already in jail. He is pressed into confinement every weekday, except Wednesdays, beginning bright and early, no excuses, at 9.30 in the morning, in the dreary courtroom in Manhattan, where his impulse to mouth off wearies and worries his lawyers, and he must listen, for the first time since his father slapped him down, to an authority telling him to gag himself. He had more leeway when Fred Trump shipped the problem child to the New York military academy where Donald bullied his classmates.

Trumpas required attendance in the courtroom as a criminal defendant is his first loss of liberty.

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist

Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks

The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them.

Thatas because the essence of learning is testing oneas ideas, assumptions and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions and values than at a university?

Donat hold your breath on Trump testifying in his own defense. It would likely be embarrassing, if not perjurious

Donald Trump dodged financial calamity on Monday. The office of Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and lawyers for Trump reached agreement in open court on the terms governing the appellate bond posted by the former president. After nearly an hour of argument and an extended recess, the parties achieved a workable solution. It is a ray of sunshine in Trumpas otherwise bleak legal landscape.

Trump would be required to leave $175m in cash only as collateral for the bond. Mutual funds or other securities will not suffice. In addition, the brokerage account holding the funds would fall under the exclusive control of the bonding company.

Iam one of the 2.5 million users of Slovene a and English and German speakers would do well to be curious about us

A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from a German cultural institution to present my debut short story collection, which was translated into German that year. The terms and conditions were generous: we pay you (a lot, as far as I was concerned), we host you for as long as you wish (I decided on three nights), we will arrange a host who loves your book a and if you need anything else, do tell us!

There was one diplomatically laid out request, however. The producers wanted me to speak German at the event. They heard me speak it fluently in a video interview and figured I could easily do it again. As a rookie, and the greenest author to have ever walked the Earth, I swallowed my anxiety and agreed to it. I kindly asked them to send me the hostas questions in advance, so I could prepare for this premiere of mine. I didnat mention that Iad never spoken German in front of a live audience, nor that I intended to translate my answers from Slovene to German and learn them by heart. I had done that for the video interview as well. I wasnat only industrious, you see, I also had an excellent memory.

Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic

AI models take every toxic gendered beauty norm and bundle them up into completely unrealistic package

Meet Madame Potato. She doesnat actually exist, but, if things go my way, sheas going to be the worldas first aMiss AIa. I recently created her image on a website that generates AI faces and then entered her into a beauty pageant. Now I am sitting back in anticipation of netting the $20,000 grand prize.

What fresh hell is this, you ask? Well, I regret to inform you that AI beauty pageants are a thing now. A company called Fanvue, which is a subscription-based content creator platform along the same lines as OnlyFans, recently teamed up with the World AI Creator Awards (WAICA) to launch the worldas first aMiss AIa competition. A team of judges a comprising two humans and two virtual models a will sort through AI-generated pictures of women and choose one to crown as aMiss AIa. The winner gets a cash prize along with the chance to monetize their creation on Fanvue.

Did rats chew the wiring on it like they did my ute?

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From Kanye West to Chris Pratt, the celebrity approach to housing is more out of touch than ever

Looking for a bargain beach house? Then youare in luck. Kanye West has just lowered the price on his minimalist mansion in Malibu, California, to a mere $39m (APS31.5m) a a $14m discount on its original listing price. There is a catch though: the house has no windows, doors, electricity, plumbing or interior finishes. Itas completely uninhabitable, unless you happen to be a gull.

The sparseness isnat a deliberate design choice a though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. West, who also goes by the name Ye, is after all a man who opened up a lawsuit-magnet of a private school in Los Angeles called Donda Academy which, according to court filings, had empty windows because the musician adoesnat like glassa. Ye is, to put it in the politest terms possible, an individual with eccentric tastes.

The X owner was always going to turn the video removal request into a glib culture war fought with 4chan-style memes and late-night missives

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This battle was never about the removal of a single violent video for Elon Musk a it was always going to turn into a glib culture war fought with 4chan-style memes and late-night missives featuring Musk as the free speech antihero fighting Woke Governments of the World. At least, that is how he wishes to portray it to his more than 180 million followers.

Musk on Tuesday responded to an interim court order from Australiaas eSafety Commission requesting that X hide graphic and distressing videos of the recent Sydney stabbing within 24 hours with a Wizard of Oz meme: itas all shits and giggles over at X. In further posts, he took aim at the eSafety commissioner, claiming she wants aauthority over all countries on Eartha, after labelling her a aCommissara for requesting the removal of the video in the first place, which depicted an attack that the NSW police have since classified as a terrorist incident.

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