Good morning.

On his visit to China, Donald Trump has seemed to revel in Chinese hospitality and flattery. Walking in the Zhongnanhai garden, in Beijing, the US president was overheard saying that his counterpart, Xi Jinping, was giving him roses for the White House rose garden, according to a pool report.

Warm words aside, there have not been any major announcements from the summit, no breakthrough on Taiwan’s future, and an accord on the Iran war has remained elusive.

Trump has claimed that the US and China “feel very similar” about ending the war in Iran but offered no details about a possible breakthrough. “We did discuss Iran,” Trump said on the final day of the meeting. “We feel very similar about [how] we want it to end. We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open.”

Trump departed Beijing on Friday. He said “a lot of good” came from his China visit and “we’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to solve”. Trump also said numerous deals had been struck between the US and China, including China buying 200 Boeing jets as well as US oil and soya beans. This deal has not been confirmed by either China or Boeing.

• What has China said on Iran? On Friday, China’s foreign ministry again called for a ceasefire in Iran and said the strait of Hormuz should be opened “as soon as possible”. Before the summit, there was speculation the US might appeal to China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, to use its leverage to encourage the country to reopen the strait. But that was walked back on Thursday by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who said: “We don’t need their help.”

• What about talks over Taiwan? They weren’t mentioned much. Xi took a firm tone, declaring that “Taiwan independence” and peace in the Taiwan strait were “incompatible”. Trump sidestepped questions on Taiwan, and a White House readout of the meeting published later omitted any mention of the country.

At least 24 killed in Kyiv in one of deadliest Russian attacks since start of war

At least 24 people, including three children, were reported killed in Thursday’s Russian attacks on Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

“The Russians practically demolished an entire section of the building with their missile,” the Ukrainian president said after visiting the site. The Ukrainian ministry of foreign affairs said it was “one of the deadliest attacks on Kyiv since the start of Russia’s full-scale war”.

Meanwhile, on Thursday the UN nuclear watchdog warned of “intensified” military activities near several of Ukraine’s nuclear sites that posed significant safety risks.

• What do Russia’s renewed heavy attacks tell us? Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said on Thursday that Russia’s heavy bombardment of Kyiv showed Moscow was “banking on escalation rather than negotiation. Kyiv and its partners are ready for negotiations aimed at a just peace,” Merz said. “Russia, for its part, is continuing the war.”

Southern states rush to redraw electoral maps to dilute Black voting power

Southern states are rushing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate Democratic districts and dilute the influence of Black voters in electing candidates, a bare-knuckled blitz occurring even in some states where voting in congressional primaries has begun, and prompted by the US supreme court’s decision gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“This is a five-alarm fire for Black representation in the south,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The [supreme] court has signaled it’s going to be a redistricting wild west, and there will be no sheriff around.”

• Which states are redrawing congressional maps? Tennessee Republicans have already enacted a new map. Louisiana is on the verge of implementing one. Alabama has successfully petitioned the US supreme court to allow it to eliminate a district currently represented by a Black Democrat. In South Carolina, the Republican governor is reportedly poised to call a special session to draw a new congressional map. States such as Texas, Missouri, Florida and North Carolina, which have already redrawn their maps to add Republican districts, could draw maps again before 2028 elections.

In other news …

• Israeli nationalists chanted “death to the Arabs”, “may your villages burn” and “Gaza is a graveyard” during a state-sponsored march through Jerusalem to mark the anniversary of the city’s capture and annexation.

• The US supreme court upheld nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Thursday.

• Closing arguments began on Thursday in Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, bringing the weeks-long courtroom battle nearer to a decision.

Stat of the day: Internal displacements caused by violence or conflict at record high of 32.3m in 2025

The number of internal displacements triggered by conflict or violence around the world hit a record high in 2025, reaching 32.3 million people, which was 60% higher than the previous year. That’s according to a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, amid conflicts such as those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Iran and Lebanon. In total, 82.2 million people were displaced around the world in 2025.

Culture pick: Cannes spotlight reverts to auteurs as Hollywood retreats from festival

When the lineup for the 2026 Cannes film festival was announced last month, one aspect immediately stood out: the near-total absence of major Hollywood studio films, writes Nadia Khomami.

Don’t miss this: The rent is too damn high – how renters’ rights could be key issue in midterms

With housing costs for working-class families steadily climbing across the US, while billionaire fortunes soar to all-time highs, renters’ rights are becoming a defining policy in the upcoming midterm elections, tenant rights organizers say. Policies previously considered too extreme have become the centerpiece of insurgent political campaigns in the midterm elections.

Climate check: Brazil’s Atlantic forest records lowest deforestation in 40 years

Brazil’s Atlantic forest, the country’s most threatened biome, last year recorded its lowest level of deforestation since monitoring began 40 years ago, a report shows. In 2025, it recorded 8,658 hectares (21,394 acres) of deforestation, marking the first time it has fallen below 10,000 hectares since 1985.

Last thing: How a kindergarten teacher became the accidental guardian of 200 king penguins

When the birds started nesting on her land at Useless Bay in southern Chile’s Tierra del Fuego region, Cecilia Durán Gafo, 72, a former kindergarten teacher, decided she would protect them from people and predators. Today, she runs a reserve that oversees the world’s only continental king penguin colony. “Last year, 23 chicks survived – a record,” she says.

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Elon Musk’s X platform has promised to block UK access to accounts linked to banned terrorist groups under an agreement with the communications regulator to crack down on terrorist and hate content.

X will also review suspected illegal terrorist and hate content within 48 hours and seek expert advice on how to handle user reports of such content.

The UK’s media regulator, Ofcom, announced the commitments as part of a drive to ensure social media platforms had the right systems in place to deal with terrorist and hate material, amid concerns that dangerous content was still not being dealt with on large sites.

Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom’s online safety group director, said: “Following intensive engagement carried out by Ofcom’s online safety team, X have committed to implementing stronger protections for UK users, which we will now monitor closely.”

Griffiths said the issue of online terrorist and hate content had become even more pressing in the wake of a spate of hate crimes committed against the UK’s Jewish community.

Under the agreement, X will block UK access to accounts that post illegal terrorist content and are linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK government. It will also review, within 48 hours, at least 85% of illegal terrorist and hate content flagged by its illegal-content reporting tool. The UK’s Online Safety Act aims to protect people in the UK from illegal content including terror- and hate-related material.

Ofcom said it was continuing its investigation into X showing images manipulated with the Grok AI tool, also owned by Musk, to depict women and girls as partly unclothed.

Danny Stone, the chief executive of the Antisemitism Policy Trust, said the agreement was a “good start” but that X was still “failing in so many regards” to tackle racism on its platform.

Adam Hadley, the executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, which aims to tackle online extremism, said the announcement was a “powerful example of what constructive dialogue between regulators and platforms can deliver”.

X has faced regular criticism over its moderation since it was bought by Musk for $44bn (£33bn) in 2022, when the platform was known as Twitter. Last year Amnesty International accused X of creating a “staggering amplification of hate” during the riots that broke out after the Southport murders in 2024.

X declined to comment.

The pound was heading for its worst week in 18 months on Friday as City traders anticipated that the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, could face a challenge from the Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, later this year.

After days of uncertainty over Starmer’s future, sterling dropped by almost three cents, or 2%, during the week to $1.336 on Friday, a five-week low. That would be the largest weekly drop against the US dollar since Donald Trump’s election win in early November 2024.

The pound fell against the dollar every day this week as leadership tensions gripped Westminster, culminating in the prospect of Burnham challenging Starmer for the role of PM after the Greater Manchester mayor announced he would run for parliament in the north-west constituency of Makerfield.

“The pound is weakening this morning after a sharp drop on Thursday, when Andy Burnham threw his hat into the ring,” said Kathleen Brooks, the research director at XTB.

“This is a sign that Burnham is the least market-friendly of all the candidates, as Wes Streeting’s resignation did not have the same negative effect,” Brooks added.

UK government borrowing costs jumped, amid a wider sell-off of sovereign debt. The yields on US and German government debt also rose – though the UK rose by more – as a rise in the oil price fuelled inflation worries.

The yield, or interest rate, on UK 10-year bonds jumped to almost 5.17%, their highest level since 2008 and above the 18-year high set on Tuesday when pressure was mounting on Starmer after last week’s local elections.

Thirty-year bond yields also rose sharply, hitting 5.84%, above the 28-year high reached earlier this week. That is a rise of 19 basis points (0.19 of a percentage point).

The sell-off in UK bonds reflected concerns in the City that a Burnham premiership might loosen the UK’s fiscal rules and increase borrowing to fund higher spending.

Investors remember that in January, Burnham said the UK was “in hock to the bond markets” and trapped in “a low-growth doom-loop”. Burnham has since softened his stance in interviews.

Neil Wilson, an investor strategist at Saxo UK, said markets would not like the idea of the Labour party anointing a left-leaning PM whose fiscal views – and his views of the bond market – were well known.

“Ultimately the bond market is likely to impose fiscal discipline, but it can get messy before that happens. And the UK’s fiscal position gets increasingly fragile every day that the strait of Hormuz is shut,” Wilson added.

Mark Dowding of RBC BlueBay Asset Management told clients that Keir Starmer’s days in 10 Downing Street were “numbered … and against this backdrop UK financial assets and sterling seem likely to be subjected to an elevated political risk premium for an extended period”.

It would take weeks before Burnham is in a position to challenge Starmer, as he must first win a byelection in an area where Reform UK performed well in the local elections, and where the Green party could also contest the seat. The sitting MP, Josh Simons, who is standing down to give Burnham a route back to Westminster, has a majority of just over 5,000 votes.

Bill Diviney, the head of macro research at ABN Amro, predicts that uncertainty and speculation of any changes in fiscal policy are likely to fuel volatility in gilt markets. He added that Burnham was popular with the public.

“Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is by far the most popular among the general public, and in YouGov polling he is actually the only major politician in the UK with a net positive approval rating,” Diviney said.

“A factor that would significantly help is if Rachel Reeves keeps her role as chancellor. This would signal continuity and a commitment to her fiscal rules that have kept markets relatively stable.”