US leader enters talks with superpower rival from vulnerable position, but will be hoping for economic wins amid turbulent backdrop

If all goes to plan over the next few days – and that is a big if – Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

The trip will mark the first time a US president has visited China in nearly a decade. The last visit was also made by Trump, during his first term, in 2017.

Social media influencers and booming men’s health companies are pushing the hormone as an answer to all ills. But is ‘low T’ really problematic – or something created to sell men a cure to a problem they don’t have?

A s a young man, Nick Dooley never thought about his hormones. He always considered himself “quite an outgoing, confident, chatty person”. Around the time he turned 30, however, Dooley began putting on weight and struggling with anxiety, “just slowly becoming a shell of my former self”, he says. By 38, he weighed 22st (140kg) and had a range of health issues. “I spent most of my life sat in front of a TV, doing nothing, with zero motivation, and from how I was in my 20s, that wasn’t me. I knew something wasn’t right.”

In 2024, Dooley had a private medical exam, which flagged he had fatty liver disease and was producing low levels of testosterone. “It wasn’t something I’d ever really heard of,” he says. “So I started down a Reddit rabbit hole.” An NHS doctor told him his blood testosterone levels, at 11.2 nmol a litre, were “within range” (although guidance differs between trusts, NHS England generally considers between 8 and 30 nmol/L normal) and offered him antidepressants. “I knew that wasn’t going to fix me,” he says. Instead, Dooley signed up with Manual, an online men’s health company. After two quick blood tests and a virtual consultation, Manual, which has since rebranded as Voy, started him on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).

It won’t win any plaudits from Japanese purists, but there’s still much to admire here

No spoilers, but I knew even before I’d reached for my chopsticks that Mitsu would be a vast improvement on its predecessor, because it has taken the place of Nobu Shoreditch in the under-gusset of the Aethos hotel, a Swiss-owned “lifestyle hospitality brand”, in east London. Nobu was gargantuan, moodily lit (that is, pitch black), woundingly expensive and terrifically hard to book, despite having something like 797 seats; it was also one of the most soulless London restaurants of the past 25 years. Nobu Shoreditch felt symbolic: it was where all the raffish hope of the 1990s YBA crowd and the early noughties electroclash heads went to die.

But that was then, and now, in 2026, the Aethos crew has deftly brightened and lightened the mood of the room, making it actually cosy and adding a twinkly central bar; there’s an open robata kitchen and roomy booths, as well as a pretty Japanese garden. Mitsu calls itself an izakaya, which is what European restaurateurs always say when they mean the Japanese-influenced food isn’t too po-faced and you can get really tipsy on sake.

East Midlands electric car club helps residents and cuts emissions – but the need for a volunteer-led scheme reflects a much wider problem

In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic Miriam Stoate, a regenerative farmer from rural Leicestershire, noticed that too many people in her small village in England’s East Midlands were struggling to get around.

Although there were plenty of cars parked in Tilton, too often she found some of the village’s residents did not have access to one when they really needed it.

National Geographic photographer and WWF ambassador Jasper Doest joined conservation teams during the latest mountain gorilla census in Bwindi Impenetrable national park, taking pictures of the apes and the people essential to their survival

With Trump wavering on Nato and war in Ukraine, Europe is scrambling to spend billions on weapons such as drones

In a small workshop in England’s East Midlands, engineers at the British startup Skycutter are designing weapons for Ukraine. A row of 3D printers make the fuselage for interceptor drones, while parts such as motors and navigation chips are slotted together by hand. The same process happens hundreds of thousands of times a month in partner Ukrainian factories.

The swarms of cheap, deadly and often autonomous drones deployed in that war have already changed combat completely. Troops far behind the frontline must move constantly to avoid attack from the air, travelling along netted tunnels and landscapes crisscrossed by fibre optic cables used to steer drones past radio jamming. Cities are terrorised by guided missiles that are cheaper and therefore more widely used than those that came before.

Former junior minister Catherine West says that unless a cabinet minister comes forward to challenge the PM by Monday, she will

Trevor Phillips told Phillipson that Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown were serious people, and friends of his. But he mocked the idea that people who did not vote Labour last Thursday might have changed their mind if they had known Harman and Brown were getting appointments as government envoys.

Phillipson said that Harman and Brown were “tremendously talented people” who had “a lot to offer”.

Early on people knew the country was in a mess. They didn’t need us to remind us to to remind them in such detail that the country was in a mess.

Tyrone Scott, who didn’t think he had a hope in the election, wants to help the Greens rebuild ‘community cohesion’ in Hackney

You would expect most political candidates who pull off a shock win to celebrate their victory, maybe with a glass of bubbly and excitement for the challenges of elected office ahead. But on Friday, as thousands of new councillors celebrated their triumphs, some surprise victors were less than pleased.

Green party handlers apologised to one newly elected councillor in Finsbury Park, north London, put down as a “paper candidate”, who pulled off an unexpected win. “You’re going to be great, we’ll support you,” they said, according to the Islington Tribune.

SNP leader wants to ensure voices of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ‘are heard loud and clear’

John Swinney has said he plans to work with the nationalist first ministers in Wales and Northern Ireland in a coordinated opposition to Labour’s policies on the cost of living and UK government spending.

The Scottish National party leader said he had spoken to Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister of Northern Ireland, on Friday night after she had called to congratulate him on his party’s “emphatic” victory in the Holyrood elections.

Russian president damns western support that has allowed Ukraine to hold out and asks for talks with Gerhard Schröder in remarks after diminished Victory Day parade

Vladimir Putin has said he thinks the Ukraine war is winding down – remarks that came a few hours after he had vowed to defeat Ukraine at Moscow’s most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years.

“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since the second world war. He said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder.