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.

Are you feeling hungry? If not, you will be after reading about the world’s most mouth-watering, life-changing sandwiches of all time ...

A crab stick and taramasalata baguette
I was young and carefree, living in Barons Court, west London, in the mid-90s. Chains weren’t a thing, and delis all had sandwich fillings laid out in silver dishes of a uniform, surgical shape, inviting adventure. Russian salad and ham? Sure, why not. The price structure was weird: sometimes everything was the same, and other times you’d accidentally hit a premium ingredient and your sandwich would be £3.50. That’s how I hit on the crab stick and taramasalata baguette, after a financial catastrophe involving actual crab. Crab sticks taste nothing like crab. They are, in fact, more delicious. So much better. And everything so pink. My life was like a fairytale. Zoe Williams

A vegetarian Christmas focaccia
Christmas sandwiches can be wildly underwhelming for veggies – but I’m still craving Glasgow cafe Boca’s offering: salty focaccia, stuffed to the brim with mushroom and chestnut roast, apricot glazed carrots and parsnips, cranberry and walnut agrodolce, sprout slaw and the option to add hefty slices of brie – which, of course, I did. Indulgent, Christmassy, and not a “festive falafel” in sight. Leah Harper

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).

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.

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.

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.

Catherine West issues ultimatum for the PM as ex-minister Josh Simons joins call for Starmer to quit

At the start of her programme Laura Kuenssberg addressed Catherine West and Bridget Phillipson who were sitting waiting for the main interviews.

Kuenssberg told West she wanted a cabinet minister to challenge Keir Starmer. She said she was sitting next to one of them. What was her message to her?

Well, there’s nothing stopping Bridget from standing. Why are all the men better than the women? We do need some senior women to step forward and to challenge for what is going to be a really difficult two and a half years between now and the general election, and also to take us into that second term.

I love you dearly, Catherine, but I just disagree on this one.

Government has begun the evacuation of the first passengers from the MV Hondius ship which arrived in Tenerife on Sunday

• Passengers begin evacuating cruise ship hit by hantavirus

In other news, there are reports of Russian attacks continuing on Ukraine despite a ceasefire that was meant to run from Saturday 9 May to Monday 11 May.

There are reports of people being injured by Russian strikes in areas including the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions.

Writing by Narges Mohammadi, arrested 14 times for activism, offers a disturbing insight into treatment

In an exclusive extract of writing smuggled from prison in Iran, the Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has described the “torture” of solitary confinement, and her systematic medical neglect by the prison system.

The writing from the past decade will be part of a soon to be published memoir that gives a rare and alarming insight into the treatment of Mohammadi, who is in critical condition. It details beatings, constant interrogations, deprivation of medical care and long stretches in solitary confinement during her numerous imprisonments.

Revolutionary Guards issue warning as Trump awaits Iran’s response to Washington’s latest proposal for peace deal

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened to target US sites in the Middle East if its tankers come under fire, Iranian media reported on Saturday, as Washington was left waiting for Tehran’s response to its latest negotiating position.

“Any attack on Iranian tankers and commercial vessels will result in a heavy attack on one of the American centres in the region and enemy ships,” the force said, a day after US strikes on two Iranian tankers in the Gulf of Oman.