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Slovakia closes border crossing with Ukraine amid warnings of further Russian strikes – as it happened

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today! At least six people were killed in an intense daytime Russian attack on Ukraine, with over 800 drones launched against targets in the country, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said (9:57, 11:47, 16:54). Neighbouring Slovakia has closed temporarily its border crossings with Ukraine in response to expected further attacks near the border (17:12). The attack comes as top regional leaders, joined by Zelenskyy, met in Bucharest to discuss the European security, reaffirming their support for Ukraine (16:35, 16:43). Earlier, French authorities have confined more than 1,700 passengers and crew members to a cruise ship docked in Bordeaux after a suspected norovirus outbreak, officials have said (13:03). The cruise ship’s operator confirmed that a number of guests are displaying symptoms, with further testing under way (13:47). A 92-year-old man died on the ship earlier this week, but the cause of his death is yet to be established (14:13). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway

A peripatetic walrus who became a local celebrity as he toured the north-east coast of Scotland has now been spotted in Norway, bringing to an end his Celtic sojourn. The young male was christened Magnus after he after first hauled his estimated 2.5-metre frame out of the sea on to Stronsay pier in Orkney on 16 April. Although walruses usually prefer to rest on sea ice, Magnus was been found snoozing on piers and pontoons along the Moray coast after swimming 200 miles south to the Scottish mainland. Police asked the public to report sightings of a wandering walrus, and his appearances drew hundreds of spectators as he swam from Lossiemouth to Macduff, Fraserburgh, Findochty and then Hopeman, entertaining crowds with his vigorous itching and – in a move surely conceived for Instagram – accidentally rolling off a harbour wall. Walruses are rare visitors to Scottish shores, although sightings have increased in recent years, prompting concerns that the effects of climate change on their Arctic ice habitat may be causing these southbound excursions. While walruses are known to be highly social animals, by 21 April police took the step of erecting a cordon at Lossiemouth marina to contain his admirers. Farther east along the coast in the fishing village of Findochty, Katie Wilson spotted Magnus on 27 April as she was dropping her three-year-old daughter at nursery near the harbour. “The kids could not believe it,” said Wilson at the time. “They were in shock. It’s not every day you see a walrus here.” Wilson said Magnus appeared to be sunbathing on a pontoon after swimming a lap around the harbour. “He seems quite happy. He is just chilling,” she told a local reporter. On 30 April, the tusked traveller was again spotted swimming alongside a group of pupils from Gordonstoun, King Charles’s alma mater, who were taking a sailing lesson in Hopeman harbour. Magnus was later seen sunbathing on a nearby rock and rolling off a pontoon while napping. A fortnight later, a local birdwatcher from an archipelago south of Stavanger, in Norway, has raised the alert that Magnus had crossed the North Sea. Åge Jakobsen told BBC Scotland: “We went out to Buerholmen at Hidra to look for and photograph the walrus Magnus who is staying there. It was a little different to take pictures of one of the birds I usually do – didn’t seem like it would fly away.” He said the walrus appeared “really tired” after the 400-mile journey across the North Sea but was having a “great time in the sun on the floating dock”. The team from British Divers Marine Life Rescue had been monitoring Magnus as he made his way around Scotland, noting that adolescent walruses do experience wanderlust. The Orkney Marine Mammal Research Initiative said this was “a genuinely rare event” and only the third time a walrus has been sighted in Orkney in the last decade. “Walruses are Arctic animals, native to the sea ice and subarctic waters of the northern hemisphere. The individuals that turn up on our shores are typically young roving animals – adolescents striking out beyond their usual range, possibly following food, possibly just exploring, likely due to climate change to some extent.”

Russia targets Ukraine with more than 800 drones in deadly daytime assault

Russia targeted Ukraine with more than 800 drones in a large-scale daytime assault that killed at least six people on Wednesday, hours after a previous deadly barrage. The strikes came as Kyiv and Moscow traded long-range attacks after a brief ceasefire, and despite the latest suggestion from Donald Trump that the war could soon come to an end. Ukrainian monitors detected at least eight salvoes of Russian drones, including some entering from Belarus, with the apparent target being Kyiv’s critical infrastructure. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was visiting Romania on Wednesday, wrote on X: “Since midnight, at least 800 Russian drones have already been launched, and the attack is ongoing, with additional drones entering our country’s airspace.” Moscow had targeted western regions closest to the borders with Nato countries, he added. Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán, condemned attacks on ethnic Hungarian regions in western Ukraine in a Facebook video. They would be on the agenda of prime minister Péter Magyar’s inaugural cabinet meeting later, she said. Slovakia announced it would be closing its border crossings with Ukraine for security reasons until further notice. Trump’s latest claims of progress in negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow were offered with scant detail and follow similar unfounded claims. “The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” the US president told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.” His comments follow remarks by Vladimir Putin in a speech last weekend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was possibly coming to an end. The latest strikes came a day after one of Zelenskyy’s top aides, Andriy Yermak, appeared in a Kyiv court after Ukraine’s two anti-corruption agencies named him as a suspect in a money-laundering scheme. He was a close friend of Zelenskyy’s for years, and led Ukraine’s talks with the US until an anti-corruption raid on his flat last November prompted his resignation. Yermak’s lawyer has described allegations that the former head of the presidential office had been caught up in a corruption scandal surrounding a $10.5m (£7.8m) luxury construction project as baseless. Yermak told reporters before the hearing: “I do not have any house, I only have one flat and one car,” adding later that he would comment afterwards. Russia’s earlier strikes had targeted Ukraine’s residential and railway infrastructure in the central Dnipro and north-eastern Kharkiv regions, port infrastructure in the southern Odesa region and energy facilities in the central Poltava region, according to Zelenskyy. Fourteen regions had come under attack on Tuesday, he said. The correlation of forces in the war has shifted in recent months. Ukraine has gone from pleading for international help with its defence to offering other countries expertise on how to counter attacks thanks to its domestically developed drone technology. Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile attacks have disrupted energy and manufacturing facilities deep inside Russia. Three regions reported strikes Wednesday. Russia’s defence ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russia, the illegally annexed Crimea peninsula, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea. On the 780-mile (1,250km) frontline, the advance of Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing each month since last October, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Moscow’s spring offensive has floundered and its forces recorded a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based thinktank said. “Not only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,” it said on Tuesday.

Marine Le Pen’s party hits back at Kylian Mbappé comments

The French football captain, Kylian Mbappé, has angered Marine Le Pen’s far-right party after expressing concerns about it winning next year’s presidential election. Mbappé, 27, who grew up in Paris’s northern suburbs in a family with Algerian and Cameroonian heritage, told Vanity Fair this week: “I know what it means and what consequences it can have for my country when people like them come to power.” Jordan Bardella, 30, the president of Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN), which is polling high ahead of the spring presidential race, immediately shot back at the football star. He made a dig at Mbappé, who left the Paris Saint-Germain club in 2024 to play for Real Madrid, only for PSG to win the Champions League the following year. “I know what happens when Kylian Mbappé leaves PSG: the club wins the Champions League! (And maybe soon a second time),” Bardella wrote on social media. Le Pen told RTL radio on Wednesday she found it reassuring that Mbappé did not want her party to win, because his own strategy of leaving PSG in order to win at Real Madrid had not worked. “Frankly I think football fans are free enough to know who to vote for without being influenced by Mbappé,” she said. Julien Odoul, an RN MP and party spokesperson, said that, as the captain of the French team, Mbappé must represent all of France, including the millions of RN voters, and should not become a “political activist”. Bardella, who could become the party’s presidential candidate this summer if an appeals court upholds Le Pen’s ban on running, has a longstanding feud with Mbappé. At the time of France’s snap parliamentary election in 2024, Mbappé, who has worked to dismantle the stereotypes often applied to Paris’s diverse suburbs where he grew up, said electoral gains made by the RN were “catastrophic”. Bardella hit back, saying it was embarrassing to see deep-pocketed athletes “give lessons to people who can no longer make ends meet, who no longer feel safe”. Asked by Vanity Fair about the allegation that he was too rich to discuss French politics, Mbappé said: “Even as a footballer, you’re foremost a citizen. We’re not disconnected from the world … or from what’s happening in our country. People sometimes think that because we have money, because we’re famous, these kinds of problems don’t affect us.” But, he said, footballers “have our say, like everyone”. He said the RN’s gains in parliament in 2024 had shocked him and other footballers. “We’re citizens and we can’t just sit there saying all will be fine and go and play. We have to fight this idea that a footballer should just be content to play and keep quiet.” Mbappé is the face of a national team often celebrated as a symbol of diversity, and which many tip to win this summer’s World Cup. He was born in 1998, the year that France’s World Cup-winning team starring Zinedine Zidane was mythologised as “Black-Blanc-Beur” (Black-White-Arab) and presented by politicians as able to solve France’s deep-seated identity issues through their triumph. William Thay, from the thinktank Le Millénaire, told Reuters that Bardella’s response to Mbappé this week was politically shrewd because the player’s popularity in France had weakened since his PSG exit, with perceived arrogance and underwhelming results at Real Madrid. But Thay said the RN risked undermining its electoral strategy by attacking one of France’s biggest sporting stars while doing little to address moderates who fear the party seeks to deepen social divisions.

Chinese court awards compensation to sacked worker replaced by AI

A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation. The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products. The company, which has not been named publicly, later said AI could do his job and offered him a demotion and a 40% pay cut. When he refused, the company fired him. Zhou disputed his dismissal, and the Hangzhou intermediate people’s court ruled last month that the company had been wrong to fire him and ordered that he be paid 260,000 yuan in compensation. The case has attracted widespread attention as an example of how China can balance the country’s enthusiastic adoption of AI with job security, especially at a time of high youth unemployment. Chinese state media heralded the ruling as sending “a reassuring message to labour rights protection efforts in the age of automation”. People in China, encouraged by their government and by a generally optimistic attitude towards technology, tend to be more positive than their counterparts in the west about AI’s potential to improve their lives. A recent survey by the polling firm Ipsos found that more than 80% of people in China were excited about products that use AI, compared with fewer than 40% in the UK or the US. But the race across different sectors of the economy to integrate AI as fast as possible is starting to cause some concern about potential job losses. China is struggling with persistently high youth unemployment with 17% of people aged 16 to 24 unable to find work, according to the latest data. Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies China’s technology and industrial policy, said there were signs of a shift in Beijing’s approach to job losses caused by AI. “Previously, Chinese policymakers seemed to downplay these risks. Official messaging on AI focused on the new jobs that AI was creating,” he said. “This process was compared to the restructuring of the labour market during the Industrial Revolution. The irony here is that there was sharp worker backlash to those changes. “Now we see more language from Beijing about addressing unemployment related to AI.” The Hangzhou case is not the first time authorities have ruled in favour of workers who have lost their jobs to AI. The Beijing local government published details last year of an arbitration case in which a company fired an woman who had worked as a manual data collector for 15 years. The company said an automated data collection tool could do her job. An arbitration committee ruled that the company was entitled to incorporate AI into its business model, but that this did not constitute a “significant change in objective circumstances” that could be the legal basis for terminating an employment contract. The committee said: “While enjoying the benefits of technology, employers should simultaneously assume corresponding social responsibilities.” Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow at Yale University’s Paul Tsai China Centre in Beijing, said the recent cases showed that “where the tech change is a foreseeable, controllable business upgrade … employers can’t simply pass the transition costs on to employees”.

Gunshots fired in Philippines senate in standoff with senator Ronald dela Rosa

Gunshots have been fired in the Philippines senate as a senator who is wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) remained holed up in the building to evade arrest. Ronald dela Rosa, a Philippine senator accused of crimes against humanity for his role in overseeing the former president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, has spent two nights in the country’s senate in a standoff with the authorities. On Wednesday he called for his supporters to gather in front of the senate, and said his arrest was imminent. Military personnel were later seen entering the senate building, some carrying assault rifles. Local media showed scenes of chaos and the sound of gunfire rung out. It is unclear who fired the shots. The country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, said in a statement late on Wednesday that no government personnel had been involved in the incident and he did not know who was responsible. He promised an investigation, questioning if the event was an attempt to “destabilise the government or trigger chaos”. . The interior secretary, Jonvic Remulla, said security footage would be reviewed. Referring to Dela Rosa by his nickname, he told media outside the building: “I will not arrest Senator Bato. I am here to secure everyone.” “We do not know who is behind this,” Remulla said of the gunfire. “But we will find them.” Dela Rosa, 64, who was the chief enforcer of Duterte’s merciless anti-drugs crackdown, dramatically evaded arrest on Monday when he outran government agents who chased him through the senate’s hallways and staircases. He managed to reach the chamber, where the senate president, Alan Peter Cayetano, an ally of Duterte, offered him protective custody. Duterte was arrested last year in Manila and sent to the ICC, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity over the crackdowns, in which thousands were killed. The senate secretary, Mark Llandro Mendoza, told reporters there had not been any casualties reported. Dela Rosa has been in the senate since Monday’s pursuit, which was captured on the building’s CCTV. Appealing for the public to gather to protect him from arrest, he said earlier on Wednesday: “Let us not allow another Filipino to be taken to The Hague.” He had called on the military to peacefully oppose moves to send him to The Hague, and sang part of the Philippine military academy hymn in front of a media scrum. “I am not appealing for violent support. I am appealing for peaceful support,” Dela Rosa said, as he urged his “fellow men in uniform” to “express their sentiment” that Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s government “should not hand me over to foreigners”. As the chaotic scenes unfolded on Wednesday night, Cayetano posted on Facebook from inside the building: “We don’t know what’s happening, everyone is locked in their rooms now, we cannot go out. We cannot secure our other staff,” he said. “This is the senate of the Philippines,” he added, appealing to law enforcement agencies for information. “What is happening? Why are we under attack here?” He said he and others were “not going to leave” Dela Rosa and legal remedies to avoid his transfer to The Hague had not yet been exhausted. Dela Rosa has filed an emergency petition to the supreme court asking it to block any attempt to send him to the ICC. The court has given all parties to the petition 72 hours to respond. “We heard that allegedly there are NBI [National Bureau of Investigation] members who want to enter. They are seen drilling door, walls,” Cayetano said. However, Melvin Matibag, the NBI’s director, told local media he had not deployed any personnel to the senate, and that the gunfire should be investigated and those responsible arrested. More than 10 military personnel in camouflage fatigues were present, some carrying assault rifles, according to Reuters. The chief of the military’s public affairs office, Xerxes Trinidad, told Reuters the senate had requested help to “assist them in securing the facility”. The events follow several days of political drama in the Philippines, including the impeachment of the vice-president, Sara Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter on Monday. She is embroiled in a fierce battle with Marcos, which intensified last year when her father was arrested. Dela Rosa is accused by the ICC of the crime against humanity of murder along with Duterte and other co-perpetrators. He did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday, but has denied wrongdoing. An arrest warrant accuses him of “authorising, condoning and promoting” the killings, providing weapons, promising impunity and rewarding perpetrators, according to an ICC arrest warrant that was unsealed on Monday. Reports that Dela Rosa could face arrest first surfaced in November and he had been missing from the senate for months. However, he made a surprise appearance on Monday, when he turned up to back a successful attempt to install Cayetano, a staunch ally of the Duterte family, as senate president. The ICC, not to be confused with the UN’s international court of justice, deals with accusations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity and is made up of 125 member states. Reuters contributed to this report

Can Hungary’s Magyar deliver on his promises of reform and restore a relationship to the EU?

Under blue skies on Saturday, crowds cheered as the EU flag was raised on the facade of the Hungarian parliament after a long absence. It was a powerful symbol on the day Péter Magyar was sworn in as Hungary’s prime minister, with a declaration that Hungarians had given his party a mandate to launch “a new chapter” in the country’s history, and change the system. The new government, seen as an experienced technocratic team, immediately signalled its new direction. “Hungary’s place is in Europe; naturally, firmly and without question,” foreign minister designate Anita Orbán said. Soon after, Hungary dropped its long-standing veto over sanctions against violent Israeli settlers – a sign it no longer sought to be outside the EU mainstream. Before taking the oath of office, justice minister Márta Görög pledged to revise Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ law, after the European court of justice (ECJ) ruled it was discriminatory and in breach of basic democratic values. “Hungary is a member of the European Union, which means that there are responsibilities,” she said. Finance minister András Kármán outlined an economic transformation plan, aiming to meet the criteria for adopting the euro by 2030. One of the first big tests is meeting Magyar’s pledge to “bring home” Hungary’s frozen EU billions. Most critical is €10.4bn in grants and cheap loans allocated under the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund that were never paid out over concerns about the rule of law and financial probity under Viktor Orbán. Later this month, Hungary is expected to produce a new plan to show how it can meet the recovery fund’s goals of making the country greener and more digital, while completing 27 “super milestones” to tackle corruption and ensure the independence of the judiciary – a condition of unlocking the funds. Hungary has until 31 August to show that it has completed these milestones, if they want the funds to be paid out by the end of the year. Economist László Andor, formerly Hungary’s EU commissioner from 2010-2014, expects the new government to “move mountains” to meet that deadline. Its economy has stagnated over the last four years, while the government deficit is spiralling. “In order to avoid at least a temporary recession and start a new cycle of public investment, [gaining the frozen funds] is absolutely vital,” he told me. “It’s also very important that the new government avoids starting with an experience of a recession, which would obviously be to the detriment of its reputation and competence.” A further €7.6bn in EU development funds remains blocked over the previous government’s conflicts with EU law, including the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, but there is no imminent risk of losing that cash. Also at stake is Budapest’s access to €16.2bn in cheap loans for defence projects under the EU’s Security Action for Europe programme. Zselyke Csaky at the Centre for European Reform thinktank suggests both Brussels and Budapest will have to tread carefully over hitting deadlines. While Magyar has a parliamentary majority to rewrite the constitution, rushing major changes would feel too much like the previous administration: “It is just not a good look if a constitutional amendment is pushed through without much consultation, so that’s basically the limiting factor in Hungary’s case.” While the European Commission has shown flexibility in its reading of the EU’s financial rules, it has also faced criticism from the ECJ for lack of transparency and “incorrectly” making an earlier decision to release €10bn to Hungary. *** Life after Orbán Beyond EU funds, it remains to be seen how Magyar will govern: whether he is a prime minister for his core conservative voters or if he will create a big tent for left-liberals, who voted for him to get rid of Orbán. For the first time since 1990, left of centre and liberal parties are absent from the Hungarian parliament, after major opposition parties chose not to run in order to ensure Orbán’s defeat. In a sign of an inclusive approach, in his first speech as prime minister, Magyar apologised to everyone who had been maligned by the state during Orbán’s 16-year rule. Richárd Barabás, co-leader of Párbeszéd-Greens which did not stand candidates, said there had been great unity among Hungarians to say “no to this kind of authoritarianism, no to this kind of Russian alliance, no to this infringement of human rights” that Orbán’s 16-year reign embodied. But when it comes to a positive agenda, he said his party would continue to take different positions to the government: “It is time to start the discussions about the future we want to have and it’s quite natural that we do not agree in every aspect of that.” Specifically, he said there was a need to debate issues such as European federalism, the integration of Ukraine into the EU and the phase out of Russian oil and gas from Hungary’s energy mix. Barabás wants to phase out Russian fossil fuels as soon as possible, favouring the EU’s end of 2027 target, while Magyar has proposed a 2035 deadline. Speaking to me the day before Magyar was sworn in, Barabás wanted to strike a positive note, congratulating him for his “really great job” in winning the elections, triumphing over the “severe” and “disgusting” smear campaign from the previous government. “We really wish him luck as prime minister to be able to fulfil all the expectations and requirements proposed by the commission for him, because Hungary really needs the EU funds to come back.” Until next week. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.

Trump lands in China for high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping, as Iran war looms over talks

Donald Trump has landed in Beijing, the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, as he seeks to mend power and prestige weakened by the war in Iran. Trump pumped his fist, descended the stairs of Air Force One and walked a red carpet flanked by 300 young Chinese people wearing light blue and white, waving red flags and chanting welcome. He was greeted late on Wednesday by China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, the vice-minister of foreign affairs, Ma Zhaoxu, and a military band and honour guard. Trump was accompanied by his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara as well as tech leaders including Elon Musk of Tesla and Jensen Huang of the chip-maker Nvidia. The US president has plans for headline-grabbing deals and previously predicted that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, would “give me a big, fat hug when I get there”. But the Middle East conflict that Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will cast a long shadow over two days of talks amid fears that he might be tempted to weaken US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China, in return for Xi’s assistance. “I don’t think we need any help with Iran,” Trump said to reporters before departing the White House on Tuesday. “We’ll win it one way or the other – peacefully or otherwise.” He also sought to play down divisions with Beijing, saying Xi had been “relatively good” during the crisis and insisting that Washington had “Iran very much under control”. The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting settlement. Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China – Iran’s biggest oil customer and one of the few powers with leverage in Tehran – to pressure the Islamic Republic into reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily passes, while accepting US terms for peace. The US recently sanctioned several Chinese firms accused of assisting Iranian oil shipments and supplying satellite imagery allegedly used in Iranian military operations. China condemned the measures as “illegal unilateral sanctions” and invoked a rarely used blocking statute prohibiting Chinese entities from complying with them. Chinese officials have publicly called for stability while carefully avoiding overt alignment with Washington. The foreign minister, Wang Yi, last week hosted his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in Beijing, and defended Iran’s right to develop civilian nuclear energy. Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the US over the war. He has said safeguarding international rule of law is paramount and “must not be selectively applied or disregarded”, nor should the world be allowed to revert “to the law of the jungle”. Still, neither side appears eager to allow the Iran crisis to derail broader diplomatic and economic engagement in the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi over the next year. The two countries remain locked in a fragile tariff truce reached last autumn after tensions threatened to erupt into a full-scale trade war. Trump has long complained about China’s trade surplus with the US, while Beijing has bristled at American export controls and sanctions. White House officials said Trump would travel with a delegation of more than a dozen US business leaders, including Musk and Cook, in a sign that both governments still seek economic cooperation despite strategic rivalry. A sale of 500 Boeing 737 Max jets, one of the biggest orders in the aeroplane-maker’s history, will be announced during the trip, the Bloomberg news agency reported. Trump and Xi will also discuss creating a new board of trade to manage what China should buy from the US and vice versa. Beijing, too, has reasons to avoid escalation. China’s economy remains burdened by sluggish domestic demand and a prolonged property crisis, while the closure of the strait of Hormuz has exposed its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern energy supplies. Trump’s trip will be closely scrutinised in Taiwan for any sign of weakening US support. On Monday, he said he would speak to Xi about US arms sales to Taiwan, a departure from historic US insistence that it would not consult Beijing on its support to the island. He also insisted that his personal relationship with Xi would prevent a Chinese invasion of the island. “I think we’ll be fine,” he said. “I have a very good relationship with President Xi. He knows I don’t want that to happen.” Another potential focus will be AI, with both countries facing calls to cooperate on global standards and safeguards. Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator, urged Trump and Xi to agree on allowing top scientists to share technical information and develop “AI redlines” about dangerous behaviour. Sanders said: “At the height of the cold war, Reagan and Gorbachev found a way to negotiate nuclear arms control. The existential risk posed by AI demands nothing less from Trump and Xi.” In Beijing, security was visibly tightened ahead of the visit, with police stationed at major intersections and checks increased on the metro system. The summit itinerary includes a formal welcome ceremony, private meetings between the two leaders and a tour of the Temple of Heaven – a religious complex dating to the 15th century symbolising the relationship between Earth and heaven. Trump will attend a state banquet on Thursday evening and then have a tea and working lunch with Xi on Friday before leaving. The US president, who has been criticised for emphasising foreign policy at the expense of domestic concerns in his second term, will be eager to project strength and present the trip as a victory. Anna Kelly, the White House principal deputy press secretary, told reporters on a call on Sunday: “President Trump cares about results, not symbols. But even still, the president has a great relationship with President Xi, and the upcoming summit in Beijing will be both symbolically and substantively significant.” But the US approach is likely to be pragmatic and transactional with little focus on structural reform. Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank in Washington, said: “China and Xi Jinping come into this meeting in a much stronger place than the United States. “China has goals that they would like: to extend the ceasefire, to reduce tech restrictions on the imports of semiconductors and lower tariffs. But even if they don’t get much on any of those things, as long as there’s not a blow up in the meeting and president Trump doesn’t go away and look to re-escalate, China basically comes out stronger.”