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South China Morning Post - World News

2026-05-15 00:12:06 (17 hours ago)

China hosts Trump at Temple of Heaven; Hong Kong sushi parasite video: SCMP’s 7 highlights

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. The message China wants to send by hosting Trump at Temple of Heaven In Chinese diplomacy, historic venues are rarely just backdrops, and are often interpreted as rich in symbolism, carrying messages about history and bilateral...

Fox News - Top Stories

2026-05-15 00:08:57 (17 hours ago)

Trump reveals Xi’s stance on arming Iran as Hormuz tensions rattle markets

President Donald Trump says Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged not to supply Iran with military equipment, calling it a major win from the bilateral summit.

New York Times - World News

2026-05-15 00:07:02 (17 hours ago)

What is Zhongnanhai, the Secretive Beijing Compound Where Trump Met Xi?

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was meeting with President Trump on Friday at Zhongnanhai, a heavily guarded Beijing compound where top Chinese officials live and work.

Fox News - Video

2026-05-15 00:06:38 (17 hours ago)

China does not ‘innovate,’ they ‘replicate’: Former DHS spokeswoman

‘Fox News @ Night’ panelists discuss President Donald Trump meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a final round of talks in Beijing.

Fox News - Video

2026-05-15 00:06:36 (17 hours ago)

Trump, Xi meet for last round of talks

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the Zhongnanhai Garden ahead of the delegation’s return to the United States.

New York Times - World News

2026-05-15 00:01:19 (17 hours ago)

Aging Palestinian Leader Boosting His Son’s Political Rise, Officials Say

Mahmoud Abbas’s years in power have been dogged by accusations of corruption. Many Palestinians yearn for fresh leadership.

New York Times - World News

2026-05-15 00:01:13 (17 hours ago)

Inside the Congolese Hotel Where Trump Deported 15 U.S. Migrants

They were shackled and sent to Kinshasa by the Trump administration. Now they face a dangerous choice: Go back to Latin America or stay in Africa.

The Guardian - World News

2026-05-15 00:00:27 (17 hours ago)

If Labour didn’t exist, would you invent it? Streeting, Rayner, Burnham – you need to tell us why

The party needs a leader who understands the difficulties facing ordinary people. I am yet to see anyone obviously equal to that challenge

If this were a poker game, Thursday lunchtime was the point when players were finally forced to show their cards. Was Wes Streeting holding all the aces, as his people relentlessly claimed, or a pair of fours and a lot of empty bluster? Did Andy Burnham even have any cards, if he couldn’t name an MP willing to surrender their seat for him? (At the 11th hour, Makerfield MP Josh Simons did the honours). Would Angela Rayner – late to the table, after scraping together £40,000 in accidentally underpaid stamp duty in order to play – scoop the jackpot by default? Or does the house, in the shape of a prime minister stubbornly refusing to budge, ultimately always win?

But in the end Streeting simply kicked the table over, scattering poker chips in all directions. His resignation from cabinet, in a blistering statement that noticeably failed to confirm he had the numbers to trigger a formal contest, was a frustrated last attempt to break the stalemate by taking what he called “personalities” – including possibly his own – and “petty factionalism” out of a revolt against Keir Starmer in which both are surgically embedded. Since the outcome is unclear at the time of writing, for now let’s leave aside the issue of whether Starmer even has the authority to do a reshuffle and focus on one question: why does Britain need a Labour party in 2026?

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

The Guardian - World News

2026-05-15 00:00:27 (17 hours ago)

Nymphomaniacs and sex droughts: what I learned while studying women’s pleasure

In antiquity, women were considered the more sexual sex – hornier, more libidinous and lust-fuelled than men. Why did that perception change?

All across the world, you will probably have read, people are having less sex. In Britain and the US, in France and Australia, frequency of sex has been on the decline (although Denmark appears to be bucking the trend). In 2018, the US magazine the Atlantic declared a “sex recession”, while last December the Telegraph ran a piece headlined “Sex is dying out. This is why it matters”.

As an ancient historian with a particular interest in the history of sex, this drought is fascinating to me – not least because some of the articles I have read seem keen to hark back to the historical period I spend most of my time researching. “Sex should be more wild and plentiful than it has been since ancient Greece,” reported the Telegraph. But antiquity was no bastion of sexual freedom – especially for women.

The Guardian - World News

2026-05-15 00:00:27 (17 hours ago)

Experience: I smuggled myself out of the UK

We were locked in a box in a lorry for 12 hours. I’ve never been so terrified

I escaped from my home, Soran, in the Erbil area of northern Iraq, in 2011 when I was 19 years old. My life was in danger – powerful people had made threats to kill me. I had been told that the UK was a secure place for refugees. I decided to try to get there and hoped the government would grant me protection.

I travelled by lorry across Europe and arrived in October of that year. I claimed asylum and felt lucky to be in a peaceful country. When I arrived, David Cameron was prime minister. Since then, there have been five others. I didn’t really distinguish between them, though – they all caused me a lot of stress.

The Guardian - World News

2026-05-15 00:00:27 (17 hours ago)

‘Frailty and terrible rage’: Linda Bassett on Call the Midwife, her crap-free CV and selling ice creams at Olivier’s Old Vic

Best known as Nurse Phyllis in the TV hit, the actor is a peerless interpreter of Caryl Churchill and is starring in Alexander Zeldin’s ‘Shakespearean’ play about dementia. She looks back on a career of unconventional choices

‘Every part is an education,” says Linda Bassett. “That’s the glory of being an actor. You learn about human feelings and frailty and rottenness. The writer puts their soul on the page, and you inhabit that. I’ve always felt I was a writer’s actor.”

She’s not wrong. Never showy, Bassett’s understated magic has enhanced plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Wallace Shawn, Ayub Khan Din and, notably, Caryl Churchill, of whom she is a peerless interpreter.

The Guardian - World News

2026-05-15 00:00:26 (17 hours ago)

Are you sitting uncomfortably? How Backrooms upended the horror movie

It was just a creepy picture on the internet. Now it’s the year’s freakiest film. Its 20-year-old auteur Kane Parsons and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve take us through the terrifying labyrinth

Chiwetel Ejiofor has been on a lot of movie sets, but Backrooms was something different: a 30,000 sq ft labyrinth of apparently random corridors and chambers, all carpeted, fluorescent lit and decorated in the same sickly yellow wallpaper. It was so big that people were getting lost in it, says Ejiofor: “Especially on those first days. As you try to navigate your way around and you’re like: ‘I’m sure it’s this door, I’m sure that’s the way.’” He’s laughing at the recollection. “And you find yourself just back in the wrong corner of the whole studio and you’re like: ‘Get me some help!’”

This is kind of the point of Backrooms – the movie and the online phenomenon that spawned it. It’s a concept that takes some unpacking, but as the premise for a buzzy A24 horror freakout, you could summarise it as something like “The Blair Witch Project meets Severance” or “The Shining set in an infinite Travelodge”or maybe “the exact opposite of a Wes Anderson movie”. Comparisons fall short, partly because the Backrooms concept feels as if it’s come from another world – a parallel dimension, even. Ejiofor concurs: “There was stuff that we were doing by the end of the film that I was just like: ‘This is among the most bizarre things I have ever been involved in.’”