Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday by video after being denied a visa to the United States for the second year in a row. In his prerecorded speech, he denounced Israeli policies that he said threatened Palestinians with a new Nakba and vowed that his people would remain “on their land”.  

Erin Ogunkeye is pleased to welcome Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The US remains a powerful actor in its relationship with China. But power on paper is not the same thing as leverage at the negotiating table. Levin warns that President Trump’s highly personalized approach to Xi Jinping offers Beijing opportunities that China can easily exploit. Xi does not approach the relationship in the same way. Au contraire, he sees the United States as an adversary to be managed while China pursues its domestic priorities and strategic objectives in Asia, including on Taiwan. 

President Donald Trump hosted a lavish state dinner for China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday night that was attended by top business leaders, including tech titans. Trump hailed his “great friendship” with Xi and pulled out all the stops for a ceremony that attempted to mask the tensions between the two rival powers.

La chroniqueuse russe Xenia Fedorova a été sanctionnée par l'UE jeudi pour avoir relayé des discours propagandistes russes dans le contexte de la guerre en Ukraine. Elle est déjà interdite de territoire français pour ces mêmes raisons.

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 As Donald #Trump welcomed his Chinese counterpart Xi #Jinping for a state visit on the tarmac of an airport near #Washington, the sound of a fighter jet during the military ceremony caught the US president off guard, prompting a series of startled facial expressions.

Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Dimitry Elias Léger, journalist and author of "Death of the Soccer God". He begins with an extraordinary but largely forgotten moment in sporting history: the Haitian-born Joe Gaetjens scoring the goal that gave the US its famous victory over England at the 1950 World Cup. But Léger is less interested in reconstructing Gaetjens’s biography than in using the football star's journey as a " jumping point" to examining diaspora, fame, mortality and moral responsibility. Success offers neither immunity from history nor escape from mortality: as he puts it, “You could be super famous and end up on death row” or die wealthy in your own bed: “Either way, you’re going to die.

Reporters from ​Politico, CNN and MS ​NOW were allowed to enter the ​White ‌House ⁠on ‌Thursday afternoon after being barred in the morning, despite a US federal judge ordering the reinstatement of their access. The judge then issued a second order for the Trump administration to restore the journalists' access after the media outlets called for an emergency follow-up ⁠hearing. 

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said his country would send "military means" to protect a Saudi oil terminal from attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis. Saudi Arabia has been using the Red Sea port of Yanbu to export oil after Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz. Read our blog to see how the day's events unfolded.

US President Donald Trump personally welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping at a military airfield outside Washington on Wednesday, kicking off a lavish state visit focused on trade, artificial intelligence and Iran, as the two powers seek to preserve a fragile diplomatic and economic truce.

Leaders of some of the world's biggest AI companies urged caution at the United Nations on Wednesday, warning that increasingly autonomous systems could outpace human oversight. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pledged to slow development to ensure new AI systems are safe, while OpenAI chief Sam Altman called for "extreme care".

A former British member of parliament implied that a video filmed from a helicopter on September 11, 2001 shows that no planes actually hit the World Trade Center's south tower, but this claim would be unfounded. The plane that hit the south tower hit the other side of the building, which isn’t visible in the video.

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday in another #MeToo reckoning for sexually assaulting a former production assistant in 2006.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to address the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, as US President Donald Trump pushes for an end to Russia’s war and Kyiv seeks to shape renewed diplomatic efforts after more than four and a half years of conflict. France 24 International affairs commentator Douglas Herbert shares further details.

Russia hammered Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, with drones in daylight attacks on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding 23, just hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to address world leaders at the UN General Assembly. Zelenskyy met US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, as Trump has expressed frustration over the lack of progress in talks aimed at ending the war and the continued escalation of aerial attacks by both sides. Emerald Maxwell reports.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has hit back at US President Donald Trump’s speech in his address to the UN General Assembly. He opened by showing images of Iranian civilians killed in US strikes, saying they demonstrated the impact of US and Israeli military action against Iran. During his speech, the US delegation walked out of the General Assembly hall. France 24 International Affairs Editor Kethevane Gorjestani has more.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is speaking before the UN General Assembly Wednesday in his first speech at the world body since the US and Israel launched the conflict with his country. His address comes a day after US President Donald Trump told the UNGA he could "annihilate the Islamic Republic" and "drive them into hell".

US media outlets CNN, Politico and MS NOW are suing the Trump administration after it removed their press credentials and banned them from covering the White House. FRANCE 24 spoke to Steven Herman, executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi about the legality of the move and its wider ramnifications.

World leaders are heading to New York for the world's biggest diplomatic gathering: the UN General Assembly. Throughout the week, attention will turn to the war in Iran, climate change and the race to rein in AI. FRANCE 24's Monte Francis and Theresa Squatrito from the London School of Economics discuss what to expect.

AI leaders are due to brief the UN Security Council at an emergency session later today. The meeting comes after weeks of warnings about the potentially uncontrollable risks posed by artificial intelligence. Delano D’Souza reports.

The US-China trade war has hit exports ranging from soybeans to solar panels, but one industry appears to be weathering the tariffs remarkably well. As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping prepare to meet in Washington this week, big-ticket exports are likely to be high on the agenda. But Chinese beauty products such as wigs, hair extensions and false eyelashes have proved highly resilient, with low prices and strong demand encouraging consumers to absorb the extra costs. China’s press-on nail industry, concentrated largely in one city, is also coming through the trade war without a scratch. Bryan Quinn