Senior U.S. administration officials will meet with a Chinese delegation on Monday in London for the next round of trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing, President Donald Trump said Friday.

The meeting comes after a phone call between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, which the U.S. president described as a “very positive” conversation as the two countries attempt to break an impasse over tariffs and global supplies of rare earth minerals.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent the U.S. side in the trade talks.

“The meeting should go very well,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Friday afternoon.

The conversation between Trump and Xi, who lead the world’s two biggest economies, lasted about an hour and a half, according to the U.S. president. The Chinese foreign ministry has said Trump initiated the call.

The ministry said Xi asked Trump to “remove the negative measures” that the U.S. has taken against China. It also said that Trump said “the U.S. loves to have Chinese students coming to study in America,” although his administration has vowed to revoke some of their visas.

Nonprofit founded by Bush looks to expand

Points of Light, the nonprofit founded by Former President George H.W. Bush, will lead an effort to double the number of people who volunteer with U.S. charitable organizations from 75 million annually to 150 million in 10 years.

The ambitious goal, announced in New Orleans at the foundation’s annual conference, which concluded Friday, would represent a major change in the way Americans spend their time and interact with nonprofits.

It aspires to mobilize people to volunteer with nonprofits in the U.S. at a scale that only federal programs like AmeriCorps have in the past.

It also coincides with deep federal funding cuts that threaten the financial stability of many nonprofits and with an effort to gut AmeriCorps programs, which sent 200,000 volunteers all over the country. A judge on Wednesday paused those cuts in some states, which had sued the Trump administration.

Jennifer Sirangelo, president and CEO of Points of Light, said that while the campaign has been in development well before the federal cuts, the nonprofit’s board members recently met and decided to move forward.

“What our board said was, ‘We have to do it now. We have to put the stake in the ground now. It’s more important than it was before the disruption of AmeriCorps,’” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. She said the nonprofit aims to raise and spend $100 million over the next three years to support the goal.

Points of Light, which is based in Atlanta, was founded by President George H.W. Bush to champion his vision of volunteerism. It has carried on his tradition of giving out a daily award to a volunteer around the country, built a global network of volunteer organizations and cultivated corporate volunteer programs.

Colo. terror suspect appears in court

A man who told investigators he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people” when he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators raising awareness of Israeli hostages appeared briefly in federal court for the first time Friday to face a hate crime charge.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, sat in the jury box in a Denver courtroom dressed in a green jail uniform and his wrists handcuffed, a U.S. Marshal sitting in the row behind him. Listening to the proceedings in Arabic through an interpreter, he answered “yes” and “I understand” in Arabic as Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O’Hara explained his rights.

Before the brief hearing started, Soliman mostly looked away from the crowded gallery, but after the proceedings he nodded and smiled as his lawyers spoke to him.

A conviction on a hate crime charge typically carries a penalty of no more than 10 years in prison but Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Hindman said that if the crime involves an attempted murder, the sentence can be as long as life in prison.

Soliman is represented by public defenders who do not comment on their cases to the media.

Weinstein judge denies juror request

A juror in Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes trial asked to be removed from the case Friday because he felt his fellow jurors were treating a member of their panel in an “unfair and unjust” way, but the judge told him he had to keep deliberating.

Judge Curtis Farber later denied a defense request for a mistrial, saying he believed the juror was simply expressing discomfort in the deliberation process, noting that he’s the youngest on the 12-person panel.

“This is nothing other than normal tensions during heated deliberations,” Farber told the lawyers after the juror rejoined his peers. “Perhaps his youth makes him uncomfortable with conflict.”

The juror said he wanted to be excused from the trial because he was uncomfortable with how some jurors were acting toward another juror. But Farber denied the request, saying there were no more alternate jurors to replace him and, in any case, his concerns did not warrant being dismissed.

Canada invites India to attend G7 summit

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta later this month, an invitation Modi accepted despite strained ties between the countries.

The countries expelled each other’s top diplomats last year over the killing of a Sikh Canadian activist in Canada and allegations of other crimes.

The invitation prompted anger from the World Sikh Organization of Canada, which wrote to Carney in May asking him not to invite Modi. Tensions remain high between Canada and India over accusations about Indian government agents being involved in the murder of a Canadian activist for Sikh separatism in British Columbia in 2023.

Carney extended the invitation to Modi in a phone call between the two leaders on Friday. The summit runs from June 15 to 17.

Carney noted Canada is in the role of G7 chair and said there are important discussions that India should be a part of.

Porn kingpin admits to trafficking charges

The founder of a California-based porn empire that recruited women with false modeling offers pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges in a federal court, authorities said.

Michael James Pratt pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in San Diego, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces a possible life sentence when he is sentenced Sept. 25.

Pratt, 42, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list when he was arrested in Madrid in 2022, three years after he fled while facing sex trafficking charges.

Federal prosecutors said Pratt and his co-defendants used force, fraud and coercion to recruit hundreds of women, many of whom were in their late teens, for their adult videos.

A New Zealand native, he founded the now-defunct GirlsDoPorn website in San Diego. In 2019, he and others were charged in San Diego with sex crimes after being targeted in a civil lawsuit by 22 women who claimed they were victimized by fraud and breach of contract.

Utah rules dementia killer can be executed

A convicted killer in Utah who developed dementia while on death row for 37 years is competent enough to be executed, a state judge ruled late Friday.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was sentenced to die in 1988 for killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker. Despite his recent cognitive decline, Menzies “consistently and rationally understands” what is happening and why he is facing execution, Judge Matthew Bates wrote in a court order.

“Menzies has not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that his understanding of his specific crime and punishment has fluctuated or declined in a way that offends the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, Bates said.

Menzies had previously selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.

Escaped zebra runs wild in Tennessee

An interstate has been closed. A drone has been deployed. Professional tracking groups and trained dogs have been dispatched.

They’re all on the case of a missing zebra that has been running wild for nearly a week in Rutherford County, Tennessee, eluding efforts to recapture it.

The latest sighting was Friday, when sheriff’s deputies tracking the startled zebra with a drone spotted it trotting through a field near Christiana, about 40 miles south of Nashville, prompting them to urge people to avoid the area.

— From news services