Update at 13:11 GMT, Feb 4, 2023

Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, postponed a planned trip to China after the Pentagon detected a Chinese balloon flying over Montana. Mr Blinken was due to land in China on Sunday, where he was expected to meet with President Xi Jinping. China denied that the object was a spy balloon, adding that American politicians were using the incident to “smear China”. On Friday American officials said that a second Chinese spy balloon was flying over Latin America.

China said that political trust with Russia had deepened following a meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers last week. The announcement came exactly one year after President Xi Jinping’s declaration that the two countries enjoy a “friendship without limits”. China has largely shown indifference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Elon Musk and Tesla were cleared of wrongdoing over tweets from 2018 in which Mr Musk said he had “funding secured” to take the electric-vehicle firm private. Some of Tesla’s shareholders had filed a lawsuit against Mr Musk, claiming that he misled them with his social-media posts (the proposed deal did not materialise). But a jury in San Francisco found Tesla’s chief executive not guilty of fraud.

The EU agreed to a cap of $100 per barrel on exports of Russia’s refined-oil products, such as diesel, to take effect on Sunday. Fuel oil and other low-value exports will be capped at $45. A cap of $60 already applies to Russian crude. Insurers and shippers are prohibited from dealing in items covered by the cap unless they were bought below or at the designated price.

Peter Frank, Germany’s prosecutor-general, said he had collected evidence of Russian war crimes in the “three-digit range”, and that Russian civilian and military leaders should be placed on trial. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government announced that it had repatriated 116 soldiers as part of a prisoner-of-war swap with Russia. Earlier, the American government had announced a new $2.2bn aid package for Ukraine that includes longer-range precision missiles.

Japan will restrict exports of the machines that make advanced semiconductors to China from this spring, according to Kyodo News. America has been cajoling allied countries to introduce controls on chip exports to China, amid concerns that access to advanced semiconductor technology will give China a military edge. So far only the Netherlands had agreed to do so.

Researchers exploring a cave system in Spain discovered evidence that cave bears, a prehistoric species that went extinct around 24,000 years ago, may have lived further south than previously thought. The researchers found that the walls of the vast cave, which had been sealed off for thousands of years, had been clawed at by the creatures. Martín Lerma, the scientific director of the excavation, said the find “opens a new door on prehistory.”

Correction: In Friday’s edition we misspelt the name of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (as Skolimowksi). Sorry.

Word of the week: teledildonics, the term in pornography for virtual-sex encounters using remotely controlled toys. Read the full story.

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Tensions between American and China balloon

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Antony Blinken, America’s top diplomat, was scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Sunday. The visit—the first by a secretary of state since 2018—seemed like proof that the countries’ fractious relationship was improving. But now it will not happen. On Friday Mr Blinken postponed his trip after a Chinese high-altitude balloon was spotted flying over America.

The Pentagon claimed it was a surveillance balloon, though it downplayed its potential value for gathering intelligence. China said it was a “civilian airship” used mainly for meteorological research. It expressed regret about the balloon’s “unintended” entry into American airspace.

Officials in Washington are disinclined to give China the benefit of the doubt. No politician wants to appear soft towards the country. That limits the Biden administration’s room for manoeuvre. Mr Blinken may still hope to visit Beijing at some point. One could argue, though, that now is precisely the time when talks are needed.

Pope Francis prays for peace in South Sudan

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In 2019, months after striking a power-sharing agreement, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar—the president and one of the vice-presidents of South Sudan, respectively—visited the Vatican. Pope Francis famously kissed their feet, imploring the foes to maintain their fragile peace. The two men, who come from rival tribes, had watched their young country descend into a civil war in 2013. In less than five years the conflict was estimated to have left nearly 400,000 people dead and 4m displaced.

On Friday Francis arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, a predominantly Christian country, with the same message. Joining him are Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Iain Greenshields, of the Church of Scotland. But their prayers for peace will probably fall on deaf ears. Between August and December 166 civilians were killed as violence rose in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state, in the north. And on the eve of Francis’s arrival 27 were killed in the south of the country.

 

“The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

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At 25 Lorraine Hansberry, a black lesbian communist playwright, longed for fame. But she couldn’t have predicted how soon it would come. She was 28 when “A Raisin in the Sun”, about a black family seeking a piece of the American dream, opened on Broadway in 1959. It marked the first time a black woman playwright had reached the Great White Way.

More than 60 years on, “Raisin” remains in heavy rotation. But another of Hansberry’s plays, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”, has hardly been staged since it closed on Broadway in 1965, the year she died of cancer aged 34. The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s rare revival, starring Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac, opens in previews on Saturday. James Baldwin once raved of the play, about a group of friends in Greenwich Village straining to reconcile their ideals with reality, that “it is about nothing less than our responsibility to ourselves and each other.”

Europe’s rugby World Cup warm-up

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This year’s Six Nations tournament starts on Saturday. The competition, which pits the top European men’s rugby teams against one another, will also be keenly watched on the other side of the world. Ahead of a World Cup this autumn, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are eyeing the northern-hemisphere competition.

Those southern-hemisphere powerhouses have won all but one of the previous World Cups. But France will look forward to home advantage. Les bleus have been in formidable form recently, with a powerful pack and a scrum-half, Antoine Dupont, who was voted World Rugby player of the year in 2021.

It would, then, be a brave fan who bet against France in the Six Nations. But Ireland, who top the world rankings ahead of France and New Zealand, will be favourites. In Josh van der Flier, a flanker, they possess the player of 2022. Of all the northern teams, it is these two that will make southern boots quake come autumn.

 

Weekend profile: Max Martin, pop hitmaker

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Britney Spears brought the sex appeal, plaintive vocals and teen longing. Max Martin supplied the rest. In 1998 their track “...Baby One More Time” ruled the radio. Any allusions to domestic violence or sado-masochistic sex in the chorus—“Hit me baby one more time”—were supposedly unintentional. Mr Martin, the song’s Swedish writer and producer, says he understood “hit me” to mean “call me”.

The earworm was the first of Mr Martin’s 25 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100, a chart of America’s most popular songs. Only Paul McCartney and John Lennon rank higher as songwriters. His collaborators include pop heavyweights from Celine Dion to Taylor Swift. On Sunday, at the Grammy Awards, the 51-year-old has three separate nominations for album of the year: for his production work on Adele’s “30”, Lizzo’s “Special” and Coldplay’s “Music of the Spheres”.

Unlike the Beatles frontmen, Mr Martin has shunned the mic since his early days as a heavy-metal rocker in Sweden. Then he was known as Karl Martin Sandberg. But Denniz PoP, the producer who steered his turn towards songwriting, insisted that he rechristen himself. “‘Martin Sandberg’ wasn’t exactly a disco name, so you couldn’t really talk to him,” Mr PoP later recalled.

Mr Martin is a proponent of a technique he calls “melodic math”, the principle that every element should serve the record and its melody. Words are chosen for their sound as much as their meaning. Take “...Baby One More Time”—the percussive Bs of “baby” make it a more common endearment in pop songs than, say, “darling”.

In 2019, in a rare interview with the Guardian, he explained the importance of phonetics, and how “melodic math” came about as a result of not speaking English as a child. He would listen to Abba, Elton John and the Beatles without registering what the songs were about. “I felt something hearing this music, and it meant something to me,” he said. “If you can have a great lyric that also phonetically sounds amazing, then you’re golden. But it’s also kind of cool if you write a song and people are emotionally moved without understanding what’s being said.”

All these years on, Mr Martin’s knack for meaningful nonsense shows no sign of diminishing.