Former President Donald Trump faces serious charges in two separate cases over whether he attempted to subvert the Constitution by overturning the results of a fair election and illegally remain in power.

Yet it's a New York case centered on payments to silence an adult film actress that might provide the only legal reckoning this year on whether he tried to undermine a pillar of American democracy.

India's main opposition party accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using hate speech after he called Muslims "infiltrators" — some of his most incendiary rhetoric to date about the minority faith in a campaign rally days after the country began its weekslong general election.

At the rally on Sunday in the western state of Rajasthan, Modi said that when the Congress party was in government, "they said Muslims have the first right over the country's resources." If it returns to power, the party "will gather all your wealth and distribute it among those who have more children," he said as the crowd applauded.

A man who works for a German lawmaker in the European Parliament has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China, German prosecutors said Tuesday.

The suspect, identified only as Jian G. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested Monday in Dresden, federal prosecutors said in a statement. They said that he has worked for a German lawmaker in the European Union's legislature since 2019.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is starting three days of talks with senior Chinese officials in Shanghai and Beijing this week with U.S.-China ties at a critical point over numerous global disputes.

The mere fact that Blinken is making the trip — shortly after a conversation between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — might be seen by some as encouraging, but ties between Washington and Beijing are tense and the rifts are growing wider.

Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale, and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public Monday as some of the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse campus tensions over Israel's war with Hamas.

More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia's green were arrested last week, and similar encampments have sprouted up at universities around the country as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

Ukrainian commander Oleksiy Tarasenko witnessed a frightening shift last month in Russia's efforts to punch through Kyiv's defense of the industrial region known as the Donbas.

Standing against Russia's unyielding advance in the strategic front-line town of Chasiv Yar, he noticed that, instead of making typical light infantry assaults, Moscow's forces were taking brazen risks by launching battalion- and platoon-sized attacks, sometimes with up to 10 combat vehicles.

For the first time in history, prosecutors will present a criminal case against a former American president to a jury Monday as they accuse Donald Trump of a hush money scheme aimed at preventing damaging stories about his personal life from becoming public.

A 12-person jury in Manhattan is set to hear opening statements from prosecutors and defense lawyers in the first of four criminal cases against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to reach trial.

Russia said Monday it captured the village of Novomykhailivka in eastern Ukraine, while Ukrainian officials warned the situation on the front lines is likely to deteriorate in coming weeks.

Russia's defense ministry said "units of the southern grouping of troops have completely liberated the settlement of Novomykhailivka," some 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from Vugledar that Russian forces have been trying to seize.

The Kremlin warned Monday it would take "necessary" measures to "ensure its security" if Poland hosted nuclear weapons, after Warsaw said it was ready to do so should NATO decide to deploy the arms.

"The military will of course analyze the situation and in any case will take all necessary response steps in order to ensure our security," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday approved long-delayed military aid to Ukraine in a rare show of bipartisan unity, while also bolstering Israel and Taiwan defenses and threatening to ban Chinese-owned TikTok.

The four bills in the $95 billion package were overwhelmingly approved in quick succession, though they leave the future of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson in some doubt as he seeks to fend off angry far-right detractors.