“I try to stay out of politics,” Ivanka Trump said in a recent interview. But the US president’s daughter spent part of her weekend sitting around a table with the Chinese, Russian and Turkish presidents, the German chancellor and the British prime minister.

The former businesswoman and fashion model briefly took her father’s seat during a G20 session in Hamburg, prompting claims of nepotism and a heavy dose of sarcasm about her diplomatic credentials. Ms Trump, 35, sat around the table with Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Angela Merkel and Theresa May. One official who was watching the session told the Bloomberg news agency she had taken her father’s place on at least two occasions on Saturday but had not spoken.A spokesman for the first daughter told Bloomberg that she had been sitting in the back of the room and then briefly joined the main table when the president stepped out. Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, addressed the meeting, which dealt with African migration and health – issues relevant to a fund that Ms Trump and the World Bank had just announced.(theguardian)…[+]

The actor Nelsan Ellis, best known for his portrayal of Lafayette Reynolds on HBO’s series True Blood, has died at the age of 39. Ellis’ manager, Emily Gerson Saines, confirmed the actor’s death on Saturday. The Hollywood Reporter, which was first to report Ellis’s death, quoted her as saying he had died from complications of heart failure.The Illinois-born actor played Lafayette, a gay short order cook, on the HBO drama from 2008 to 2014, and more recently appeared in the CBS detective series Elementary. He was also a playwright and a stage director.Ellis appeared as Martin Luther King Jr. in Lee Daniels’ film The Butler and as singer Bobby Byrd in the James Brown biopic Get On Up. He also appeared in The Help, and his fellow cast member Octavia Spencer mourned his death on Instagram. “My heart breaks for his kids and family,” she wrote.(the guardian)…[+]

The Church of England’s ruling body is to vote on whether to provide special services for transgender people during their transition. The General Synod is considering a motion on the need for transgender people to be “welcomed and affirmed in their parish church” as part of the “long and often complex process” of transition. The vote comes after bishops overwhelmingly backed a motion calling for a ban on “unethical” conversion therapy for gay Christians.

While the synod debated and voted on the private member’s motion on Saturday, an estimated 1 million people were celebrating Pride weekend in London, marking 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality. On Sunday the meeting in York will decide on a diocesan synod motion on “welcoming transgender people”, tabled by the Rev Chris Newlands of Blackburn. The church has stated its “fundamental belief” is that baptism can only be received once, therefore there is “no possibility” of the synod approving a service re-baptising individuals in their new gender.

Newlands’s motion “seeks to ensure that the C of E engages seriously with the issue of providing the opportunity of a liturgical marking of a person’s transition, which has the full authority of the C of E, as an appropriate expression of community and pastoral support to trans people”.(theguardian)…[+]