facing the org.xml.sax.SAXParseException Exception in xml parsing

I have written a scheduler in java spring boot application which runs once in every hour, since month it was working completely fine. But today it has started throwing exception while parsing. I guess may be the xml(from which I am getting the data is broken or may be it has changed little bit which I am unable to figure out).

Please note: I cannot change the source data.

Here is my code:

    @Scheduled(fixedRate = 1*60*60*1000 , initialDelay = 10*1000)
    public String updateNewsFeed() {

        try {
            DocumentBuilder db = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
            String URL = "https://nation.com.pk/rss/coronavirus";
            Document doc = db.parse(URL);
            List<NewsFeed> newsFeedList = parseNewsItemsToList(doc);
           
            return "Works fine";

        } catch (Exception ex) {
            return ex.getMessage();
        }
}

public List<NewsFeed> parseNewsItemsToList(Document doc) throws Exception{
        doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();
        NodeList nodes = doc.getElementsByTagName("item");
        List<NewsFeed> newsFeedList = new ArrayList<>();
        for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
            Element element = (Element) nodes.item(i);

            NodeList title = element.getElementsByTagName("title");
            NodeList link = element.getElementsByTagName("link");
            NodeList description = element.getElementsByTagName("description");
            NodeList pubDate = element.getElementsByTagName("pubDate");
            NodeList guid = element.getElementsByTagName("guid");

            org.jsoup.nodes.Document htmlDoc = Jsoup.connect(link.item(0).getTextContent().trim()).get();
                /*Elements pngs = htmlDoc.select("picture");
                System.out.println("\nimg link:"+pngs.toString());*/

            String image = htmlDoc.select("picture").select("img[src~=(?i)\\.(png|jpe?g)]").attr("src").trim();
            newsFeedList.add(new NewsFeed(
                    title.item(0).getTextContent().trim(),
                    description.item(0).getTextContent().trim(),
                    pubDate.item(0).getTextContent().trim(),
                    guid.item(0).getTextContent().trim(),
                    image,
                    link.item(0).getTextContent().trim()
            ));
        }
        return newsFeedList;
    }

Here is the Error message:

[Fatal Error] coronavirus:195:32: The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference. org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; systemId: https://nation.com.pk/rss/coronavirus; lineNumber: 195; columnNumber: 32; The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference. at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(DOMParser.java:258) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(DocumentBuilderImpl.java:339) at javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder.parse(DocumentBuilder.java:177) at com.i2p.covid19.service.NewsFeedService.updateNewsFeed(NewsFeedService.java:87) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498) at org.springframework.scheduling.support.ScheduledMethodRunnable.run(ScheduledMethodRunnable.java:84) at org.springframework.scheduling.support.DelegatingErrorHandlingRunnable.run(DelegatingErrorHandlingRunnable.java:54) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:308) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$301(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:180) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:294) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Issue is the & ampersand character in the XML. <category>Lifestyle & Entertainment</category>

& is an illegal in XML document outside CDATA section. This must be written as & but the producer of the XML document has already escaped the & character.

If you replace the & with & , it will work.

Use ROMETOOLS library (https://rometools.github.io/rome/) If your target is process the RSS feeds, I recommend to use rome library which handles the special chars like & - it is straightforward and simple to use. Refer https://www.baeldung.com/rome-rss

Below code snippet prints the International News from the <title> tag of the RSS feed:

URL feedSource = new URL("https://nation.com.pk/rss/coronavirus");
SyndFeedInput input = new SyndFeedInput();
SyndFeed feed = input.build(new XmlReader(feedSource));
System.out.println(feed.getTitle());