On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Amazon announced that Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history and for the first time ever customers purchased more e-books that physical books. With kindle being such a popular gift most people who got one must have simply gone online and ordered some e-books the read. It just works that easy. With 390,000 books to choose from is it any wonder. We have added the list of the bestsellers this Christmas season from Amazon. Amazon Worldwide 2009 Holiday Facts (includes www.amazon.com , www.amazon.co.uk , www.amazon.de , www.amazon.fr , www.amazon.co.jp and www.amazon.ca ): Amazon shipped to over 178 countries. One of our most remote shipments contained the EMU Australia Toddler Boot and was delivered to Atqasuk, Alaska. On the peak day this season, Amazon's worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 7 million units. Amazon shipped over 200,000 units to APO/FPO addresses. Amazon shipped more than 99 percent of orders in time to meet holiday deadlines worl...