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...
Over the finish line. Usain Bolt won his third Gold Medal at the London 2012 Olympics, by leading the Jamaican team to victory in the 4 x 100 meters relay. The Jamaican Team also set a new world record of 36.84 seconds. If you watch the YouTube video uploaded by the Olympics channel, you will see that it was almost even between the US and Jamaica when Usain Bolt started the final leg. he thundered past Ryan Bailey of the US to the finish line to set a new world record. When Yohan Blake started his third leg run everyone knew things were changing fast on the track. Usian took the baton to lead the team to victory. There was also a small situation after the relay, Usain wanted to keep the baton but the officials told him they need it back. He did give it back grudgingly but it was returned to him 40 minutes later. He was allowed to keep his memento. There has been a lot of discussion on the internet regarding his victory display and ' Doing the bolt ' is also a small meme on the...