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...
The Story has been one of the most talked about in India A 19 year wait: The case file Ruchika and her friend Aradhana were members of the Haryana Lawn Tennis Association, of which S P S Rathore (then IGP, Haryana) was the president. A chronology of the events recorded in the case: AUG 11, 1990: Rathore visits Ruchika's house at noon. Persuades her father, S C Girhotra, a bank manager, not to send Ruchika to Canada. Promises special training for the teenager. Asks her father to tell Ruchika to visit his office-cum residence the next day. AUG 12: Ruchika and Aradhana visit Rathore's office. Rathore asks Aradhana to fetch the coach. Aradhana returns and finds Rathore molesting Ruchika. On seeing her, Rathore lets go Ruchika, who rushes out of the room. Rathore asks Aradhana to talk to Ruchika and that "he would do whatever she would say". The girls decide not to talk about the incident to their parents, considering Rathore's powerful position. AUG 14: Ruchika and Ar...