We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
'India and China have the wise and sage leadership to steer this complex relationship in the coming decades.'
'Indian diplomacy faltered amidst multiple failures of statecraft.' 'The functionaries responsible must be held to account for their abject failure,' asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Twice Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova said on Friday she would do everything she could to return to tennis after suffering a hand injury in a knife attack that will keep her out of the sport for at least six months. Kvitova was wounded on Tuesday when she fought off an intruder at her home in the Czech Republic, damaging all the fingers on her left playing hand. The world number 11 addressed the media directly for the first time on Friday after an operation to repair the tendons in her hand and was determined to get back to playing.
India lacks China's culture of collective discipline, so what will provide the glue for people to cooperate rather than follow their raw survival instincts? asks Ravi Bhoothalingam.
It is apparent that an easing of tensions at the border and a disengagement of troops is on the cards, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
A summary of sports events and persons who made news on Friday.
'We will not accept these misadventures by the Chinese.'
'Post the pandemic, when India is turning a new leaf in its economic policy with an eye on foreign capital and global supply chains that are likely to leave China, heightened tensions on the India-China border creates an atmosphere of uncertainty,' observes Virendra Kapoor.
'China has gone too long as a rogue power, trashing international norms, agreements, and treaties as if they were not the paper they were written on.' 'The ill-advised attack on Ladakh may be the beginning of the end of that nonsense,' advocates Rajeev Srinivasan.
The meeting with Xi is being held amid the ongoing trade war between the United States and China.
The deliberations focused on bringing down tension along the disputed borders and ways to bridge the trust deficit.
Top seeds Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis continued their rampaging form and recorded a straight set victory in their opening match of the year-ending $7 million WTA Finals in Singapore.
A day after two new cases of novel coronavirus that included one from Delhi were reported, the health ministry on Tuesday said six cases with "high-viral load" were detected during sample testing in Agra and these people have been kept in isolation. The six have been kept in isolation at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi and their samples are being sent to NIV, Pune for confirmation.
'Testing is a very good strategy if only symptomatic people are transmitting the disease.' 'Here asymptomatic people, with minimum, trivial symptoms, are transmitting too.' 'Testing, treating, tracing contacts and quarantining them -- yes, it will work up to a certain extent.' 'But more important is physical distancing, hand hygiene, cough etiquette and cocooning, protecting with reverse quarantining the most vulnerable people, senior citizens, people with other major medical problems.' 'To me, that makes much more sense.'
In remarks titled 'Implement Consensus and Handle Differences Properly to Bring China-India Relations Back on the Right Track' posted on the Chinese embassy website, Sun spoke of disruptions in the bilateral relationship and outlined five steps to clarify 'some fundamental points'.
'The theme of death seems to be a theme about which many of us, raised in Western societies, have almost completely removed from consciousness; it represents a theme that is suddenly and forcefully resurging now.' 'And for some, this is scary and destabilising.'
'At the same time, if we are a little careless, we will run into trouble. No doubt about that.'
In his address at the Plenary session of the 18th SCO summit in Qingdao, Modi coined an acronym 'SECURE' which he explained: 'S' for security for citizens, 'E' for economic development, 'C' for connectivity in the region, 'U' for unity, 'R' for respect of sovereignty and integrity, 'E' for environment protection.
'What Trump and Kim have demonstrated is that leaders need not remain prisoners of the status quo and they can, by showing the necessary will and courage, break out of the hang-ups and constrictions of the past and carve out a new pathway for themselves,' says B S Raghavan.
After the Kerala government declared the coronavirus outbreak as a 'state calamity', as the three positive cases were detected from Thrissur, Alapuzha and Kasaragod, tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran admitted that the sector had suffered a hit. The sector had aggressively launched promotional advertisements in the domestic and international markets after the floods to revive the sector. However, all the efforts took a beating, with mass cancellations of hotel bookings after the outbreak of the infection in the state was reported.
'China is concerned about its impact within Tibet.'
Top seed and defending champion Roger Federer battled past in-form Russian Daniil Medvedev 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 to reach the last-16 at the Shanghai Masters on Wednesday.
Chinese people annually spend $98.6 billion at restaurants, or 900 times the cost of China's recent second manned space mission, it was revealed at a national chef's festival held in central China's Wuhan city.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
Former world number one Garbine Muguruza was beaten 7-5, 6-4 by Aryna Sabalenka in the China Open second round on Tuesday while an ailing Jelena Ostapenko lost 6-0, 6-0 to Wang Qiang.
Official sources said the two leaders will meet for around four to six hours for the 'agendaless' talks
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Wednesday
Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis extended their winning streak to 37 games with a straight sets victory in the opening round of the women's doubles event at the St Petersburg Ladies Trophy on Thursday.
Only he, with his tremendous political capital and personal stature, can pull it off, observes B S Raghavan, the veteran civil servant.
China had been trying hard to enter the Indian market, without opening its own to Indian products. There is an economic crisis in India-China relations that the Chennai Connect barely scratched the surface, points out Srikanth Kondapalli.
Two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist Saina Nehwal continued her impressive run, progressing into the women's singles semi-finals with a straight-game win over unseeded Korean Lee Jang Mi at the Asia Badminton Championship in Wuhan, on Friday.
'India does not have the wherewithal to successfully manage a full blown covid-19 crisis,' warns Vivek Gumaste.
Hail and rainstorm killed 160 people in 11 provincial regions, mainly along the mighty Yangtze River and its distributaries, and have left 28 missing, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
India's Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis continued their domination in the women's doubles by winning their sixth consecutive title by lifting the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament, in Brisbane, on Saturday.
The Union health ministry said West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh reported a casualty each on Monday, taking the total number of deaths to nine in the country due to COVID-19.
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
Trump had accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorists.
Lieutenant General Wei Fenghe's, China's new defence minister's, first guest of honour could be his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman.
'Premature lifting of the lockdown will spread the disease from asymptomatics, and those undetected, to the whole community, ushering in prolonged misery, preventable and avoidable deaths, famine and social unrest,' warns Dr Debashish Danda.
