Good morning. Delhi has spent the week playing host to half the world, with motorcades, road closures and a security bubble unlike anything the capital has seen in years. That kind of week tends to produce either theatre or substance, and this one is worth sifting for the latter.
Away from the cameras, there was also a fair bit of money changing hands in Bengaluru boardrooms and a couple of overnight developments abroad worth your attention. Here is what actually matters this Sunday.
In today's newsletter: BRICS nations agree on the New Delhi Declaration, and Modi and Xi's first face to face in seven years.
What to watch this weekend
Gandhari, on Netflix. Taapsee Pannu plays a mother turned vigilante in this dark thriller from director Devashish Makhija, and while reviews on the writing are mixed, Pannu's performance is being singled out as the reason to watch. |
Reacher, Season 4, on Prime Video. Alan Ritchson's action thriller is in its final stretch this week, and critics have called it the show's best run yet, with a spin-off dropping alongside the finale. |
BRICS nations adopt the New Delhi Declaration after talks stretch to 4am
Negotiators from all 11 BRICS nations reached consensus on a joint declaration at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on Saturday, after talks that ran from Friday evening until around 4am, a result Indian officials are calling a major diplomatic win for the country's chairship year.
The New Delhi Declaration backs multilateralism and reform of global institutions while expressing deep concern over the war in West Asia, a formulation drafters deliberately kept vague enough to bridge sharp divisions between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE without naming any single country.
Getting 11 governments, several of them at odds with each other, to sign one document while Washington leans on more than a few of them individually is not a small feat. For India, pulling it off in its own capital, in its own chairship year, is the kind of quiet leverage that matters more than the summit photographs.
India used its own summit to quietly stay out of the disputes it was hosting. Delhi did not take sides on the Gulf rifts playing out on its own soil, choosing instead to let the declaration's vagueness do the diplomatic work, a small but telling sign of how it wants to be seen as chair.
Modi and Xi meet for the first time in years, and try to reset ties
On the sidelines of the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting on Indian soil in seven years, in what both sides are framing as an attempt to move past the freeze that followed the 2020 Galwan Valley clash.
Xi urged the two neighbours to join hands on BRICS cooperation, while Modi thanked Beijing for its backing through India's chairship, a notably warmer register than either side has used in years, even if it stops well short of resolving the underlying border dispute.
Breaking.exe
Flipkart's shopping agents. Flipkart-owned fintech Super.money is rolling out AI agents that can shop and buy gold on a customer's behalf, betting that autonomous purchasing will help it stand out among larger rivals. |
Altman hits pause. OpenAI's Sam Altman told staff he is ready to slow the pace of AI development, a striking shift in tone from a company that has spent three years racing to ship faster than everyone else. |
Pizza money. Bengaluru's Popo Global, which runs The Pizza Bakery and Paris Panini, raised Rs 532 crore from Artal Asia in its first external funding round, after nine bootstrapped years building 40 outlets. |
iPhone 18 pre-orders. Apple opened India pre-orders for the iPhone 18 Pro at Rs 1,64,900, its steepest starting price yet, with sales beginning September 18. |
Pangaea Revisited
Strikes and warnings. Russian strikes killed civilians in Zaporizhzhia and wounded dozens in Odesa, hours after Putin warned that European troops entering Ukraine would mean direct conflict with Russia. |
An unlikely meeting. Iran's President Pezeshkian and the UAE's Mohamed bin Zayed held talks on the sidelines in Delhi, a rare direct engagement between the two Gulf rivals that the BRICS platform made possible. |
Manila-Beijing spat. China-Philippines tensions flared after Beijing told Manila to stop "theatrics," days after a Philippine minister publicly rebuked China at a Seoul security forum. |
Also, Also, Also
Rapid rail debut. PM Modi inaugurated India's first Namo Bharat RRTS, dedicating the full 82km Delhi-Meerut corridor built for speeds of 180 km per hour. |
Hockey heroics. A Supriya hat-trick fired India's junior women past South Korea 5-1 and into the Junior Asia Cup final, where the defending champions will defend their title. |
Quick commerce milestone. Flipkart Minutes marked two years with 4x growth, now running nearly 1,200 fulfilment centres across more than 150 cities. |