- India successfully launches a Mars probe. One is reminded of the 2003 Economist headline when China launched its first crewed space mission: 'Congratulations China! (So, no need for any more aid, then?)'
- Why Obama will let Iran enrich uranium.
- FT columnist Gideon Rachman reports on an audience he and other eminent thinkers and retired politicians had with Xi Jinping. He hears 'faint echoes of Chinese history, in which foreign barbarians paid tribute to the leader of the Middle Kingdom.'
- Stephen Walt asks of the NSA's snooping: 'Where are the big foreign policy and national security gains that we're reaping from this work?'
- The UN tallies up the economic damage of Syria's civil war.
- Regular Interpreter contributor Raoul Heinrichs has made a big splash in the Fairfax papers this morning with his fiery op-ed: 'PM Stumbling Around the International Stage'.
- Also in the Fairfax press this morning, Matt Wade summarises a new book on cricket and India's impact on the world:
A new book called The Great Tamasha, by British journalist James Astill, explores how India's economic surge and obsession with cricket made it the dominant power in the international game (''Tamasha'' is Hindi for entertainment).
"Cricket is the international forum that has been most affected by India's economic rise over the past two decades," says Astill, who is the political editor of The Economist and its former Delhi-based correspondent. ''There isn't another realm outside South Asia that has been so transformed by India's rise as cricket has been. Therefore, it's a salutatory lesson in the good and the bad."