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Snapshot of the day
August 25, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia
Tarun Tejpal, former Tehelka editor, must surrender to jail authorities within three weeks’ time, the Supreme Court ordered today, saying that only then will it hear his appeal against the Bombay high court’s verdict convicting him of raping his subordinate and sentencing him to ten years in prison. The Goa government, which had prosecuted the case and has asked the top court to enhance Tejpal’s sentence to life imprisonment, had argued that he must surrender before his appeal can be taken up.
Reeling from the fallout of its illegal war on Iran, the US has now opened an economic front. Under its newly ‘Operation Economic Outcast’ campaign announced yesterday to increase the financial pressure on Iran through sanctions and threats of secondary sanctions against countries knowingly trading with Tehran, the US government sanctioned four Indian-based companies – Portease Partners LLP, Sadashiva Overseas Limited, PP Softtech Private Limited and Prakrutees Infra Impex Private Limited – for either importing Iranian petrochemical products or facilitating their imports to India. It has also placed sanctions on some of their partners or proprietors. Even as India Cable goes to press, the Ministry of External Affairs is yet to comment on it.
India and China conducted the latest round of talks under their Special Representatives mechanism, the highest bilateral channel for negotiating the settlement of the boundary question, in Beijing today. Both sides, represented by Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, said they’d discussed advancing talks on delimiting the border. Beijing said in its readout that both countries will use the SR mechanism to “pursue a fair, reasonable and mutually‑acceptable package solution to the boundary question”.
Xi Jinping is likely to travel to New Delhi for the BRICS summit next month with a delegation of around 400 officials, Saurabh Sharma and Aftab Ahmed report citing sources, adding that the Chinese president’s final travel plans and the agenda for a potential bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Modi on the sidelines of the summit are not yet confirmed. If Xi does visit, it will mark his first visit to India in seven years, and six years after the border clashes in eastern Ladakh sent ties nosediving before they gradually recovered starting late 2024.
China and Egypt are conducting the second iteration of their joint air exercise – the ‘Eagles of Civilisation’ – and this time the Chinese J-16 fighter jets are set to train alongside the Egyptian Air Force’s Rafales. This assumes significance because Pakistan had deployed the Chinese J-10C fighters during Operation Sindoor last year and claimed to have downed multiple Indian jets including Rafales (India has accepted suffering losses but contests the extent of them as claimed by Rawalpindi). Speaking to Rahul Bedi, a two-star veteran IAF pilot captured the stakes for India as follows:
