When Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia received him with the pomp and circumstance normally reserved for the kingdom’s most strategic ally, the United States.
Four fighter jets from the Royal Saudi Air Force escorted Xi’s plane after it entered the country’s airspace. It was then escorted to land by six aerobatic jets dragging green smoke trails, according to China’s state broadcaster …

When world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, issued a joint statement condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, a familiar sentence stood out from the 1,186-page document.
“Today’s era must not be of war,” it said, echoing what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a face-to-face meeting in September.
Media and officials in the country …