Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist.

I'm Orret Ogunby.

And I'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Biryani, Jalof, special fried, you name it.

Rice dishes make up a key part of many cultures' cuisine,

but environmental changes and soaring demand are threatening the production of rice

and the lives of the farmers who grow it.

And the death of a panda in Tennessee has drawn a lot of attention,

particularly from Chinese nationalists who claim it was a result of anti-China sentiment in America.

We look into the long-running role of pandas as furry soft power.

But first...

Donald Trump was a president of many firsts,

and at the end of last month he chalked up another one when he became the first president to be indicted.

Yesterday the details of that indictment were at last unsealed,

and Mr. Trump was back as a ringmaster of a media circus that he's always relished.

On Monday Donald Trump flew from his home in Palm Beach from Mar-a-Lago to New York,

and he stayed overnight at Trump Tower.

John Fasmin is...well, you guys know who John Fasmin is.

And then on Tuesday afternoon, a motorcade delivered him to the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building,

where he went into the district attorney's office, and he was fingerprinted,

he was given a number like every other criminal defendant in the New York court system,

...