Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

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

There's a mystique to mercenaries, hired guns with serious grit and flexible ethics.

The UN has formally outlawed them, but these days the shadowy business is becoming more

accepted and in Africa there may be more of them than ever.

And history is littered with artists who died as poppers, their genius undiscovered.

It's happening less and less.

Artists are planning for their legacies early on and galleries are spending quite a lot

of their time and effort on the dead.

First up though.

High in the Himalayas is a mostly barren 2100 mile frontier between India and China.

The border has long been the site of scattered disputes, but on Monday things took a deadly

turn for the first time in 45 years.

At least 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops were killed in the region

of Ladakh.

The world's most populous countries and Asia's largest nuclear powers are now seeking

a way out of the situation while saving face.

This particular crisis erupted about a month ago, but the border dispute itself goes back

a half century.

Shashank Joshi is our defence editor.

India and China fought a border war in 1962 in which China defeated India.

And the most important thing to understand is there isn't really a border at all.

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