“President Trump left Beijing on board Air Force One, concluding a summit in which he worked to gloss over his differences with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but which yielded few concrete changes to the two superpowers’ shaky relationship,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

New York Times: “The Trump-Xi summit, the first U.S. presidential visit to China in nearly a decade, was a test of whether the détente between the two nations would continue. It was heavy on public praise and pleasantries. At a lavish state banquet on Thursday evening, Mr. Trump invited Mr. Xi to visit the White House in September.”

“The U.S. is taking steps to indict Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba and brother of Fidel, in connection with the downing of planes 30 years ago,” CBS News reports. 

“The potential indictment — which would need to be approved by a grand jury — is expected to focus on Cuba’s deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.”

“John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, traveled to Cuba on Thursday, the Cuban government announced,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Ratcliffe is the highest-ranking official to visit Cuba and the first since the administration began intensifying its pressure campaign against the Communist government.”

New York Times: “The senior U.S. officer overseeing combat operations in Iran told the Senate on Thursday that the military had identified only one potential incident in which Iranian civilians were mistakenly killed out of about 13,600 U.S. airstrikes, a statement that human rights groups and some lawmakers said was not remotely credible.”

New York Times: “For President Trump, the first day of his visit to Beijing was all about the personal relationship between him and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.”

Said Trump: “You’re a great leader. I say it to everybody.”

“Mr. Xi, unsurprisingly, spent little time on flattery. Once the 21-gun salute and precision-marching by units of the People’s Liberation Army were finished, the disciplined Chinese leader plunged right away into setting boundaries for the two country’s relations.”