Rahul Gandhi, the head of the Indian National Congress. Chinky Shukla for The New York Times

Rahul Gandhi, the scion of an Indian political dynasty, is trying to unseat the prime minister, Narendra Modi. He traveled across the country to try to pull his once-dominant party, the Indian National Congress, out of the political wilderness.

The Australia Letter: The wife and daughter of our Sydney bureau chief had been shopping just minutes before the recent mall stabbings. “Sometimes the news — and the worst news of all, involving death and tragedy — hits as close to home for us as it does for those we write about,” Damien Cave writes.