Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan remarked that the India-US joint statement issued on the Indian PM Narendra Modi’s State Visit reduced Pakistan to having the “mere role of inciting terrorism in India across the border and nothing more.” Khan blamed the government for making Pakistan irrelevant at the international level and said there is no adequate mention of human rights violations in Kashmir or “the horrific treatment meted out to minorities, especially Muslims, in India.”
Nepal’s anti-graft body has launched a probe into reports that 10 kg of gold was missing from an ornament weighing 100 kg inside the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu. The Commission for Investigation of Abuse and Authority (CIAA) started an investigation after it was reported that gold was missing from the new gold ornament ‘Jalhari’ installed on the Shiva Linga inside the temple last year. The temple has been shut down for investigation.
Former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif has been acquitted by a Pakistani court in a long-standing case dating back 37 years. The case involved allegations of Sharif transferring 6.75 acres of “precious state land” to Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman, the owner of the Jang/Geo media group, as a “bribe” during Sharif's tenure as chief minister of Punjab. Rehman had previously been acquitted in the same case. The court’s decision comes shortly after the federal government, led by PM Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz’s younger brother, made significant amendments to laws that lifted the lifelong ban on politicians. This ban was imposed on Nawaz Sharif in 2018 following a Supreme Court ruling in the Panama Papers case, rendering him ineligible for future public office.
On Sunday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that China supports Russia’s efforts to maintain national stability, a day after an aborted mutiny by heavily armed mercenaries of the Wagner Group. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in Beijing to discuss Sino-Russian ties and “international and regional issues of common concern.” China considers Russia’s recent escalation of tensions as related to “internal affairs” and expressed its support for Russia in safeguarding its internal stability.
US President Joe Biden’s administration informed Israel that it was reinstituting a ban that forbids US taxpayer assistance from being utilised in any research and development or scientific cooperation initiatives undertaken in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to a State Department spokesperson, the department recently “circulated foreign policy guidance to relevant agencies advising that engaging in bilateral scientific and technological cooperation with Israel” in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights “is inconsistent with US foreign policy.”
About 120,000 workers and students in North Korea held mass rallies in Pyongyang on Sunday, shouting slogans vowing a “war of revenge” to destroy the US as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of the Korean War.
Japan has lodged a protest against Russia after the latter declared 3 September as a day of victory over “militaristic Japan” in World War II. Japan said that the “extremely regrettable” move could “stir anti-Japanese sentiment among the Russian people,” and “also lead to anti-Russian sentiment among the Japanese people.”