The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), is urging local banks to persuade their clients to settle trade between the UAE and India in dirhams (AED) or Indian rupees (INR) to minimise reliance on US dollars, as reported by Reuters. According to sources, the move is part of the RBI’s goal of encouraging settlement in local currencies with nations with whom India has a trade deficit, with the result that the rupee’s global reach would improve.
Human Rights Watch said on Monday that Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, including women and children, who attempted to enter the kingdom along its mountainous border with Yemen. According to the rights group’s 73-page report, Saudi guards used explosives to kill several migrants and shot at others from close range.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia would lose the ongoing war in his nation, only one day after Denmark and the Netherlands committed to providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Zelensky addressed a large outdoor gathering in Copenhagen, saying, “Today, we are confident that Russia will lose this war.”
Twenty-three people were killed and 12 wounded in an attack on a village in central Mali on Sunday. The attack occurred in the Bandiagara region, where unidentified men set fire to several homes in the village of Yarou.
India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to review their free trade pact by 2025 at the 20th Asean-India Economic Ministers’ Meeting in Indonesia. Both sides will seek to fix the ‘asymmetries’ in the Asean-India Trade in Goods Agreement (AITIGA), which was signed in 2009.
Thailand’s fugitive former premier, Thaksin Shinawatra, returned to the country on Tuesday after 17 years in exile. Police said the former leader would be arrested and taken directly to the Supreme Court for a hearing before being transferred to a prison. Thaksin fled Thailand in 2008 to avoid being jailed for abuse of power, a charge he has vehemently refuted.
An Air Koryo passenger flight from Pyongyang landed in Beijing on Tuesday, according to flight tracking app Flight Master. This marks the first commercial flight outside North Korea since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not immediately clear who was on the flight.
On Tuesday, Japan announced it would begin releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on August 24. The decision has drawn strong criticism from China.
The UN Security Council on Monday condemned illegal construction by Turkish Cypriots inside the buffer zone dividing Cyprus, and their assault on UN peacekeepers, calling the move a violation of the status quo. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the Council’s statement “unacceptable” and accused the peacekeepers of bias against ethnic Turks. The latest round of tensions erupted in the disputed region last week after Turkish Cypriots attacked peacekeepers for preventing the construction of a road that would extend into the neutral buffer zone.