China

Social media videos showed crowds outside the 13th-century Najiaying Mosque in Nagu town on Saturday. Scuffles broke out between police and locals, who were hemmed in by hundreds of armed officers, BBC reported. Yunnan, an ethnically-diverse province in southern China, has a significant Muslim population.

The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 9.31 a.m. (Beijing Time), according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). About 10 minutes after the launch, Shenzhou-16 separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit.

During his address to industrialists and businessmen in Karachi, Prime Minister Sharif said that Pakistan has successfully met all the stringent conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), emphasising the government's commitment to completing the IMF programme, Samaa TV reported.

A top engineer of the Highways (PWD) department of Arunachal Pradesh government on Thursday said that the 1,811-km-long Trans Arunachal Highway is near completion, and the focus now is on the Frontier Highway and inter-connectivity corridor projects, which were recently approved by the Centre. He said that the Frontier Highway.

Islamabad is still contemplating ways to meet other repayment deadlines as the country has about $3.7 billion in overseas debt due this month and in June against its current foreign exchange reserves of just $4.3 billion, The News reported.

The Financial Times said that China's $1 trillion BRI infrastructure finance programme has been hit by spiralling bad loans, with more than $78 billion worth of borrowing turning sour over the past three years. China has also had to restructure a part of the loans. Clearly, the returns on the investments have not been as expected.

The State Department's 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom, released on Monday, documents allegations of "forced disappearances, arrests, physical abuse and prolonged detentions without trial of monks, nuns and other persons due to their religious practices" in Chinese-occupied Tibet last year.

As the featured speaker at Freedom House's annual Freedom Awards on Wednesday, Blinken stated: "We're also concerned by reports of the spread of mass DNA collection to Tibet as an additional form of control and surveillance over the Tibetan population."

When questioned about the government's approach to the budget in the event of a failure to reach a deal with the IMF, the minister said that the US and other Western powers should bear in mind that Pakistan's dependence on China would intensify, Dawn reported.

The latest known case saw officers raid multiple offices used by the business consulting firm Capvision in Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou and Shenzhen, The Guardian reported citing the Chinese state media as saying on Monday. It followed raids on Mintz Group in March, which saw five employees arrested and the branch shut down. US management consulting firm Bain & Company said its Shanghai office was visited by Chinese officers in April, and employees questioned.