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SC hearing of review petition on NEET JEE exam dates; India, Russia to hold naval exercise in Andaman sea; Vodafone Idea board meet to consider fund raising; US Open third round; UEFA Nations League: Italy vs Bosnia and Herzegovina; Netherlands vs Poland (12:15 am, Friday)

Border tense

• China has moved additional forces opposite the Chushul sector in eastern Ladakh after a large number of well-armed Indian troops occupied the dominating heights from Thakung to Reqin La. A senior officer told the Times of India the situation is tense all along the LAC; “it’s like a tinderbox in eastern Ladakh”. Thousands of rival troops, tanks, armoured vehicles and howitzers are ranged against each other.
• Army chief General M M Naravane visited the Chushul sector on Thursday. He will also visit other forward areas to the north in the region on Friday before returning to New Delhi. Underlining the heightened tensions along the 3,488-km Line of Actual Control (LAC), IAF chief Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria visited frontline airbases in the eastern sector, including Hashimara in sub-Himalayan West Bengal.

But talks on

• Rival brigadiers met at the Chushul-Moldo border for the fourth day running on Thursday. The meeting, however, was inconclusive.
• The ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the way forward was to hold negotiations “sincerely”. “Now the way ahead is negotiations, both through the diplomatic and military channels. The Indian side is firmly committed to resolving all outstanding issues through peaceful dialogue,” MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said.
• Foreign minister S Jaishankar confirmed he would meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Moscow on September 10 at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting. The solution to the crisis “has to be found in the domain of diplomacy,” Jaishankar said.
• Defence minister Rajnath Singh was already in Moscow for the SCO summit, but he refrained from committing himself to a meeting sought by his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe. Singh cited his “tight schedule”, TOI reports.

• Facebook on Thursday banned Telangana BJP MLA T Raja Singh from its platform as well as Instagram for violating its policy on hate speech and promotion of violence. This comes a day after Facebook India chief Ajit Mohan appeared before a parliamentary standing committee, a fractious meeting where panel chairman Shashi Tharoor and others questioned the alleged bias in implementing hate-speech rules, while the BJP members in the panel spoke of the supposed political affiliation of Mohan.
• Raja Singh was banned for “violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” Facebook said. Last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook India’s public policy executive, Ankhi Das, had opposed taking down his posts or banning his profile for repeated violations, saying it “would damage the company’s business prospects in the country”. Raja’s profile had posted Rohingya “should be shot” and called Muslims “traitors”. Singh Thursday claimed he did not have an FB account since April 2019.
• Facebook on Thursday said it was “non-partisan” in response to the letters Congress had sent CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling an inquiry into the alleged bias in the public policy team. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had written another letter over “concerted efforts” by the platform to reduce the reach of people of “right-of-centre ideology”.

The Twitter account of PM Narendra Modi’s personal website (@narendramodi_in) was hacked to publish tweets seeking donations to the PM National Relief Fund through cryptocurrency. This was similar to the recent Twitter hacking that targeted US presidential candidate Joe Biden, among others; US prosecutors recently charged three in the case.

• In every country among the top 20 in terms of cases, barring India, the daily addition is now well below the peak value — the day when they reported maximum cases. The three-day average of fresh cases reported by India on Thursday was 77,387 — that’s 93.7% of the peak of 83,065 cases reported on the day.
• In no other country among the top 20 was this even 80%. Of the 210 countries and territories for which the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control compiles daily Covid data, the ratio was the highest for India.
• All the countries that have reported over 500,000 cases have significantly reduced cases in recent times. For instance, the average of cases in the past three days in the US was less than half the country’s peak cases. In Brazil, the current level is less than two-thirds of the peak.

Thursday’s count:

• Cases: 83,065, new high & count above 80,000 for 3rd straight day; Overall: 3,928,110
• Deaths: 1,088, second highest so far; Overall: 68,501
• Recoveries: 3 million+
• Active cases: 830,000+

• Road alert: In the wake of instances of Delhi Police stopping and prosecuting those who were found not wearing a mask even when they were driving a car alone, the health ministry has clarified that it is not mandatory for a lone driver to wear a mask.

• Clue 1: The 70-year-old was embroiled in a scandal involving four London apartments on the second-most expensive road on the ‘Monopoly’ gameboard — Park Lane.
• Clue 2: His family’s influential Ittefaq Group was an industrial conglomerate with interests in sugar, steel, and textiles.
• Clue 3: The Lahore-born politician is also the country’s longest-serving PM.

Scroll below for answer

Nawaz Sharif. A Pakistani court on Thursday directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to execute a non-bailable arrest warrant against the former PM in a 34-year land allotment case, according to media reports. Sharif has been in London since November last year after the Lahore High Court granted him permission to go abroad for four weeks for treating a heart disease and an immune system disorder.