Following are the top foreign stories at 2000 hours

FGN28 2NDLD LANKA

Lankan Prez names elder brother Mahinda as PM after Wickremesinghe resigns Colombo: Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday named his elder brother and former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa as the new prime minister after incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe announced his resignation from the post following the election debacle.

FGN29 SINGAPORE-INDIA-MISSILES

India, Singapore ink LoI on use of Integrated Test Range at Chandipur Singapore: India and Singapore on Wednesday exchanged a Letter of Intent that could pave the way for the city-state to conduct live firing of missiles like the Spyder air defence system at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Odisha. By Gurdip Singh

FGN27 PAK-LD SHARIF

Nawaz Sharif meets medical experts for check-up in London London: Medical experts in London are assessing Nawaz Sharif’s health condition on Wednesday after which a decision would be taken on whether the former Pakistani Prime Minister needs to be flown to a hospital in the US, his close aides said. By Aditi Khanna

FGN25 CHINA-AFGHAN-TALIBAN

First Afghanistan-Taliban meeting to be hosted by China put-off Beijing: A rare meeting between the Afghan government and the Taliban to be hosted by China here on Thursday has been postponed, while Beijing maintained that it is in touch with all parties to hold the talks. By K J M Varma

FGN20 SINGAPORE-INDIA-RAJNATH

India, Singapore agree to hold trilateral maritime exercise annually Singapore: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held wide-ranging talks with his Singapore counterpart Ng Eng Hen here on Wednesday during which the two sides agreed to conduct the trilateral maritime exercise involving Singapore, India and Thailand annually from next year. By Gurdip Singh

FGN16 US-COMMISSION-2NDLD NRC

USCIRF expresses concern over NRC, says 1.9 million Assam residents may soon be deemed stateless Washington: Expressing concern over the NRC exercise in Assam, an independent, bipartisan US government entity has said that close to two million long-time residents of the Indian state may soon be deemed stateless and alleged that they are being stripped of their citizenship "without a fair, transparent, and well-regulated" process. By Lalit K Jha

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