Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: August 28, 2016 Edition

The 11th G20 summit is scheduled to be held on September 4-5, in the picturesque city of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, in China.

Islam Karimov is the granddaddy of Central Asian succession questions. At 78, the region’s oldest ruler has been the subject of almost annual health-scare rumors. Every two-week absence from public appearances in recent years–in 2015 and in 2013, for example–touched off a swirl of ill-health and even death rumors. Karimov is said to have heart and respiratory problems, but details are few and far between–the government never confirms them.

On August 28, however, Uzbek officials appeared to have done just that. A statement published in Gazeta, the official state newspaper, from the Cabinet of Ministers, said Karimov had been hospitalized and was “receiving medical treatment.” The statement did not say how long he’d stay in the hospital, only that it would “require a certain amount of time for medical assessment and treatment.”

More at: Balochistan and the Killing of Akbar Bugti: 10 Years Later

The SM-3 would supplement parallel missile defense efforts in South Korea. For instance, the United States is also reportedly looking to upgrade South Korea’s Patriot Advanced Capability-2 missile defense systems to the more advanced PAC-3 platforms. South Korea would become the third U.S. ally after Japan and Taiwan to field the PAC-3 system.

“Right now we’re focused on upgrading the Patriot system that we have here in Korea,” Eric Fanning, the U.S. secretary of the army, told Yonhap. “I have seen the potential for the upgrades,” Fanning reportedly added, strongly suggesting that a PAC-3 upgrade was forthcoming.

Earlier this summer, for the first time, a U.S. PAC-3 system was temporarily transferred from Kadena Air base in Okinawa, Japan, to Busan, South Korea.

North Korea’s deputy ambassador to London has become one of his country’s most high-profile defectors by fleeing to South Korea, adding to a growing list of defections by people held up by the regime for their loyalty.

Thae Yong-ho, Pyongyang’s No. 2 man at the U.K. embassy, is the most senior diplomat to ever claim refuge in the South, which is home to some 30,000 North Korean defectors.

Last week, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) held what state media called a “maritime confrontation drill” in the Sea of Japan. The drill involved a simulated skirmish between two Chinese naval task forces and involved multiple warships from the PLAN’s East China Sea Fleet.

Early Wednesday morning, North Korea launched a submarine-launched ballistic missile off its eastern coast, which then splashed down in international waters in the Sea of Japan. The SLBM launch comes shortly after the United States and South Korea began their annual late-summer Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercises and after South Korea staged its largest-ever life fire artillery drills near the border with North Korea.

On Friday, Reuters, citing U.S. government data, notes that “American civilian and military aid to Pakistan … is expected to total less than $1 billion in 2016.” If this pans out, 2016 would become the first year since 2007 when the United States gave less than $1 billion in foreign assistance to Islamabad. It would moreover represent a difference over more than $2.5 billion from the all-time-high in 2011 of $3.5 billion in U.S. foreign assistance.

The decline in U.S. assistance isn’t too surprising given recent trends in not only U.S. relations with Pakistan, but Washington’s thinking about the South Asian regional more broadly. Pakistan, though nominally an ally in the U.S. war on terror since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, has frustrated Washington with its refusal to pull back support for the Afghan Taliban and other militant groups in the area. As I discussed earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense decided to withhold a $300 million tranche of military reimbursement payments, citing Pakistan’s inadequate attention against the deadly Haqqani network terror group.

At the closing ceremony for the 2016 Rio Olympics, Brazil passed on all the glory and the responsibility of hosting the mega sports games to Japan – host of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

After Koike Yuriko, Tokyo’s newly-elected governor, accepted the Olympic flag from the head of the International Olympic Committee, a two-minute promotional video introduced Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario from the hit Nintendo franchise.