News brief: Big stories of the day

The BJP's Sushma Swaraj said Wednesday that she will not contest the 2019 elections.

"It is the party which decides, but I have made up my mind not to contest next elections," Swaraj said (watch video below).

News reports said Swaraj was stepping down for health reasons.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimates that Indian banks will have capacity to lend an extra 2.5 trillion rupees to 3.0 trillion rupees ($35 billion to $42 billion) over the next year after it decided to relax a deadline for lenders to boost capital ratios, two sources aware of discussions on the matter said on Tuesday.

Amid international uproar over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, some members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are agitating to prevent Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from becoming king, three sources close to the royal court said.

The IMF has demanded Pakistan provide all details of China's financial support to the cash-strapped country to avail a bailout package from it, according to media reports.

China believes the Maldives will make the "correct choice" to continue with a bilateral free trade deal, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday, after a Maldives politician said the tiny nation would pull out of the pact.

Mohamed Nasheed, the chief of the Maldivian Democratic Party, which leads the ruling federal alliance, told Reuters this week that it was a mistake to strike such a deal with the world's second biggest economy.