A senior official at Japan's Ministry of Finance said U.S. Treasury buybacks were not discussed at the bilateral meeting.

Israel Defense Forces said it struck multiple targets in the Gaza Strip to eliminate threats to its security forces. The IDF reported no casualties among its forces.

Westpac expects the RBNZ to raise rates 25bp to 2.75% on Sept 2, in line with market consensus. The bank says RBNZ policy projections will likely imply a year‑end rate near 3% and a peak around 3.3%. Westpac expects any signal on an October move to be framed as data‑dependent and judges that, unless the RBNZ departs from that wording, the meeting is unlikely to trigger large market moves. It assigns roughly a 10–15% probability to a hawkish surprise (eg, upward revision to neutral-rate assumptions or clearer signals of consecutive hikes in Oct and Dec) and a similar 10–15% probability to a dovish surprise implying a pause before December, leaving risks broadly symmetric around the baseline.