MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Western secret services were involved in the incident with the detention of a group of Russians in Minsk in the summer of 2020, as Russia has stressed more than once, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Russia’s TV Channel One about the affair. “We expressed Russia’s position on the issue in different formats and at different levels when this affair was unfolding in Minsk,” Peskov stated while commenting on a CNN report on the incident. “We said at the time that the hand of overseas secret services was unmistakably at work there. This was clearly said back then. There is nothing new about this,” he added. Earlier, the CNN network quoted sources in the Ukrainian intelligence as saying that the United States’ CIA had assisted the Ukrainian authorities in an operation which resulted in the detention of 33 Russians in Belarus last year. In the meantime, an anonymous US official noted this was untrue and an attempt to put part of the blame for the failed operation on US secret services. At the end of July 2020, Belarus detained 33 Russian citizens on its territory. Minsk described them as employees of the Wagner private military company. All of them were eventually arrested. Kiev argued that 28 of the 33 had taken part in the armed conflict in Donbass and demanded their extradition.

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RABAT (AFP) – Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has named businessman Aziz Akhannouch to lead a new government after his National Rally of Independents (RNI) thrashed the long-ruling party in parliamentary elections. The king appointed Akhannouch “head of the government and tasked him with forming a new government”, following Wednesday’s polls, a statement from the palace said. The RNI won 102 of parliament’s 395 seats, trouncing the moderate Justice and Development Party (PJD), which had headed the governing coalition for a decade but took just 13 seats, according to results released by the interior ministry. Following his win, Akhannouch pledged to improve conditions for citizens of Morocco, where entrenched social inequalities have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

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SYDNEY (Dispatches) – Australian government documents have revealed that the country assisted the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in launching a coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende. On September 11, 1973, an American-orchestrated military coup against Allende’s government resulted in a long-time dictatorship led by the coup leader Augusto Pinochet. On the eve of the 48 anniversary of the coup, declassified documents published by the National Security Archive reveal that spies from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) assisted in the destabilization of Allende’s leftist government. At the request of the CIA, ASIS established a secret base in Santiago in the fall of 1970. Liberal Party Foreign Minister William (Billy) McMahon had reportedly approved the cooperation of ASIS agents with the CIA. The base operated for approximately 18 months and involved Australian agents and equipment alongside several Chilean s[pies recruited by the CIA in Santiago.

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The UN special envoy for Libya has warned that failure to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Dec. 24 could renew division and conflict and thwart efforts to unite the oil-rich North African nation after a decade of turmoil. Jan Kubis told the UN Security Council that “aborting the drive for elections will be for many a signal that violence is the only path to power in the country.” UN-sponsored peace talks brought about a cease-fire last October between rival governments in Libya’s east and west and installed an interim government that is expected to lead the country into December elections, but the Libyan parliament has failed to finalize a legal framework for voting to take place. Kubis said the House of Representatives adopted the presidential electoral law, and he was told it is in the process of finalizing the electoral law for parliamentary elections. He said the High Council of State, an executive institution that among other duties proposes electoral laws, complained that the presidential electoral law was adopted without consulting its members.

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LONDON (The Daily Mail) – The UK is facing “permanent” shortages of key food and drink produce on supermarket shelves, an industry leader has warned. Chief Executive of the Food and Drink Federation, Ian Wright, has warned that supply issues that have already hit supermarkets as well as takeaways and restaurants like McDonald’s are “going to get worse” as the market changes permanently after Brexit and COVID, The Daily Record reported. However, Wright stressed that “these shortages don’t mean you’re going to run out of food”, reports Yorkshire Live. But he did warn that incidents such as no bottled water being available in the entirety of Eastern England could become more common. He added, “The UK shopper could have previously expected just about every product they want to be on shelf or in the restaurant all the time.” “That’s over and I don’t think it’s coming back,” he said. It comes as the UK prepares to slap post-Brexit checks on imports from the EU in two stages from October 1 and January 1. The government is reportedly set to delay these checks - a move Wright claimed could be announced within hours.

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CAIRO/ABIDJAN (AP) – A Sudanese military plane crashed in the White Nile south of the capital, Khartoum, killing all onboard, authorities say. Authorities retrieved three bodies of officers, including a lieutenant colonel, the prime minister’s office said in a statement. Search efforts were still ongoing for others who were onboard when the plane crashed near Al-Shegilab on Wednesday, according to the statement. No further details were released, including how many people were onboard. The crash was the latest involving a military plane in Sudan, where aircraft crashes are common mostly due to poor aviation safety record. An Apache attack helicopter loaded with weapons and ammunition crashed in January, shortly after taking off from an airport on the eastern borders with Ethiopia. The three-person crew survived that crash.