MINSK (RT) – Washington is using the migrant crisis to stage a conflict with Belarus, the country’s leader Alexander Lukashenko declared, in his latest tirade against the West, as the region’s border humanitarian crisis drags on. The veteran politician has alleged that the U.S., “with the hands of the Poles, the Baltic states and the Ukrainians”, wants to start a conflict to “create a mess somewhere around here again”, RT reported. America “will stand by and supply weapons so that we kill each other and the economy sinks. They will come back with the dollar, which they are printing now, to ‘help’ us,” the Belarusian leader claimed. Lukashenko went on to denounce NATO’s potential role in the refugee crisis on the border between his country and the EU as nothing more than a provocation for a full-blown assault. “Europe doesn’t want war. Who needs this war? The Americans,” he noted. Speaking later from a migrant camp near the border, Lukashenko said that Poland was blocking a deal to allow people to be resettled in Germany, saying that “Europe will choke” unless a solution is found.

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ALGIERS (AFP) – Algerians vote on Saturday in local elections seen as key in President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s push to turn the page on the two-decade rule of late president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. But despite official campaigns urging Algerians to “make their mark,” the vote for municipal and provincial councils has sparked little public interest. Observers are predicting a low turnout, as with a string of poorly attended votes since the Hirak pro-democracy protest movement that drove Bouteflika from power in April 2019. The North African country’s rulers are trying to “impose their will despite the embarrassing results of previous elections,” said analyst Mohamed Hennad. But he said voters saw the exercise as producing “an electoral mandate stripped of any political content.” Saturday’s poll will be the third vote in the country under Tebboune, who has vowed to reform state institutions inherited from Bouteflika, who died in September at the age of 84. Algeria’s local assemblies elect two-thirds of members of the national parliament’s upper house, with the president appointing the remainder. But while the national electoral board ANIE says more than 15,000 candidates are in the running, campaigning has been muted.

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OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) – Police fired tear gas in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, on Saturday during a demonstration against the government’s failure to stop a wave of violence by militants. Opponents of President Roch Kaboré called for renewed protests in response to a recent surge of attacks in Burkina Faso, including one by Al-Qaeda-linked militants that killed dozens of military police officers and four civilians. Anti-riot police on Saturday fired tear gas to prevent the demonstrators from gathering for the rally in a square in the center of Ouagadougou, where substantial police and security forces had been deployed and all shops closed. One of the protesters, 28-year-old Fabrice Sawadogo, said that “after seven years of failure to prevent the terrorist attacks... it is time to ask the government to go.” The “incompetent” administration “has to admit it has failed,” he said. Security officers launched tear gas canisters to disperse about 100 protesters who were trying to march toward downtown Ouagadougou. After retreating to side streets, the protesters began erecting barricades and burning tires and trash cans. The public’s angry response to the latest attacks has unnerved the authorities, who cut mobile internet access a week ago and refused to authorize Saturday’s demonstration.

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TOKYO (Dispatches) – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has vowed to bolster the country’s military capabilities, saying he will consider ‘’all options’’ to counter what he claims to be threats from China and North Korea. In an address to hundreds of Japanese Ground Force members on Saturday, the newly-elected premier described the security situation around Japan as “rapidly changing” and said, “The reality is severer than ever” with North Korea’s ballistic missiles tests and China’s military activity in the region. “The security environment surrounding Japan has been rapidly changing at an unprecedented speed. Things that used to happen only in science-fiction novels are today’s reality,” Kishida said. “I will consider all options, including possessing so-called enemy base strike capability, to pursue strengthening of defense power that is necessary.” The possibility of possessing so-called enemy base strike capability has been a divisive issue in the country, with critics saying it breaches Japan’s war-renouncing Constitution. Kishida also announced plans for upgrading surface to air missile launchers on islands at the edge of the East China Sea and Patriot PAC-3 missile batteries elsewhere that are the last line of defense against any incoming North Korean missiles.

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CAIRO (Al Jazeera) – Sudan’s former minister of cabinet affairs Khalid Omer Yousif was released from detention along with others less than a day after beginning a hunger strike, the country’s information ministry said in a statement early on Saturday.
An army takeover on Oct. 25 halted a power sharing deal between the military and civilians from the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) alliance, and a number of ministers and top civilian officials were detained. Also released on Saturday were former Khartoum State governor Ayman Nimir and anti-corruption taskforce member Maher Abouljokh. Several high profile politicians remain in custody. Yousif and others had began the hunger strike, according to the Sudanese Congress Party, to protest their continued detention despite the signing of a deal between military leaders and civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok which provided for the release of all civilian detainees. Several other prominent civilian politicians and activists had been released on Monday and Friday.