PODGORICA, July 12 (Reuters) - A Montenegro court acquitted 13 people including pro-Russian politicians and two Russian intelligence officers on Friday in a retrial over an alleged 2016 election day plot to topple the government and kill then-prime minister Milo Djukanovic. The defendants were initially convicted in 2019 and given long prison terms over the alleged plot against the pro-Western Djukanovic, who led the small Adriatic state almost continuously as premier or president for three decades until 2023. But the verdict was overturned on appeal in 2021 and a retrial was ordered.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato's "groundless accusations" that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang's comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a "decisive enabler" of Russia through its "large-scale support for Russia's defence industrial base", in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

cross-posted from: https://fed.dyne.org/post/185621

The elections are approaching and the polls show that the conservative are trailing. Is it a surprise? The leader makes image of the party, how much can a rich guy of Indian origin connect with the British public? Not at all. There could still be the appeal to the other British indian, after all the statistics say that British of Asian descent make a big minority, but a big chunk of them originates from Pakistan and on them Sunak is likely to have the opposite effect. There is also the big share of British Indians who are concentrated in Urban areas where the rest of the population overwhemingly votes for labour, they won't bring any support. For what matters all the other voters Sunak is definitely not a popular character as was Boris Johnson when the Tories won the election.

What I say is quite obvious to the experts and the Tories have a team of very good analysts. Why are they sticking with Sunak? Because they want to lose, they could not carry out the work that must be done now. The privatisations of the Thatcher era have exhausted their purpose. Big finance extracted all the value they could squeeze from the privatised services and they now they hold big piles of debts. it's time to nationalise the losses.

It's not just Thames Water. The railways have been asking for money for quite some time. Wales and Scotland already nationalised the local networks. The rest of the work already started, now it's time to complete it.