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.

WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) - A U.S. review found no evidence of human rights violations by Ukraine's Azov Brigade, paving the way for it to use American training and weapons, the State Department said on Tuesday, citing Russian disinformation aimed at discrediting the unit. U.S. law bars foreign security forces from U.S. military assistance if they have committed gross violations of human rights, but a review of the National Guard of Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade cleared them for U.S. funds, the department said in a statement.

"After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State," the department wrote, referring to the Leahy Law. The move allows the Biden administration to reverse a decade-old ban on allowing the Ukrainian military unit to use U.S. weapons, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the decision.

The U.S. has added three more companies to an entity list that bars imports from firms allegedly involved with Uyghur forced labor in China, according to a U.S. government notice posted online on Tuesday. The latest targets include shoe manufacturer Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co, electrolytic aluminum maker Xinjiang Shenhuo Coal and Electricity Co and food processor Shandong Meijia Group Co, also known as Rizhao Meijia Group, the notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

The announcement by the head of the Republicans was a historic break with his party’s policy. Top politicians on the right have called for him to step down, bringing the party to the brink of implosion.

Last fall, a coalition of rebel groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a rapid-fire offensive across Myanmar’s northern Shan state, quickly overrunning more than 100 military outposts and seizing several key towns along the country’s border with China.

This in itself was not unusual. Myanmar’s military government has faced insurgencies from ethnic and political militias for decades, and there’s been a major uptick in rebel activity since the 2021 coup, which brought the country’s current military junta to power, ending a short period of representative government. Over the past few months, the government has been rapidly losing ground to rebel forces in several regions of the country.

People who are poor, unemployed, homeless, immigrants, or exploited, as well as all those killed by past dictatorships and turned into rubbish by the "throwaway culture" of the present: the level of a society's civilisation is measured by the way they are treated, the Pope said.

Pope Francis reiterated the centrality of the vulnerable as well as the urgency of countering the triple "scourge" of corruption, abuse of power, and lawlessness—both in politics and in society—in his address on Wednesday with representatives of the DIALOP transversal dialogue project.

US climate envoy John Kerry will leave the administration later this winter and plans to help President Joe Biden’s election campaign, Kerry’s office said on Saturday.

Kerry, a US former secretary of state, informed his staff earlier on Saturday after speaking with Biden earlier this week, a spokesman for Kerry said.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has helped in the fight against rebels for more than two decades, will completely withdraw from the country by December.

“After 25 years of presence, MONUSCO will definitively leave the DRC no later than the end of 2024,” Bintou Keita, head of the mission known as MONUSCO said at a media briefing in the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Saturday.

A landslide in north-west Colombia has killed at least 23 people and injured around 30 more, local authorities say.

The road connecting the cities of Medellín and Quibdo had been closed by several landslides, so many people stopped their cars to take shelter in a house near the community of Carmen de Atrato, a local official said.

Another landslide then struck the road, burying them and some of the vehicles.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ukraine’s foreign affairs ministry says that four of its citizens were among those captured by al-Qaida-linked extremists in Somalia after their helicopter that was contracted by the United Nations made an emergency landing in territory controlled by the militants earlier this week.

Officials say the helicopter went down on Wednesday because of engine failure and was then attacked by al-Shabab militants who killed one person and abducted the other passengers.

“Our citizens were members of the helicopter crew of the United Nations Mission in Somalia that crashed,” said Oleh Nikolenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign affairs ministry said Friday in a Facebook post.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — France’s new foreign minister arrived in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Saturday to meet with his counterpart in a sign of support for Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale invasion nears its second anniversary.

Stéphane Séjourné noted that Ukraine was his first destination abroad since his nomination in a government reshuffle this week.

“Ukraine is and will remain France’s priority,” Séjourné said. “The defense of the fundamental principles of international law is being played out in Ukraine.”