Briefly

BELARUS

Western powers told not to interfere

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday that Western leaders should focus on their own problems rather than the political situation in Belarus."They are having a great deal of problems at home. Do not point at Belarus in order to draw attention away from the issues in France, the United States, Germany and so on," he said. Belarus is engulfed in mass protests after Lukashenko won a sixth term during the Aug 9 elections, with the opposition refusing to recognize the results. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday there was no need for outside mediation over the unrest in Belarus and accused foreign powers of using the crisis to interfere in Belarus, Russia's TASS and Interfax news agencies reported."Nobody hides that it is all about geopolitics, about the struggle for the post-Soviet space," Lavrov said.

UNITED STATES

Apple beats rivals to $2 trillion market value

Apple hit a market capitalization of $2 trillion on Wednesday to become the first publicly traded US company to reach the milestone. The iPhone maker broke the barrier in Wednesday's early stock market trading when its shares surpassed $467.77. Apple reached a market capitalization $1 trillion market cap on Aug 2,2018. Other tech giants, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, have also reached the $1 trillion mark. Apple isn't the first company in the world to reach a market value of $2 trillion. That honor belongs to energy producer Saudi Aramco, which attained it in December 2019. Saudi Aramco now trails Apple with a market value of about $1.8 trillion.

WEST AFRICA

Regional bloc suspends Mali's membership

The Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, said it had suspended Mali from the regional bloc following the seizure of power by military putschists and forced detention of senior officials, including the country's president and prime minister. In a statement on Wednesday, the ECOWAS Commission demanded the reinstatement of constitutional order in Mali. The West African bloc said it utterly condemns the overthrowing of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's democratically elected government by military putschists, adding it will categorically deny any kind of legitimacy to the rebels. The regional bloc also requested the immediate activation of the ECOWAS standby force while demanding the immediate implementation of sanctions against all mutinous soldiers and their partners.

Xinhua - Agencies