Aug 23 (Reuters) - Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was believed dead after a private jet on which he was listed as a passenger crashed north of Moscow with no survivors.

Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded a mutiny against Russia's top army brass on June 23-24, which President Vladimir Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.

Others who have opposed Putin or his interests have also died under unclear circumstances or come close to death.

Here are some details about these mysterious incidents:

BEIJING, Aug 24 (APP): “These days, the volume of meat export is about to go up after China allowed Pakistani meat to be imported. The Chinese government has given some specifications and standard operating procedures for boiled and heat-treated meat,” said Umair Ahmad Khan, representative of Hardoi Livestock and Meat Company at Pakistan’s first International Food and Agriculture Exhibition recently held in Karachi.

The event attracted more than 400 delegations from 55 countries, while China has the largest delegation participating in the Expo, CEN reported on Thursday.

MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Russian civil aviation authority (Rosaviatsia) published on Thursday the names of all 10 passengers and crew members who were on board the Embraer plane that crashed in the Tver region, among them -- Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin.

Also on the list were Sergey Propustin, Yevgeny Makaryan, Alexander Totmin, Valery Chekalov and Nikolay Matyuseev. The names of three crew members were made public as well.

22 August 2023; MEMO: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said on Monday that it rejects any attempts to impose Israeli sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem and its sanctities. The OIC issued its statement on the 54th anniversary of the arson attack against Al-Aqsa Mosque, with which, it pointed out, Muslims have an “eternal connection”.

JOHANNESBURG /South Africa/, August 24. /TASS/: The West’s ambitions to defeat Moscow strategically have forced Russia to carry on with its work on the battlefield, rather than through diplomatic channels, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters on Thursday.

"They [Westerners] say: 'We must defeat Russia on the battlefield, inflict a strategic defeat on it on the battlefield.' Well, then we will do our work on the battlefield, rather than diplomatically," Lavrov said.

GENEVA, Aug 24 (NNN-KBC) — The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is grappling with a dire humanitarian crisis fuelled by ongoing political instability and armed conflicts, severely impacting the entire food supply, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said.

The situation is particularly alarming in the east, where malnutrition has taken hold among 4.4 million people, exacerbated by compromised health services, lack of clean water, and an uptick in gender-based violence, highlighted Peter Musoko, WFP Country Director, during a press briefing in Geneva.

SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The second attempt for reconnaissance satellite launch by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) failed on Thursday, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The flights of the first and second stages of the rocket were normal, but the launch failed due to an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight, the KCNA reported.

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 (Reuters) - The BRICS group of nations has decided to invite six countries - Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - to become new members of the bloc, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday.

The debate over expanding the BRICS bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has topped the agenda at a three-day summit in Johannesburg ending on Thursday.

JOHANNESBURG, August 24. /TASS/: The decision on BRICS enlargement, adopted at the summit, will give the association more strength, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at a news conference on the results of the 15th BRICS summit on Thursday.

"The enlargement will be a new starting point for the development of cooperation within BRICS and give the BRICS group more strength," Xi said. "I believe that as long as we work together, BRICS cooperation will have great prospects and the BRICS countries - a promising future."

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran sentenced seven men and a woman to prison after their convictions over allegedly aiding two men who were earlier executed for killing a paramilitary volunteer during the nationwide protests last year that followed Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody, state media reported Wednesday.

The sentences come just ahead of the one-year anniversary of Amini’s Sept. 16 death, as authorities have been rounding up activists and others in an apparent attempt to tamp down on any dissent ahead of it.

BEIRUT, Aug 24 (NNN-NNA) – A Lebanese Air Force helicopter crashed last night, in Hammana, a town in central Lebanon, about 26 kilometres east of Beirut, killing two army service members and injuring another, local TV channel LBCI reported.

LBCI said, the helicopter crashed while conducting a training flight.

The reason behind the incident is still unknown.

Aug 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) independent experts on Wednesday narrowly voted against recommending the approval of Medtronic's (MDT.N) blood pressure treatment device, saying risks tied to using it do not outweigh the benefits.

The same panel on Tuesday voted in favor of rival ReCor's device for use in a surgery called renal denervation in patients whose high blood pressure cannot be controlled by drugs.