Armenia plans to begin regular shipments of fresh fruit and vegetables to the United Arab Emirates in September. At the initial stage, export volumes could reach up to 40 tonnes a week. Armenia’s Economy Ministry announced this on August 27 following a meeting between Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan and Omar Mohammad Hamdan Abdullah Al Shamsi, the founder and CEO of UAE-based company Watermelon Ecosystem. The sides signed a memorandum of understanding following the meeting.

A preliminary examination of the body of Abkhaz blogger and activist Daur Buava, who was found dead in Tbilisi, revealed no signs of violence. The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs told the Georgian news agency IPN.

The Chechen Republic retained its first place among Russian regions with the lowest smoking prevalence. Moreover, the rate in the republic has decreased even further since the beginning of the year.

Boris Ebzeev, the former head of Karachay-Cherkessia, a Constitutional Court judge and a longtime member of Russia’s Central Election Commission, died this week at the age of 76. His political career spanned several different eras of Russian rule — from the establishment of constitutional justice in the early 1990s to Vladimir Putin’s political system of centralized power. The Russian-Chechen war holds a special place in his biography: in 1995, Ebzeev disagreed with the majority of the Constitutional Court, which ruled that the actions of the Russian authorities in Chechnya were lawful. Twenty-five years later, he was already a member of the Central Election Commission when Vladimir Putin was “resetting” the Constitution to allow himself to run for president again.