Georgia's parliament passes controversial "foreign agent" law amid protests, widespread criticism
CBSN
Georgia's parliament has passed a law that critics see as a threat to media freedom and the country's aspirations to join the European Union – and a step toward the kind of draconian laws that have quashed political dissent in neighboring Russia.
In backing the so-called "foreign agent" law, Georgia's parliamentarians defied weeks of large demonstrations in the capital against the legislation, which also saw thousands of people vent their anger at Russia.
Tens of thousands of protesters shut down a major intersection in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Tuesday, Reuters reported, and protests again on Wednesday gathered outside the parliament.
An Israeli attack on Iran damaged facilities at a secretive military base southeast of the Iranian capital that experts in the past have linked to Tehran's onetime nuclear weapons program and at another base tied to its ballistic missile program, satellite photos analyzed Sunday by The Associated Press show.
A Northern Ireland man was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 20 years in prison after being found guilty by a U.K. court in what has been described as the biggest criminal "catfishing" case in the country. Alex McCartney, 26, had pleaded guilty earlier this year to a charge of manslaughter in a Northern Ireland court after a young American girl who was among the thousands of alleged victims he blackmailed online died by suicide.
Kazan, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday presided at the closing session of a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West's "perverse methods." The three-day summit in the city of Kazan covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.
Gisele Pelicot, the woman at the center of the mass-rape trial that's shocked her own country of France and the world, told her husband in court on Wednesday that she still "did not understand why" he had drugged and raped her for nearly a decade, along with dozens of other men he invited into their home.