Новости за 17.05.2024

Orthodox Christian leaders and members of the ruling Georgian Dream party took part in a march marking Family Purity Day on May 17. The new holiday was created in 2014 in reaction to demonstrations marking the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia. Georgian LGBT activists say they no longer mark that event out of fears for their safety.

An armed attack on a group of foreign tourists in Bamiyan Province in central Afghanistan on May 17 left several dead, a Taliban security source told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi.

Villagers in the Armenian village of Kirants on the border with Azerbaijan have expressed anger after a meeting with the local provincial governor of Tavush was held behind closed doors. Many locals are angry with a border demarcation deal under which four abandoned villages, pasture, and road sections will return to Azerbaijani control.

Uzbekistan's Foreign Labor Migration Agency on May 17 called on the Central Asian nation's citizens who may have broken laws in Russia to avoid travel to neighboring Kazakhstan, citing Kazakh-Russian agreements on joint efforts against crime.

At least one Taliban border guard and one Pakistani soldier have been killed and several more injured in the latest border clash between them.

North Macedonia's new president, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, refused to say the word "North" in the country’s name when she was sworn in. She says she has the right to do so, but this has sparked an angry reaction from Greece.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has characterized her option to forestall the "foreign agent" law's implementation as a "veto." But that's not exactly what the constitution allows in the current high-stakes legislative battle.

The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said on May 17 that four "leaders" of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group and several of the banned organization's members have been apprehended in Bishkek and other locations inside the Central Asian nation.

Over 7,000 Iranians, including convicts and some with ties to the state, own what experts estimate to be billions of dollars of property in Dubai, according to a report by the Netherlands-based outlet Radio Zamaneh.

Authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka on May 17 visited Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region, known as Qarabag Province in Azeri, for the first time since Baku regained full control over the region last year following decades of ethnic Armenian control.

Many ex-Afghan officials and U.S. contractors, some of them members of the new Afghan political elite, are accused of skimming U.S. reconstruction funds.

Yulia Alyoshina, the first Russian transgender politician, announced on May 16 that she had decided to change gender again and return to using her former name, Roman.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico remains in intensive care in serious condition and will stay in a hospital in the central city of Banksa Bystrica at least until May 20 before he may be moved to Bratislava.

A Moscow court on May 17 issued an arrest warrant for Zalina Marshenkulova, an activist journalist in exile, on a charge of justifying terrorism.

The European Union has joined the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency in urging Iran to abandon suggestions that it might develop nuclear weapons.

Russian physicist Anatoly Maslov reiterated his innocence in his final statement on May 17 at his treason trial before the court renders its verdict.

Senior Georgian Orthodox clerics and conservative religious groups on May 17 are marking a holiday known as Family Purity Day with a march along Tbilisi's Rustaveli Avenue, the scene of weeks of protests against a divisive "foreign agent" bill passed by parliament earlier this week.

Mariam Pirashvili is a unique figure in Tbilisi who moves among demonstrators opposed to Georgia's "foreign agent" bill, which critics say could curtail civil liberties. Wearing a Georgian flag, she passes around a garbage bag, collecting litter. Pirashvili says the rallies are about protesting and "tidying up our country."

Moldovan lawmakers have set October 20 as the date for both a presidential election and a referendum on the country joining the European Union.

The United States hopes that by the upcoming NATO summit in Washington, nearly all 32 alliance members will meet the pledge made 10 years ago to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith.