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Summary Leading opposition figures in jail, exile or under charge Lawsuit would ban three opposition parties Ruling party says it is shielding Georgia from figures who would foment war TBILISI, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Just over a year ago, a diverse array of opposition coalitions jockeyed for votes in Georgia’s parliament, with four of them winning seats. Today, of their eight main leaders, all but one are in jail, in exile or facing criminal charges. The ruling party aims to ban the three main opposition groups outright.The slide into one-party rule has shocked many in the tiny South Caucasus country...

The potential for a military clash between Turkey and Israel is growing. There are several colliding points, and each one of them has the potential to become a full-scale war, despite mechanisms designed to avoid conflict. The most obvious is the Syrian front. Reports indicate that Turkey plans to help Syria’s transitional government develop a military force of approximately 200,000 personnel (approximately 10–15 divisions). Turkey has assumed the role of protector of Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa (al-Jolani, his nom de guerre). Israel, for its part, has assumed the role of protector of the Druze minority in southwestern Syria, an area...

According to a Georgia Today report, a chainmail shirt and a helmet dated to the ninth or tenth century a.d. have been unearthed at the site of a medieval palace within Rustavi Fortress. Located in southeastern Georgia, the fortress was constructed in the fourth or fifth century A.D., and destroyed during the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The helmet is thought to be the only combat helmet from the period to be discovered in the South Caucasus. To read about another discovery from Georgia, go to "Around the World: Georgia."

Georgian police used pepper spray and water cannon to force protesters away from the presidential palace in the capital Tbilisi on Saturday, amid a large demonstration on the day of municipal elections, a Reuters witness said. A group of protesters attempted to force entry to the presidential palace, after some opposition figures called for a "peaceful revolution" against the incumbent Georgian Dream party, which they accuse of being pro-Russian and authoritarian. The country's pro-Western opposition has been staging protests since last year, when Georgian Dream won an election that its critics say was fraudulent.

In a fascinating twist of ancient chemistry, copper-smelting artisans may have stumbled upon a technique that would eventually lead to the intentional extraction of iron from ore, a discovery that was both accidental and revolutionary.A fresh analysis of slag, ores, and furnace residues from the 3,000-year-old site of Kvemo Bolnisi, Georgia, is rewriting the story of how humankind first learned to make iron.A team of researchers from Cranfield University in England, reexamining old finds from Kvemo Bolnisi using modern techniques, suggests that what had once been labeled an early iron-smelting site was actually a copper workshop that utilized iron oxides...

Ca' Foscari University of Venice announced that when an international team of researchers first began to analyze 34,000-year-old stone tools found in the Dzudzuana Cave in the foothills of Georgia's Caucasus, they were just hoping to learn something about how they were used. However, as they peered closer, they uncovered incredible evidence of human behavior and complexity dating back tens of thousands of years. The pebble grinding tools contained traces of plant matter and indigotin, the deep blue compound also known as indigo. The results were stunning -- not only was this the first time that indigo has been found...

I’m old enough to remember when Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize for — I give up. I can’t think of anything that Obama did to earn it just eight months into his presidency. For what it’s worth, the Nobel Peace Prize website says that the committee gave him the prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”In his second term, President Donald Trump has gotten real results in his efforts to bring peace to areas of the globe that desperately need it. And he’s done it in less time than it took for...

Russian state propaganda has sharply intensified its bellicose rhetoric toward Azerbaijan amid reports of a possible lifting of Baku’s arms supply moratorium to Ukraine. A new “special military operation” could begin in the South Caucasus, propagandist Vladimir Solovyov stated on the program “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov” on the Russia-1 channel. According to him, NATO bases could appear in the Caspian Sea region, which he called “a very big problem.” With this, he was unmistakably alluding to Azerbaijan, which is close to Türkiye, a member of the North Atlantic Alliance. “And this is so dangerous that, from a geopolitical perspective, the...

In 1995, former Iranian president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani made a little-noticed trip to the neighboring country of Georgia. He spent several hours in Tbilisi, the capital, and then instead of returning to Iran, he made a secret side trip to the breakaway region of Adjara to visit President Aslan Abashidze. The purpose of the detour was not to visit the balmy, palm-treed tourist sea port resort of Batumi on the Black Sea. His purpose was more sinister. The Iranian president was looking for black market sources of chemicals to enrich uranium for building a nuclear bomb. He found a willing...

...The Turkish foreign ministry called on both parties to "exercise common sense and refrain from unilateral actions."They added, "We expect that measures will be taken to reduce tensions in the region as soon as possible and that the necessary mechanisms, including in the field of counter-terrorism, will be put in place to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. We also support Pakistan's call for an investigation into the 22 April terrorist attack."...Azerbaijan also issued a statement soon after the attack, condemning violence against Pakistan.In their statement they said, "The Republic of Azerbaijan expresses its concern over the further escalation of...

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

Hundreds of women were kept as slaves on a human egg farm in Georgia where they were fed hormones and treated like cattle. Their horrifying ordeal has been revealed by three Thai women who were freed from the clutches of the 'egg mafia' on January 30 after being exploited for half a year, tabloid Bild reports. The woman said they were held captive on a 'human farm' in the eastern European country of Georgia by a criminal organisation led by Chinese criminals, who sold their eggs on the black market. They were lured in by a job offer on Facebook,...

<p>The good news for the people of former Soviet Georgia is that their little Caucasus republic has advanced 160 years in political development in only a decade. The bad news is they still live in a violent, complex neighborhood, cursed with national borders that were expressly designed not to work.</p>

Scientists have uncovered evidence suggesting that hominins, the ancient relatives of modern humans, were present in Europe at least 1.95 million years ago. This finding, from the Grăunceanu site in Romania’s Olteț River Valley, represents the earliest-known trace of hominin activity on the continent, predating prior European hominin fossils by more than half a million years. The discovery, recently published in Nature Communications, hinges on meticulously analyzed cut-marked animal bones unearthed in a fossil-rich region historically overlooked in discussions of early human migration. According to researchers, these cut marks were made with tools, indicating that hominins were actively butchering animals...

Bashplemi Lake tablet. (Shengalia et al., Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology, 2024) A few years ago, late in the fall of 2021, locals fishing Georgia's Bashplemi Lake in the municipality of Dmanisi came across a long-forgotten piece of history – a small stone tablet inscribed with dozens of mysterious symbols. Now a team of archaeologists from across Georgia has confirmed the impressions represent samples of a script that has never been documented, raising questions on the spread and preservation of writing across the transcontinental region. Roughly the size of an iPad, the basalt tablet features just 39 different characters...

Roughly 100 world leaders are traveling to Baku, Azerbaijan, for the U.N. Climate Change Conference — even as scores are skipping the annual talks, known this year as COP29. In a Tuesday address before world leaders speak at the summit, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres described the previous year as a “master class in climate destruction,” adding, “The sound you hear is the ticking clock.” He also expressed optimism about the transition to clean energy, saying that “no group, no business, and no government” can stop it. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg chose to skip the conference: Speaking Monday at a...

During the Roman period, Apsaros was an important port and garrison on the Colchis coast—a term that refers to a historical region on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, roughly corresponding to what is now western Georgia—Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski said. Apsaros, constructed around 2,000 years ago, was of particular importance in the time of the Roman emperors Trajan (who ruled from A.D. 98-117) and Hadrian (who ruled from A.D. 117-138).The votive plaque found during the 2024 excavation season at the site, which ran from mid-May to the end of July, is essentially a thin gold plate. It features a Greek inscription...

By the end of June, more than 10,000 foreign workers from India will be employed in Israel, and at the same time, the process of absorbing about 10,000 foreign workers from other countries such as Georgia, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, and more will begin. The arrival of foreign workers will save the construction industry, which is currently in collapse, and most of the construction sites are closed. The trend is to bring about 40,000 more workers to Israel to complete a quota of 65,000 foreign workers because Palestinian workers who worked in the construction industry no longer come to work in...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 13 that in the coming weeks, Azerbaijan could invade Armenia. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has threatened Armenia with war multiple times.Meanwhile, pro-Erdogan media outlets in Turkey are also playing their war drums against Armenians. The headline news in the pro-Erdogan newspaper Türkiye on October 3 refers to Armenians in Armenia’s Syunik (Zangezur) province as “snakes”, “gangs” and “terrorists”. One headline reads: “The new nest of the snake is Zangezur”. It claims that the Armenians displaced from Artsakh (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh) are receiving military training in “terror camps in Zangezur”.When the...

Taking its fears of an imminent coup to the next level, the Georgian government is now accusing the United States of sponsoring a DIY revolution workshop in Tbilisi.USAID, the international aid arm of the US government, and its Serbia-based partner organization that organized the workshop have dismissed the claim as false and absurd. The US Embassy in Tbilisi assailed the Georgian claims, saying they “fundamentally mischaracterize” the goals of US assistance to the country. Domestic critics contend that the government’s accusations are politically motivated, intended to kneecap opposition elements as Georgia gears up for parliamentary elections in 2024.