Category Archives: Georgia

British teenager Bella Culley to be held in Georgia until September drugs trial

Posted on by

Tbilisi judge rejects lawyer’s offer of plea agreement for release of pregnant Teesside teenager, now 19, at hearing

The British teenager Bella Culley is to be held in a Georgian prison for at least five more weeks as she awaits trial on drug-smuggling charges, a court in Tbilisi has ordered.

Culley, the great-granddaughter of a former Labour MP, was arrested on arrival at the city’s airport in May. Georgian prosecutors said she was carrying a large amount of illegal drugs in luggage she brought with her from Thailand.

Continue reading...

Family of man killed after his tent was crushed by a bulldozer sues Atlanta

Posted on by

Cornelius Taylor was killed during a sweep of a homeless encampment in city’s preparation for MLK weekend

The family of a man who was killed after city workers crushed his tent with a bulldozer during a sweep of a homeless encampment in Atlanta, Georgia, filed a lawsuit against the city on Friday over his death, calling it “tragic and preventable”.

The lawsuit filed by Cornelius Taylor’s sister and son alleges that city employees failed to look to see if there was anyone inside the tents in the encampment before using a bulldozer to clear it in the 16 January sweep. Taylor, 46, was inside one of the tents and was crushed by the truck when his tent was flattened, the lawsuit says.

Continue reading...

Spanish-language journalist still in Ice custody despite being granted bond

Posted on by

Mario Guevara, arrested in Georgia while covering a protest, still detained after Ice refused his family’s bond payment

A week after an immigration judge granted him bond, a Spanish-language journalist who was arrested while covering a protest last month remains in federal custody.

Police just outside Atlanta arrested Mario Guevara while he was covering a protest on 14 June, and he was turned over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) several days later. He was being held at an immigration detention center in Folkston – in south-east Georgia, near the Florida border – when an immigration judge last week granted him bond.

Continue reading...

Georgian man extradited to US to face charges over poison-candy terror plot

Posted on by

Officials say Michail Chkhikvishvili is the leader of a neo-Nazi group that promotes violence against minorities

The leader of an eastern European neo-Nazi group has been extradited to the United States from Moldova following his arrest last summer for allegedly instructing an undercover federal agent to dress as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to Jewish children and racial minorities, prosecutors said.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 21-year-old from the republic of Georgia, was arraigned on Friday before a federal judge in Brooklyn on multiple felonies, including soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence.

Continue reading...

‘From all sides’: universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home

Posted on by

As universities begin to push back on Trump’s policies, those in Republican-led states face multiple threats

Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with academic institutions.

As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government’s sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states.

Continue reading...

Toby Jones’s next campaign? Misinformation, and a huge immersive theatre show

Posted on by

Meera Syal also to star in London production reflecting producer’s experience of censorship in Georgia

Hidden from view inside a south London warehouse, a new underground movement will be fighting the international blight of misinformation this summer.

The huge immersive event – half theatrical show, half social campaign – is to involve some of Britain’s leading acting talent, including Toby Jones and Meera Syal, and has been put together by a theatre company led by a woman who learned about misinformation the hard way, at the Georgian television station Imedi.

Continue reading...

More US states report measles cases amid vaccine misinformation

Posted on by

Ohio, Maryland and Alabama among states to report new cases, with 378 confirmed in first few months of 2025

More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.

The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. Yet the parents of the six-year-old girl who died of measles in Texas have spoken against measles vaccination as misinformation continues to proliferate, including from figures such as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Continue reading...

Pentagon official condemned over tweet about Jewish victim lynched by Georgia mob

Posted on by

Kingsley Wilson cast doubt on circumstances of death of Leo Frank, in echo of white supremacist talking point

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has condemned a past social media post by the Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson that disputed the innocence of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman whom most historians agree was wrongfully convicted of killing a 13-year-old factory worker and lynched in 1915 during a wave of antisemitism in the US.

“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,” Wilson wrote on X in response to an August 2024 tweet by the ADL marking the 109th anniversary of Frank’s lynching. “The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you.”

Continue reading...

Two Georgia opposition leaders arrested at anti-government protest

Posted on by

Nika Melia and Gigi Ugulava detained as thousands try to block highway into Tbilisi amid unrest against ruling party

Georgian police arrested two opposition leaders during a street protest against the ruling party on Sunday, a move quickly denounced by the EU, which condemned Tbilisi’s “brutal crackdown”.

The Black Sea nation has been rocked by daily mass protests since the Georgian Dream party claimed victory in October parliamentary elections rejected by the opposition as falsified.

Continue reading...

Southwest Airlines pilot charged with DUI while preparing for takeoff

Posted on by

Officers said pilot had bloodshot eyes and smelled of alcohol before planned flight from Savannah to Chicago

Police at a Georgia airport arrested an airline pilot on a DUI charge as he was making pre-flight checks aboard a Southwest Airlines flight with bloodshot eyes and reeking of what smelled like alcohol, according to a police report.

Passengers had boarded the Southwest Airlines flight from Savannah to Chicago and were awaiting takeoff on Wednesday morning when police boarded the plane and took the pilot away in handcuffs.

Continue reading...

Voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams fined for illegal campaigning

Posted on by

New Georgia Project, fined $300,000 by state ethics body, admitted to 16 violations of election law, officials say

The New Georgia Project, a prominent voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams, has been fined $300,000 by the state ethics commission of Georgia for illegally campaigning for Abrams and other Democratic candidates during the 2018 election cycle.

The consent order ends a years-long investigation that the voting rights group had broken state campaign finance laws by raising and spending millions in support of candidate without proper registration and disclosure. The fine is the largest in Georgia history, according to the state ethics commission.

Continue reading...

Winter storm across US south disrupts travel and closes schools

Posted on by

Flight cancellations pile up and state officials warn of dangerous roads on Saturday with biting cold and wet snow

Flight cancellations piled up and state officials warned of continuing dangerous roads on Saturday in the wake of a winter storm that closed schools and disrupted travel across parts of the southern US.

A storm that brought biting cold and wet snow to the south was moving out to sea off the east coast on Saturday, leaving behind a forecast of snow showers in the Appalachian mountains and New England. But temperatures are expected to plunge after sundown on Saturday in the south, raising the risk that melting snow will refreeze, turning roadways treacherous and glazed with ice.

Continue reading...

Days-long funeral procession for Jimmy Carter begins in south Georgia

Posted on by

Motorcade with flag-draped casket heads to boyhood home in Plains before moving to Atlanta, then Washington

Jimmy Carter’s long public goodbye began Saturday in south Georgia, where the 39th US president’s life began more than 100 years ago.

A motorcade with Carter’s flag-draped casket is heading to his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood home on the way to Atlanta. The procession began at the Phoebe Sumter medical center in Americus, where former Secret Service agents who had protected the late president served as pallbearers. A mournful train whistle filled the clear air as the pallbearers turned to face the hearse for a final goodbye, their hands on their hearts.

Continue reading...

Jimmy Carter to be honored in Washington funeral and laid to rest in Georgia

Posted on by

State funeral to be held for former president on national day of mourning before he is buried next to wife in Plains

Jimmy Carter, the former US president who died at age 100 on Sunday, will be honored with a state funeral before being laid to rest in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, next to his wife, Rosalynn.

The state funeral for Carter will be held in Washington DC on Thursday, 9 January. The date has also been declared a national day of mourning in the United States.

Continue reading...

Jimmy Carter’s death comes at a time when rancour and uncertainty prevail

Posted on by

The ex-president died as Biden, a fellow one-term president heads for the door and chaos agent Trump returns to power

Early in Mike Bartlett’s 2022 stage play, The 47th, the funeral of former US president Jimmy Carter is held at Washington National Cathedral. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton are all in attendance. Donald Trump is not invited but turns up anyway – and late. “He’s here to pay his disrespects, and use / A funeral for self-promotion,” Kamala Harris observes.

Life – or rather death – is about to imitate art as Washington prepares to bid farewell to Carter, who died at home in Georgia on Sunday at the age of 100. He was the longest-lived president in US history and the first Democratic president to die since Lyndon Johnson more than half a century ago.

Continue reading...

Georgia’s pro-west president says she remains ‘only legitimate president’ as new leader sworn in

Posted on by

Salome Zourabichvili tells protesters she will leave presidential palace as far-right successor Mikheil Kavelashvili takes power

Georgia’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has said she will leave the palace but remain the country’s legitimate officeholder, after refusing to hand over the keys to her successor in the wake of a controversial general election.

Zourabichvili spoke as thousands of protesters gathered in the capital, Tblisi, to demonstrate against the inauguration of Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former football player turned far-right politician backed by the ruling pro-Moscow and increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream (GD) party, who was sworn in as president at a parliamentary ceremony.

Continue reading...

‘Let’s see who will be leaving’: Georgia’s presidential standoff nears crunch point

Posted on by

Georgian Dream government threatens pro-west president with jail if she refuses to leave office on Sunday

All eyes in Georgia are fixed on the elegant 19th-century Orbeliani Palace in Tbilisi, where a defining moment looms. Who will occupy its halls on 29 December?

On Sunday, Georgia’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, is supposed to hand over the keys to her successor, Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former football player turned far-right politician who is backed by the ruling and increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream (GD) party.

Continue reading...

‘Let’s see who will be leaving’: Georgia’s presidential standoff nears crunch point

Posted on by

Georgian Dream government threatens pro-west president with jail if she refuses to leave office on Sunday

All eyes in Georgia are fixed on the elegant 19th-century Orbeliani Palace in Tbilisi, where a defining moment looms. Who will occupy its halls on 29 December?

On Sunday, Georgia’s pro-western president, Salome Zourabichvili, is supposed to hand over the keys to her successor, Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former football player turned far-right politician who is backed by the ruling and increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream (GD) party.

Continue reading...

Georgia opposition leader arrested as mass anti-government protests stretch into seventh night

Posted on by

Nika Gvaramia among numerous other opposition members to be arrested on Wednesday as police raid homes and offices

Georgian police have raided the offices of an opposition party and arrested its leader in an apparent attempt to quash a wave of mass protests triggered by the governing party’s decision to suspend negotiations on joining the European Union.

Protesters on Wednesday night gathered for a seventh consecutive night of protests, facing off against riot police who have used water cannon and teargas to disperse them on previous nights. Protesters have thrown fireworks at police officers and built barricades on the Georgian capital’s central boulevard.

Continue reading...

Georgian police fire teargas at pro-EU protesters as political crisis deepens

Posted on by

Tbilisi experiences fifth day of demonstrations amid anger over ruling party’s decision to shelve EU accession talks

Georgian police have fired teargas to try to disperse thousands of pro-EU demonstrators rallying in the centre of Tbilisi amid a deepening political crisis in the Black Sea nation.

The country’s prime minister hours earlier had vowed “no negotiations” with the opposition, enraged by the ruling Georgian Dream party’s decision to shelve EU accession talks after it claimed victory in an election they decried as fraudulent.

Continue reading...