GEORGIA: Former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili was inaugurated as the country’s president today.

Outgoing pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili said that she would vacate her residence at the Orbeliani Palace in Tbilisi but insisted that she was still the legitimate office holder.

Mr Kavelashvili, who was the only candidate on the ballot, easily won the vote earlier in December, given the Georgian Dream party’s control of a 300-seat electoral college that replaced direct presidential elections in 2017.

CHAD: Citizens voted in a parliamentary and regional election today that will end a three-year transitional period from military rule, but which the main opposition boycotted after accusing authorities of not overseeing a credible electoral process.

Chad’s parliamentary election is the first in more than a decade and comes months after junta leader Mahamat Idriss Deby won a disputed presidential vote that was meant to restore democracy.

Mr Deby took power in 2021 following the death of his father Idriss Deby, who had been president for just over 30 years.

MIDDLE EAST: Syria’s embassy in Lebanon suspended consular services on Saturday, the day after two relatives of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad were arrested at Beirut airport with allegedly forged passports.

The same day, dozens of Syrians were handed over to their country’s new authorities after they were caught entering Lebanon, Lebanese officials said.

The embassy announced on its Facebook page that consular work had been suspended “until further notice” at the order of the Syrian Foreign Ministry. It gave no reason for the suspension.

BELARUS: President Alexander Lukashenko has pardoned 20 people described by human rights activists as political prisoners, a government statement said on Saturday.

The announcement came amid persistent oppression in the run-up to presidential elections next month that are likely to extend Mr Lukashenko’s decades-long authoritarian rule.

Saturday’s announcement marks the eighth such pardon by Mr Lukashenko since this summer. In all, 207 political prisoners have been freed, human rights group Viasna said.

According to Viasna, over 1,250 political prisoners remain behind bars, many of whom have not been heard from for months.