Georgian parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he had signed into law a “family values” bill curbing LGBT rights, just weeks before a high-stakes parliamentary election.

Lawmakers from the ruling Georgian Dream party last month approved the bill, which bans gender transitions and could outlaw pride marches and displays of the LGBT rainbow flag. The party says the law is necessary to protect Georgia’s Orthodox Christian church from outsiders.

President Salome Zourabichvili, a critic of the ruling party, had refused to sign the bill into law. Georgian Dream and its allies in parliament had enough seats to overcome her opposition.

Georgian LGBT activists say that the law is an attempt by Georgian Dream to boost support among conservative voters ahead of the Oct. 26 election, in which the party is seeking an unprecedented fourth term in power.

Some Western countries have criticized the bill, casting it as part of what they say is a turn towards authoritarianism and alignment with Russia in country that had mainly leaned towards the West since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Opinion polls show that Georgian Dream remains the country’s most popular single party against a divided opposition, though it has lost ground since 2020, when it won almost 50% of the vote and a narrow majority in parliament.

Georgian Dream, founded by the country’s richest man, has also enacted a law requiring groups that receive funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, which its opponents say is modelled on legislation used to criminalize dissent in Russia.

Relations with Moscow have overshadowed politics for decades in Georgia, which has been a candidate to join NATO and the EU.

Moscow supports separatists in two ethnic regions who broke away from Tbilisi’s rule in wars in the 1990s, and Russian forces defeated Georgia in a brief war in 2008. Georgian Dream argues that its opponents would bring a return to war, and says it would pursue more stable relations with Russia.

The temporary ceasefire was called for by US President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and other allies during last week’s UN General Assembly.

“He [Nasrallah] agreed, he agreed,” Habib told Christiane Amanpour in an interview aired on Wednesday.

“We agreed completely. Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire but consulting with Hezbollah. The [Lebanese House] Speaker Mr. Nabih Berri consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French what happened. And they told us that Mr. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents [Biden and Macron.]”

White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was then set to go to Lebanon to negotiate the ceasefire, Habib continued.

“They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that and you know what happened since then,” the foreign minister added.

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

A day earlier, a joint statement issued by the United States, France, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Qatar called for a 21-day ceasefire, “to give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further escalations across the border.”

A Western source familiar with the negotiations also said Hezbollah had agreed to the temporary truce shortly before the US released the proposal last week. The source didn’t say whether the decision had come directly from Nasrallah, but said that for the movement to agree, they would have needed his approval. A second source familiar with the talks agreed that the US was aware that Hezbollah was agreeing to the ceasefire.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller did not rule out that it had happened, but also said the US was not aware.

“We were having a number of diplomatic engagements to talk about the proposals that we were going to put forward. I think all of the parties were well aware of the proposals that we were going to put forward, but at no time in those conversations did we get a message that Hezbollah had agreed or was going to agree to it,” Miller said.

Hezbollah never officially announced their position publicly. It appeared Hezbollah was waiting to see what Israel would do once the US, France and the other allies put out the statement on Wednesday night announcing the ceasefire.

But hours later, Prime Minister Benjajmin Netanyahu said Israel would “continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might.” Israeli officials tried to explain what happened as an “honest misunderstanding,” saying they thought the proposal “was the start of a process that could ultimately lead to a ceasefire.”

The US official said that the administration retreated from pushing last week’s ceasefire plan once they learned Israel may try to take out Nasrallah.

In response to a question on the United States’ diminishing influence in the region, Habib said Washington was “always important in this regard.”

“I don’t think we have an alternative. We need the United States’ help. Whether we get it or not, we’re not sure yet, but [the] United States is very important, vital for the ceasefire to happen,” said Habib.

A Cambodian woman who worked as a maid in Malaysia has been deported to her homeland for comments she posted on social media criticizing Cambodian government leaders, in the latest example of a Southeast Asian government helping another arrest a dissident.

A Cambodia prison official and an opposition activist group said Thursday that Nuon Toeun, 36, who had worked in Malaysia for several years, was arrested last week by Malaysian authorities following a request from the Cambodian government.

Human rights groups have criticized several Southeast Asian governments for helping each other harass, detain and deport political dissidents in exile. New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Thai government to stop forcing political dissidents to return to their authoritarian home countries, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, where they might face torture, persecution or death.

Freedom House, a US-based organization that promotes democracy, says the practice of attacking or sending back exiled dissidents “is becoming a ‘normal’ phenomenon as more governments around the world use it to silence dissent.″

Nuth Sovana, a spokesperson for Cambodia’s prison department, said Nuon Toeun was detained at Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh upon her arrival in Cambodia on Tuesday. She was charged with incitement to commit a felony or cause social disorder and incitement to discriminate on the basis of race religion or nationality, he said. He couldn’t provide details of the offenses she was accused of committing.

If convicted on both charges, she could face up to five years in prison and a fine.

Malaysian police and immigration officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on her deportation.

Nuon Toeun is neither an opposition leader nor a well-known activist. However, Cambodia’s government has expressed concern recently about overseas critics rallying support among Cambodian expatriates.

Nuon Toeun’s arrest came shortly after a Cambodian investigative reporter, Mech Dara, known for exposing online scams and corruption, was charged with incitement to commit a felony for material he posted on social media.

Radio Free Asia, a US government-funded news service that reports extensively on Cambodia, said Nuon Toeun often used social media to criticize Cambodia’s leadership, including Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen, the former prime minister who is now the Senate president, over their handling of social issues.

Cambodia’s government under the governing Cambodia People’s Party has long been accused of silencing critics and political opponents.

Radio Free Asia said Nuon Toeun was a supporter of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, which was dissolved ahead of the 2018 general election as part of a crackdown on the opposition. The Cambodian People’s Party subsequently won every seat in the National Assembly.

A few days before her arrest, Nuon Toeun posted a video on Facebook in which she said she was “expressing rage on behalf of the people living inside Cambodia,” Radio Free Asia reported.

“If I have sinned because I (have cursed) this despicable guy, I am happy to accept the sin because he has mistreated my people so badly,” she said, in a reference to Hun Sen, Radio Free Asia reported.

The Khmer Movement for Democracy, a movement formed by opposition leaders in exile, condemned Nuon Toeun’s deportation from Malaysia. It said in a statement that she was working legally in Malaysia and had committed no crime except expressing her opinions.

It said her deportation without due process was a “blatant violation of international law and a grave assault on human rights.”

Editor’s note: This story contains a graphic image and descriptions of violence.

Up to 600 people were shot dead in a matter of hours by al Qaeda-linked militants in an August attack on a town in Burkina Faso, according to a French government security assessment that nearly doubles the death toll cited in earlier reports. The new figure would make the assault, in which civilians were shot dead as they dug trenches to defend the remote town of Barsalogho, one of the deadliest single attacks in Africa in recent decades.

Militants from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al Qaeda affiliate based in Mali and active in Burkina Faso, opened fire methodically as they swept into the outskirts of Barsalogho on motorcycles and shot down villagers, who lay helpless in the freshly upturned dirt of the trench, according to several videos of the August 24 attack posted by pro-JNIM accounts on social media. Many of the dead were women and children, and the footage is punctuated by the sound of automatic gunfire and screams of victims as they are shot while apparently trying to play dead.

The United Nations initially estimated the death toll was at least 200. JNIM said it had killed nearly 300 people but claimed it had targeted militia members affiliated with the army, rather than civilians, according to a translation by Site Intelligence Group cited by Reuters.

“Large-scale deadly attacks (at least a hundred deaths) against civilian populations or defense and security forces have been occurring for several weeks at a rate that seems unsustainable for the government,” the report says of Burkina Faso, “which no longer really has a military strategy to offer and whose propaganda discourse seems out of breath and ideas.”

On September 17, the capital of nearby Mali, Bamako, was rocked by another JNIM assault, which hit the airport, among other key buildings, and killed more than 70 people.

‘Defensive trenches’ became mass grave

The massacre at Barsalogho came as locals were ordered by the military to dig a vast trench network around the town to protect it from jihadists circulating nearby. The JNIM gunmen then attacked the defenses, mid-construction, falsely claiming the civilians were combatants because of their involvement, according to eyewitnesses.

“I started to crawl into the trench to escape,” he said. “But it seemed that the attackers were following the trenches. So, I crawled out and came across the first bloodied victim. There was actually blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until later in the afternoon, hiding.”

“There were few remaining men afterwards in the town. Seeing the bodies arrive on motorized carts from the massacre site was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen in my life. Neither women nor children had tears to shed. We were more than shocked. How can you cry if there are no tears to shed?”

“We the survivors are no longer normal. The problem is beyond us all. The massacre started in front of me. The very first shots were fired right in front of me. I was one of the people who picked up the bodies and buried them. I see my late friends when I’m asleep,” he said, adding that the initial reports of 300 dead were too low. “Anyone who denies it, should come and see me.”

The assault led to angry protests in which Burkina Faso’s junta leader, captain Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in the second of two successive military coups in 2022, was derided as “IB Captain Zero” for endorsing the construction of the trenches by civilians. The French report said their construction had been part of a plan by the Minister of Civil Service in which each settlement “must organize itself and have its own response plan to an attack.”

Burkina Faso’s 2022 coups came amid frustrations over the authorities’ inability to quash recurring jihadist violence, despite intensive French military assistance, which has claimed thousands of lives for almost a decade. But that violence has worsened under Traore, according to experts and human rights watchdogs.

Though successful at first, by 2014, France’s military operations in the region were met with growing anti-French sentiment. France broadened its counterterrorism presence but was unable to contain the ever-expanding armed groups who threatened civilians. As a result, local populations became wary of the former colonial power.

Traore has made only one public appearance since the massacre, and the assessment – penned in late August – questions his state of mind and fitness for office. “We see there all the powerlessness of the authorities to provide a serious and credible response to the terrorist threat,” the report reads.

Russian mercenaries on back foot as violence spreads

Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries who arrived in Burkina Faso almost a year ago have failed to bring calm to the country and are at least partially being pulled out to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine, the assessment adds. Increased security in the capital Ouagadougou around key buildings may be linked to the withdrawal of much of the 100-strong Wagner mercenary group’s “Bear” unit, charged with Traore’s personal protection, says the report. The mercenary group has been under new management since the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last year, but Wagner is still colloquially referred to by its old name in the Sahel.

The report suggests the unit was reassigned to fend off Ukraine’s invasion of the Russian border regions and may be replaced with less capable Russian servicemen.

Criticism of the army, voiced by relatives of the dead and survivors from Barsalogho, who maintain the military fled the assault, has been amplified by recent accusations of cannibalism by Burkina Faso soldiers, the report adds. It cites videos posted publicly on social media that appear to show soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion 15 (BIR-15) eating parts of dead jihadists.

The report adds: “The general staff of the Burkina Faso armies published a press release on July 24, 2024, in which it ‘condemns these macabre acts’ and ‘reassures that measures will be taken to formally identify the origin of these images as well as their authors.’” It assesses the incident as another sign of discipline in the army deteriorating since the coup two years ago that put Traore in power and led to the French departure.

The French security assessment adds the violence in Burkina Faso has begun to spill over into at least one of its peaceful southern neighbors, citing an attack inside Togo from a Burkina Faso border town, Kompienga, on July 20, seizing a Togolese army camp, killing at least 12 soldiers and looting weapons. “Rumors indicate the creation of a new GSIM Wilaya for Togo,” the report adds, referring to a new al Qaeda affiliate for the country, “fueled by terrorists from the North.”

“Barsalogho is proof that Burkina Faso is teetering on the edge because the terrorists have such a hold on the country. Six hundred people have died, and that’s terrible, but what’s worse is that it’s as if it never happened, because the killers continue to roam free with no fear of retribution,” according to the assessment.

A Singapore court charged a property billionaire on Friday with obstructing justice and abetting offenses by a disgraced ex-transport minister jailed a day earlier in the city-state’s high-profile government graft case.

Ong Beng Seng, the 78-year-old owner of Hotel Properties Ltd and the rights holder to the Singapore Grand Prix Formula One race, is accused of giving high-value gifts to ex-minister S. Iswaran, who on Thursday became the first former cabinet member to be jailed in Singapore.

The case has been the subject of major intrigue in Singapore, a wealthy financial hub that offers ministers salaries of more than S$1 million dollars ($771,247) to deter graft and prides itself on its reputation for clean governance.

Iswaran was imprisoned for 12 months for obstructing justice and improperly receiving gifts as a public servant, with Ong a central part of the prosecution’s case.

Ong has so far issued no comment on the accusations. Channel NewsAsia said he entered no plea on Friday and did not indicate how he would plead.

Ong’s firm, Singapore-listed Hotel Properties, requested a trading halt early on Friday following Thursday’s announcement that he would be charged.

During Iswaran’s trial, prosecutors said the ex-minister received gifts worth more than $300,000, including tickets to English Premier League soccer matches, the F1 Grand Prix, London musicals and a ride on a private jet to Doha.

Ong was charged with one count of abetting Iswaran’s receiving of valuables and one count of obstruction of justice, according to the charge sheet.

During Iswaran’s trial, the court heard how the minister had asked Ong to bill him for the Doha trip on the private jet, after he discovered the anti-graft agency had seized the flight manifest for an unrelated case.

Justice Vincent Hoong, who presided over Iswaran’s case, said on Thursday the minister’s request to be billed was a deliberate move to obstruct the course of justice and try to evade investigation.

Channel NewsAsia said Ong’s court hearing was adjourned until pre-trial proceedings on November 15.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to use nuclear weapons to destroy South Korea if attacked, state media reported Friday, after South Korea’s president warned that if the North used nuclear weapons it would “face the end of its regime.”

The fiery rhetoric isn’t new, but comes at a time of tension on the Korean Peninsula and just weeks after North Korean state media released images of Kim visiting a uranium enrichment facility, which produces weapons-grade nuclear materials.

While touring an army base in the western part of the country Wednesday, Kim said if the South were to encroach upon the North’s sovereignty, Pyongyang “would use without hesitation all the offensive forces it has possessed, including nuclear weapons,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Friday.

“If such situation comes, the permanent existence of Seoul and the Republic of Korea would be impossible,” Kim added, using the proper name for South Korea.

Hostilities between the two Korean leaders have been simmering this year as North Korea has appeared to have intensified its nuclear production efforts and strengthened ties with Russia, deepening widespread concern in the West over the isolated nation’s direction.

Kim’s comments appeared to come in direct response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who on Tuesday showcased Seoul’s most powerful ballistic missile and other weapons designed to deter North Korean threats during a parade for Armed Forces Day.

North and South Korea have been cut off from each other since the end of the Korean War in 1953, which concluded with an armistice not a peace treaty, leaving the two sides still technically at war.

While both governments had long sought the goal of one day peacefully reunifying, earlier this year Kim announced the North would no longer pursue that aim, calling the South the “principal enemy” and demolishing a monument symbolizing unification.

Last month, North Korean state media released photos of Kim purportedly touring a nuclear facility in a rare glimpse of the nation’s closely guarded weapons program. Experts said the images – which show Kim flanked by men in military uniforms and crisp white lab shirts – underscore North Korea’s growing confidence in its position as a nuclear power.

South Korea has also been building up its arsenal to respond to a potential threat from the North.

On Tuesday, Yoon unveiled the Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile, which is reportedly capable of penetrating North Korean underground bunkers.

“If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the SK-US alliance,” Yoon said, in reference to the United States as the country’s key military partner. “The North Korean regime must now break free from the delusion that nuclear weapons will protect them.”

The US flew a B-1B bomber over an Armed Forces Day ceremony on Tuesday in Seongnam, near Seoul, in an apparent show of solidarity.

On Wednesday, Kim called Yoon a “puppet” and said he was an “abnormal man” for bragging about his military might at the doorstep of a nation in possession of nuclear weapons, KCNA reported.