Felix Light

Police in Georgia arrested several anti-government protesters on Sunday as thousands of demonstrators demanding new parliamentary elections briefly blocked a motorway on the edge of the capital Tbilisi.

Armenia's government on Thursday gave approval to a bill that calls for the country, once part of the Soviet Union, to launch a bid to join the European Union.

Russia and Ukraine conducted a prisoner swap on Monday, with each side freeing 150 prisoners of war, Russia's Defence Ministry said in a statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has transferred shares in brewer AB InBev's Russian joint venture into temporary management, according to a decree published on a Russian government website on Monday.

Mikheil Kavelashvili, a hardline critic of the West, was sworn in as president of Georgia on Sunday amid a political crisis after the government froze European Union application talks in a move that sparked major protests.

The United States on Friday sanctioned Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, a former prime minister widely seen as the country's de facto leader, saying he was undermining democracy and allowing Russia to benefit.

The Kremlin on Monday rejected Turkish media reports which suggested that Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, wanted a divorce and to leave Russia.

The vote sets up Mikheil Kavelashvili to replace a pro-Western incumbent amid protests against the government over a halt to EU accession talks.

Georgia's parliament passed a law on Friday forbidding protesters to cover their faces and banning fireworks and lasers from demonstrations following clashes between police and civilians at pro-EU protests.

Seventy-five-year-old Marina Terishvili's teenage son Mamuka was shot dead at a nationalist rally in Georgia in 1992. Now her other son, Giorgi, has been arrested for his role in protests against perceived Russian influence in their homeland.