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Georgia's ruling party is leading the crucial election race that could decide the country's role in Europe.The Central Election Commission said the ruling Georgian Dream party had won 52.99% of the vote after 97% of the electronic vote was counted. Not all paper ballots and votes cast by Georgians abroad have been counted. Both Georgian Dream and the opposition blocs trying to end its 12 years in power have portrayed the vote as an existential choice.After the polls opened Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who set up Georgian Dream and made his fortune in Russia, accused opposition parties of being "an agent of a foreign country that will only fulfil the tasks of a foreign country" - suggesting the West wants Georgia to go to war with Russia.He also pledged to ban all pro-Western oppositi...

Bodies wrapped in blankets are laid out in a front yard. Some on beds, others on the hard ground."These are the martyrs of Al Sireiha - more than 100," the man recording the video says, as mourners pray and walk around the corpses in the poorly lit evening darkness. Civilians were massacred in the farming village of Al Sireiha in the eastern parts of Sudan's Al Jazira state on Friday.The horror has emerged in a handful of videos uploaded to social media amid a telecommunications blackout."The number of deaths we've received so far is 124, though due to communication outages, we haven't been able to confirm this or if it has risen," says Mohamed Tarek. He is a member of the Madani Resistance Committee, the state capital's branch in a network of grassroots, frontline volunteer groups born ou...

Evidence of potential war crimes collected by British spy planes operating over Gaza could be handed to the International Criminal Court, the UK has confirmed.The Royal Air Force (RAF) is reported to have flown hundreds of missions over and near the war-torn territory since December, gathering intelligence to help in the hunt for hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023.The Ministry of Defence (MOD) said the Shadow R1 surveillance aircraft - which also fly over Israel as well as international air space - are purely tasked with gathering information to assist Israel's operation to find its hostages.The spy planes are not involved in gathering intelligence for any other aspect of the war against Hamas, which has resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians, inc...

Fresh off the back of becoming the first Irish-born winner of the best actor award at the Oscars, Cillian Murphy is busier than ever."It's my third film I've done since then so that was clearly my coping mechanism", he tells Sky News at the UK premiere of Small Things Like These. Set in 1985 Wexford, the film is based on Claire Keegan's Orwell prize-winning fictional novel of the same name that follows coalman Bill Furlong as he uncovers the treatment of the unmarried mothers sent to a Magdalene laundry in his town.Murphy, 48, first pitched the idea to Matt Damon, who produced the film under his production company Artist's Equity, on the set of Oppenheimer, calling it "a little bit Manchester By The Sea meets Doubt"."Claire's story was so perfect and magnificent in its brevity and what it ...