Lawmakers in Georgia elect hardline critic of West as new president

Georgian lawmakers elected Mikheil Kavelashvili, a hardline critic of the West, as president on Saturday, setting him up to replace a pro-Western incumbent amid major protests against the government over a halt to the country’s European Union accession talks last month. The ruling Georgian Dream party’s move to freeze the EU accession process until 2028, abruptly halting a long-standing national goal that is written into the country’s constitution, has provoked