Main News of September 19

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Protests in Tbilisi over claims that inmates in a Georgian jail have been tortured continue into their second day.

*Bushra al-Assad, the sister of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has fled Syria along with her children to the United Arab Emirates, Al Arabiya TV channel reported citing an unnamed source.

*France will close several of its embassies and schools around the world amid concerns of a backlash after a cartoon of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad appeared in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

 

RUSSIA

*Leading Russian rights activists slammed Moscow’s decision to force a U.S. development aid mission to wind up its operations in the country by the start of next month.

*Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has angered the U.S. administration by derogatory comments on the recent killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, Kommersant daily reported.

*A lawmaker in Russia’s St. Petersburg said that media coverage of the possible end of the world in 2012 was contributing to a rise in suicides and crime and asked the city governor to consider ways to limit television and newspaper reports on the topic.

 

BUSINESS

*Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the just completed privatization sale of shares in the nation's biggest bank, Sberbank, which netted $5.208 billion for the state.