TBILISI — Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze vowed on Sunday to push ahead with a law on “foreign agents” that has sparked a political crisis, after opponents of the bill rallied in one of the largest protests seen since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. 

Kobakhidze told a televised briefing that the ruling Georgian Dream party would secure passage of the bill in a third reading this week, and threatened protesters with prosecution if they resort to violence. 

Georgia’s opposition has called on opponents of the bill to stage on all-night protest outside parliament to prevent lawmakers from entering the building on Monday, when they are due to begin debating the bill’s third reading. 

The bill requires organizations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as agents of foreign influence or face punitive fines.  

Western countries and Georgia’s opposition denounce it as authoritarian and Russian-inspired. Critics liken it to Russia’s 2012 “foreign agent” law, which has been used to hound critics of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. 

The dispute over the bill has come to be seen as key to whether Georgia, which has had traditionally warm relations with the West, continues its push for European Union and NATO membership, or instead builds ties with Russia. 

The EU, which granted Georgia candidate status in December, has repeatedly said the bill could jeopardize Tbilisi’s further integration with the bloc. 

Georgian Dream’s founder, billionaire ex-prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, said last month that the law was necessary to assert Georgian sovereignty against Western powers which he said wanted to drag the country into a confrontation with Russia. 

On Saturday evening, a crowd of protesters braved driving rain to stage the largest protest yet, with several columns of marchers shutting down much of central Tbilisi. 

A Reuters estimate, using the Mapchecking crowd counting tool, placed the number of protesters at around 50,000 people. 

Some Georgian media and activists have put the crowd size in the hundreds of thousands, citing their own calculations. The ruling party said 18,000 attended, but did not explain its reasoning. 

 
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WARSAW — A fire broke out Sunday morning in a vast shopping center housing 1,400 shops and service outlets in the Bialoleka district in Poland’s capital.

The fire brigade said more than 80% of The Marywilska 44 shopping complex was on fire, and 50 teams, including chemical and environmental rescue specialists, were carrying out rescue operations.

A police spokesperson told the news agency PAP there were no injuries reported. Authorities also sent a text message warning Warsaw residents about the fire and telling them to stay home with the windows closed.

Footage aired by private broadcaster TVN24 showed thick black smoke rising over the area.

Mirbud, an industrial construction company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, owns the shopping center.

Shopping centers and large shops are usually closed on Sunday due to a ban on trade imposed by the previous government which had close ties to the Catholic church, viewing it as a day of worship. Such outlets are exempt from the ban only about half a dozen Sundays a year, to allow people to shop ahead of Christmas, Easter and other events.
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TORGIANO, Italy — The Prada Group is expanding its production footprint in Italy, including dozens of new jobs at its knitwear factory in Umbria, leaning into “Made in Italy” as integral to the brand’s ethos and developing new artisanal talent to ease the luxury group through a generational shift in its workforce.

Prada CEO Andrea Guerra, who was brought in last year as part of the generational change in family-run Prada’s management, said at an unveiling of the expanded plant Tuesday that the company is investing 60 million euros ($65 million) in production this year.

At Torgiano, Prada has added 30 new jobs this year, alongside 65 last year, bringing the workforce to some 220 employees, mostly women, to create knitwear for the Prada and Miu Miu brands, a key category for the group. The site had just 39 employees when Prada bought it in 2001.

“For many years, Torgiano was a small, important place, linked to the Umbrian knitwear tradition,” mostly dedicated to product research and development, Guerra said. “In the last six or seven years, with the extraordinary growth in knitwear, we decided to create an all-around industrial hub,” adding production to a reinforced R&D center.

The innocuous low-slung plant, identified by a simple, small Prada nameplate near the gate, is at the heart of a network that includes dozens of smaller companies that together create some 30,000 pieces of knitwear a month for the global luxury group. They include red crocheted Miu Miu culottes to soft gray Prada cardigans that have become a trademark.

Guerra described the Milan-based fashion group’s manufacturing footprint in central Italy as a “network of intelligent relationships and craftsmanship merged with a constant capacity to bring innovation to the market.”

Prada’s investments to exert greater control over its supply chain stand out against the backdrop of a recent investigation that revealed sweatshop conditions in Chinese-owned factories producing luxury goods for other Italian brands in the Lombardy region, where the Italian fashion capital Milan is located. The production arm of Giorgio Armani has been put under receivership as part of an ongoing supply chain probe.

Prada has focused on what it calls vertical integration of its supply chain — working with smaller companies, some with just a handful of craftspeople, that provide specific, sometimes unique, skills. For its knitwear operation, Prada works with some 60 smaller companies that it refers to as “partners” or “collaborators.”

“Contractors, subcontractors, that is not something tied to this world. There are production phases that are assigned to our collaborators, our partners,” Guerra said, adding: “The way I work inside, and the way I work outside needs to be the same.”

Lorenzo Bertelli, marketing director and head of corporate social responsibility who is slated to take over the company from his parents Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada, said a strong governance is the key to avoiding “such incidents.” He credited his father with starting Prada on the road to integrating its supply chain in the 1990s.

Audits of suppliers, which have so far been voluntary, will become mandatory in 2025 under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting legislation, aimed at controlling abuses, said Stefania Saviolo, a fashion and luxury expert at Milan’s Bocconi University. Publicly quoted companies like Prada, which are used to a level of transparency and reporting, will likely have an easier time than others, she said.

Integrating the supply chain doesn’t just mean that a major player buys up smaller companies, she said, but they may invest in specific machinery, or help them secure bank financing. “It is not ownership, it is a longer transaction along the model of partnership,” Saviolo said, adding that such relationships also provide a sense of security to the smaller companies more vulnerable to market crashes.

Noting that the luxury and fashion industries have long relied on third-party manufacturing, Bernstein global luxury goods analyst Luca Solca said the kind of investments by Prada to integrate manufacturing processes in-house “is a sort of catch-up with best-in-class-players in the industry.”

A key part of Prada’s investments are aimed at securing know-how into the next generation, a transition the company has been preparing also in its management and creative roles.

Finding new workers with both experience and passion is difficult, even in a region where knitwear is part of the local tradition, said Lorenzo Teodori, who runs the Torgiano plant.

To fill that gap, Prada runs an internal academy as needed at its 23 Italian production sites to train young craftspeople. The next one in Torgiano starts in the fall, with experienced workers training the next generation.

“Through the Prada Academy, we have seen how this dialogue is still alive and successful,” Bertelli said. “We need it to train the future technicians of tomorrow, who in turn will be the teachers in the future. It is a fundamental cycle for our group.”
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VATICAN CITY — The Vatican crossed a key milestone Thursday in the runup to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year. It’s a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans.

Pope Francis presided over a ceremony in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica for the reading of the papal bull, or official edict, that laid out his vision for a year of hope: He asked for gestures of solidarity for the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.

“Hope is needed by God’s creation, gravely damaged and disfigured by human selfishness,” Francis said in a vigil service afterward. “Hope is needed by those peoples and nations who look to the future with anxiety and fear.”

The pomp-filled event, attended by cardinals, bishops and ordinary faithful, kicked off the final seven-month dash of preparations and public works projects to be completed by December 24, when Francis opens the basilica’s Holy Door and formally inaugurates the Jubilee.

In a novelty, Francis announced in the papal bull that he would also open a Holy Door in a prison “as a sign inviting prisoners to look to the future with hope and a renewed sense of confidence.”

For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, and receiving indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins in the process. For the city of Rome, it’s a chance to take advantage of some 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and neglect.

“In a beautiful city, you live better,” said the Vatican’s Jubilee point-person, Archbishop Renato Fisichella, who himself is not indifferent to the added bonus of Jubilee funding. “Rome will become an even more beautiful city, because it will be ever more at the service of its people, pilgrims and tourists who will come.”

Pope Boniface VIII declared the first Holy Year in 1300, and now they are held every 25 years. While Francis called an interim one devoted to mercy in 2015, the 2025 edition is the first big one since St. John Paul II’s 2000 Jubilee, when he ushered the Catholic Church into the third millennium.

As occurred in the runup to 2000, pre-Jubilee public works projects have overwhelmed Rome, with flood-lit construction sites operating around the clock, entire swaths of central boulevards rerouted and traffic snarling the city’s already clogged streets.

The Tiber riverfront for much of the city center is now off limits as work crews create new parks. Piazzas are being repaved, bike paths charted and 5G cells built. The aim is to bring the Eternal City up to par with other European capitals and take advantage of the 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in special Jubilee funding and some 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) more in other public and post-pandemic EU funds that are available.

“It’s really putting our patience to the test,” said Tiziana Cafini, who operates a tobacco shop near the Pantheon and says she has taken to walking to work rather than riding a bus into the city center because it gets stuck in traffic. “And it’s not just in the center. There are an infinite number of construction sites all around Rome.”

Though she knows the discomfort will be worth it in the end, the end is still pretty far off. In addition to the Jubilee construction, there’s a longer-term, separate project to extend Rome’s Metro C subway line into Rome’s historic center which has encountered years of delays thanks to archaeological excavations of ancient Roman ruins that must be completed first.

For the next four years at least, central Piazza Venezia and its Imperial Forum-flanked boulevard to the Colosseum are scheduled to be congested and blighted by giant, 14-meter-high green silos that are needed for the subway drilling operation.

“We’re upset, but we’re Romans, we’ll make do,” Cafini said.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said recently he was satisfied with the pace of the Jubilee works so far, noting that they got off to a months-delayed start due to the 2022 collapse of Premier Mario Dragi’s government.

But Gualtieri promised they would be completed on time. And in a nod to Romans and tourists who have suffered from the traffic chaos and acute shortage of taxis already, he promised that an extra 1,000 taxi licenses had been approved and would be in use by December.

Yet as of late last month, only two of the 231 city projects had been completed; 57 were under way and another 44 were expected to be started by the end of May, Gualtieri told reporters. Another 18 are up for bids, seven have been assigned, 90 are planned. Thirteen have been canceled.

“We have recovered a lot from the initial delay,” Gualtieri told the foreign press association, adding that he expected the “essential” projects to be completed on time. Other projects were always planned to take longer than the Jubilee but were lumped into the overall project to take advantage of the accelerated timeframe.

The most significant project, and one that has caused the greatest traffic disruption to date, is a new Vatican-area piazza and pedestrian zone connecting Castel St. Angelo with the Via della Conciliazione boulevard that leads to St. Peter’s Square.

Previously, a major thoroughfare divided the two landmarks, causing an unsightly and pedestrian-unfriendly barrier.

The new works call for a tunnel to divert the oncoming traffic underneath the new pedestrian piazza. But that project required re-routing and replacing a huge underground sewage system first, which has only recently been completed. Now crews are working through the night to try to complete the tunnel in time.
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MALMO, Sweden — Switzerland won the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 on Saturday in the Swedish host city Malmo, beating runner-up Croatia.  

Billed as a feel-good celebration of European diversity, this year’s contest was thrust into the political spotlight with calls for Israel to be excluded because of its military campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ deadly attack on October 7 in Israel.  

Swiss rapper and singer Nemo, 24, won the contest with “The Code,” a drum-and-bass, opera, rap and rock song about Nemo’s journey of self-discovery as a non-binary person. 

“I hope this contest can live up to its promise and continue to stand for peace and dignity for every person in this world,” Nemo said, after receiving the Eurovision trophy on stage. 

“To know that a song that has changed my life and a song where I just speak about my story has touched so many people and maybe inspired other people to stay true to their story is the most insane thing that has ever happened to me,” Nemo said later during a press conference. 

Swiss sing along

Cheers of joy broke out in bars in central Zurich when the winner was announced, and Swiss revelers sang along as Nemo tore through a victory rendition of “The Code.” 

“I think it’s just great, Nemo is fantastic,” said Maha Nater, a 24-year-old kindergarten worker celebrating the win after watching the marathon contest. 

One karaoke bar began blasting out Queen’s “We Are The Champions” as patrons joined in. 

Nemo’s victory would blaze a trail for others who had had to cope with prejudice against non-binary people, Nater said. 

“It sets an example to follow,” she said. 

Croatia places second

Croatia’s Baby Lasagna, real name Marko Purisic, 28, came second with “Rim Tim Tagi Dim,” a song about a young man who leaves home aspiring to become a “city boy” with better opportunities. 

Israel’s Eden Golan, 20, finished fifth in the contest despite demonstrators’ calls for a boycott of the country. 

The female solo artist on Thursday emerged as one of the leading contenders to win after qualifying for the final. 

Booing was heard during Golan’s performance but also applause, a Reuters photographer in the auditorium said. The noise was partly audible in the broadcast viewed by tens of millions of people in Europe and around the world. 

There was also booing when the points of the Israeli jury were presented. 

Protesters claim Eurovision supports genocide

Several thousand protesters gathered in central Malmo ahead of Saturday’s final, waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Eurovision united by genocide,”  The contest’s official slogan is “United by music.” 

A few hundred people later also protested outside the venue, chanting “Eurovision, you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide.” 

Protesters have been pointing to double standards as the European Broadcasting Union banned Russia from Eurovision in 2022 because of its invasion of Ukraine. 

Police hauled away some protesters before surrounding them and ushering them away, a Reuters reporter outside the arena said. Some protesters were seen lying on the ground after police used pepper spray to disband the demonstration. 

25 countries compete

Twenty-five countries competed in the final after Dutch artist Joost Klein was expelled earlier on Saturday because of a complaint filed by a production crew member. 

Viewer votes made up half of Saturday’s final result, while juries of five music professionals in each participating country made up the other half. 

The Eurovision winner is awarded the contest’s official glass trophy, which is shaped like a classic, old-fashioned microphone, with sand blasted and painted details. The winner also gets to host the competition the following year. 

Nemo broke the fragile prize shortly after receiving it but was given a new one to replace it. 

“I didn’t just break the code, I also broke the trophy,” Nemo said, laughing, at the press conference after the win. 
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