The week at a glance ... Europe

Lisbon

More gay marriage: Portugal’s conservative president said this week he would reluctantly ratify a law recognizing gay marriage, making the predominantly Catholic country the sixth in Europe to allow same-sex couples to wed. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva said that despite his “personal conviction” that homosexuality is wrong, he would not veto the bill because the liberal majority in parliament would just override his decision. “I feel I should not contribute to a pointless extension of this debate, which would only serve to deepen the divisions between the Portuguese,” he said. The announcement came just days after Pope Benedict XVI visited Portugal and called same-sex marriage one of the most “insidious and dangerous” threats facing the world.

Paris

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Prisoners freed: In an apparent prisoner swap, France has unexpectedly freed the convicted assassin of Shapour Bakhtiar, Iran’s last prime minister under the shah. Bakhtiar emigrated to France in 1979, after the Islamic Revolution; Ali Vakili Rad, an Iranian intelligence agent, was convicted of stabbing him to death near Paris in 1991. Rad was released just two days after Iran freed a French university student who had been arrested for taking photos during the protests that erupted last year after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. The timing sparked widespread speculation that the two countries had struck a deal on the prisoners, though both governments insisted the releases were unrelated. Rad went home to Tehran this week to a hero’s welcome.