Anna Arutunyan
Yegor Gaidar, chief architect of the economic "shock therapy" of the early 1990s, died suddenly of a blood clot early on Wednesday morning. He was 53.
The day before his death, Gaidar, a former acting prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, took part in a news conference at RIA Novosti, where he talked about next year's economic forecasts.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed their condolences to Gaidar's family on Wednesday and praised Gaidar's role in changing Russia from a planned economy into a market economy in the first half of the early 1990s, when he served in the government.
...Gaidar, the soft-spoken grandson of Arkady Gaidar, a famous Bolshevik military commander, Stalin-era children's writer and World War II hero, came to the fore during the break-up of the Soviet Union as a liberal economist. In 1991, Yeltsin appointed him deputy prime minister and then acting prime minister in June 1992 at the age of 35. He controversially declared an end to price regulation, freeing prices and leading to sky-rocketing inflation. Such policies of shock therapy ultimately led to his vilification by millions of Russians who suffered economic hardships in the 1990s.read more @ moscow news
2. stepfather suspected of pushing 50 needles into 2 year old boy
RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian police Wednesday arrested a man suspected of pushing around 50 metal needles into his two-year-old stepson, possibly as part of a "black magic" ritual.
The man, named by police as Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, was being questioned as the prime suspect in the case, which was being treated as attempted homicide, the website of the O Globo newspaper reported. He was refusing to talk, it said....The boy's name was not released because of his young age. He is conscious in his hospital bed and reportedly cries any time anybody asks who put the needles in him....
The mother of the boy, Maria Souza Santos, 38, told the newspaper A Tarde de Salvador de Bahia that she believed her son had been the victim of a black magic rite.
She said she had found a bottle of cachaca, Brazilian rum made from sugar cane, and other, unspecified objects in the modest house she shares with her six children, her mother and her husband of six months, Magalhaes.
3. Georgian authorities demolish WWII memorial
Authorities in Georgia's second largest city, Kutaisi, have started demolishing a memorial to WWII heroes in order to construct a parliament building.Russia's Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily said on Wednesday that Kutaisi authorities aim to complete the demolition by December 21, President Mikheil Saakashvili's birthday.
The government has said that the relocation of the Georgian parliament from Tbilisi to Kutaisi will boost the development of western Georgia.
The move has sparked protests among Kutaisi residents and the Georgian opposition. Sculptor Merab Berdzenishvili, the creator of the war memorial, said the demolition is an insult to the memory of thousands of Georgian soldiers who gave their lives in World War II. The authorities have promised to erect a new memorial, saying that the old one was already partially destroyed and cannot be restored. Russian Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov called the destruction of the memorial "blasphemy". "Georgia's decision to build a parliamentary building on the site of a memorial to those who gave independent Georgia a chance to construct such buildings is regrettable and confusing," he said.
MOSCOW, December 16 (RIA Novosti)
4. Holodomor can not be termed genocide - PACE
A famine that killed millions in the Soviet Union in the 1930s cannot be described as a genocide that targeted the Ukrainian people, the Council of Europe has said. A member of the Russian delegation to the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, or PACE, said the word genocide was removed from a draft report on the famine put forward by Ukraine. The report's findings and a draft resolution are expected to be published in January. Moscow says the famine killed people throughout the Soviet Union, not just in Ukraine, and that Kiev is trying to politicize the tragedy.
5. Georgia mocks Nauru's recognition of Abkhazia - click through to see the pic, the guy looks like Avigdor Lieberman's little brother
The recognition of Abkhazia's independence by Nauru, the world's smallest island state, is utterly irrelevant, the Georgian minister for reintegration said on Tuesday. Nauru, an island in the South Pacific Ocean, recognized the independence of the former Georgian republic earlier on Tuesday, with both countries signing an agreement on establishing diplomatic relations.
Nauru is the fourth country to recognize Abkhazia's independence, joining Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela. "The recognition of Abkhazia's independence by Nauru is more like a comedy... it changes nothing in the international arena," Temur Yakobashvili said.
Nauru, which has a population of about 15,000 people, is the world's only country with no capital. It became a member of the United Nations in 1999. Russia recognized Abkhazia and another former Georgian republic, South Ossetia, as independent states shortly after a five-day war with Georgia in August 2008 that began when Georgian forces attacked the latter in an attempt to bring it back under central control.
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