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On the eve of December 21, some residents of the regions of Northern Caucasus feared the predicted "doomsday" and prepared for it; however, it was not of a mass character. Muslim clerics, while noting that Islam has a concept of the "judgment day", said that there is no evidence of this event.

The NGO named "Union of Societies of Georgian-Russia Relations: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" and Georgian figures of culture are setting up an initiative group for settlement of Georgian-Russian relations, in order to revive the tradition of joint projects in the sphere of education and sciences.

Today, court marshals, a representative of the administration of the Sovietskiy District and policemen appeared at No. 14 Amurskaya Street in Astrakhan, aiming to evict the Porfiriev family out of their house.

Beslan Tsechoev, a villager of Sagopshi, Malgobek District of Ingushetia, was detained by the police without explanation, his relatives assert. They fear that the man will be exposed to illegal methods of physical pressure, noting that earlier similar cases had already happened.

On December 20, 130 employees of the medical centre in the city of Telavi went on a strike demanding to pay their wage arrears.

A soldier from the Georgian contingent has disappeared in Afghanistan; searches are fruitless.

Grant Bagratyan, a member of the oppositional parliamentary faction "Armenian National Congress" (ANC) and the former Prime Minister, has announced, on his Facebook page, his intention to take part in the presidential election. Bagratyan also said that he would suspend his cooperation with the ANC in order not to hamper the organization.

Ruslan Eshugaov, the chair of the Adaptation Commission of former militants in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), has promised, when meeting relatives of convicted militants, to help in their conditional early relief (CER).

The Chechen newspaper "Kadyrov's Way", which was closed today after the press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was initially presented by local officials at a celebration ceremony of the 60th birthday of the late Akhmad Kadyrov, the former head of the region, in August 2011.

About a thousand supporters of the party "United National Movement" have held a protest in Tbilisi against the arrests of Nicka Gvaramiya, Director General of "Rustavi-2", as well as the former Energy Minister Alexander Khetaguri, Director General of the Energy Company "Telasi" Devi Kandelaki and former Deputy Minister of Economy Kakha Dameniya.

The murder of the TV presenter Kazbek Gekkiev did not entail any mass resignation of employees of the State TV and Radio Company (STRC) "Kabardino-Balkaria". To date, only three out of one hundred and eighty employees have submitted their voluntarily resignation applications, said Kamal Abdullaev, Deputy Director of the STRC, which is a branch of the All-Russian TV and Radio Company.

The session of the Tbilisi City Court, scheduled for December 19, on the case of Akhmed Chataev, a native of Chechnya and a Russian citizen, who was detained in a special operation in Lopota Gorge, did not take place due to the failure of the prosecutor to summon his witnesses.

At the trial of the case of the attack on Nalchik, the court has announced the decision to extend the term of the defendants' detention for another three months, until March 26, 2013.

An action in memory of the children killed on December 14 in Newtown, State Connecticut of the USA, was held in the gym of Beslan School, whose pupils and teachers in September 2004 became terrorists' hostages and were killed. Mothers of the kids killed in North Ossetia decided to support their counterparts from another country, who have experienced the same grief.

A bridge across the Yassa (Aksay) River is being built in the mountainous Vedeno District of Chechnya, near the village of Dargo. The old bridge was destroyed in the course of the first military campaign in the country, said the Ministry of Motor Roads of Chechnya. The commissioning of the new bridge is scheduled for 2013.

Five Circassians-refugees from Syria have been deported to Jordan from the Moscow Airport "Domodedovo".

At the Moscow City Court (MCC), where today the trial on the murder of Colonel Yuri Budanov was continued, the advocate of the defendant Yusup Temerkhanov has reported about an incident in Chechnya, which was treated by him as an act of intimidation intended to press the relatives of his client and the defendant himself.

As reported by the information centre of the Russian National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC), the death toll of the special operation conducted on December 19 in Nazran included two militant leaders Ayub Kholadov and Movsar Katsiev, and a militant Khamzat Pugoev from Katsiev's grouping.

On December 19, in the Georgian city of Zugdidi, street vendors blocked the road in front of the Central Marketplace. Later, they tried to do the same in front of the House of Justice, but the police demanded the free the roadway.

Thirty-five journalists of Armenian mass media wrote an open letter to the Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Ovik Abramyan with a demand to give a political assessment of the incident that occurred on December 19 at the National Assembly.