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President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili has expressed his discontent with the decision of Tskhinvali court in relation to four detained Georgian teenagers, since two of them were left to serve their terms in South Ossetia.

Abkhazia has officially addressed Ecuador with a request to study the issue of recognizing its independence. This was reported by Maxim Gvindzhiya, deputy minister of foreign affairs of Abkhazia, who is at his working visit in Ecuador.

The militants' statement about their involvement in blowing up the "Neva-Express" train is treated by power agents as another "propaganda duck" of separatists. They assert that Doku Umarov has neither real means nor capacities to commit large-scale diversions and terror acts outside the republic.

On the eve of the International Day of Invalids, marked on December 3, Makhachkala hosted a cultural-and-sports festival for children with disabilities. Now, Dagestan has about 27 thousand children-invalids.

Mushvig Guseinov, imprisoned journalist of the newspaper "Bizim Yol" (Our Way), who suffers from tuberculosis, is indignant by statements of the officials of the Azerbaijani Penitentiary Service that his health condition has normalized. "They just want me to die," Mushvig said yesterday in a telephone conversation with his relatives, as reported by his sister Dilbyar Guseinova.

The trial is over in Tskhinvali of the four Georgian minors detained on November 4, 2009, by power agents of South Ossetia.

The message about the intention of a number of Russian human rights organizations to set up the Public Commission for monitoring the situation with observance of human rights in the territory of the Chechen Republic has caused contradictory reactions in the republic. Some members of local human rights NGOs saw in this initiative a sort of encroachment of "Varangians" on their sphere of influence; others believe that the commission will help local residents.

The section "Family and Public Health" of the Forum "Caucasus. Traditions and Modernization", held on November 30 in Kabardino-Balkaria, discussed the issue of preserving the Caucasian family values at the background of modernization of the rest of the life. In the opinion of singer Varvara, mother of four children, these values are surely exemplary. Other debated topics were social problems, health of the population and demography.

Militants of Northern Caucasus call the terror act against the "Neva-Express" train a link in the chain of "blows on strategic objects in the territory of Russia."

The Georgian party has released five citizens of South Ossetia: Ibragim Laliev, Lavrentiy Kaziev, Yakov Tekhov, Pavel Tekhov and Vladimir Eloev. The hostages were handed over at the Georgian-South-Ossetian border.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Chechnya finds that the militants' statement about involvement of Doku Umarov's people in blowing up the "Neva-Express" to be just bluffing. However, their federal colleagues refrain from comments.

The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of the young bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Gadjizade, convicted for hooliganism and inflicting bodily injuries, has not resulted in any decrease of critical ideas in the blogosphere of Azerbaijan. This is proved by the analysis of blogs and interviews conducted by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent among civil society figures, experts and bloggers.

On December 1 in Krasnodar, opposite the building of the Forestry Department of the Krasnodar Territory, a picket was held in defence of the would-be Utrish Natural Reserve. Activists demanded, in particular, to stop construction of the so-called "anti-fire" road, where, in their opinion, relic forests are felled.

Today, the city of Anapa was to hold public hearings on the project "Forest Anti-Fire Road in the Anapa District Forestry", where the customer is the Department of Forestry of the Krasnodar Territory.

On December 1, the capital of Northern Ossetia starts a public reception office, intended to render free-of-charge legal aid and organized by law students.

The public organization of the Adyg people "Khasse" has made a statement on the fact of beating the leader of the "Circassian Congress" Ruslan Keshev in Kabardino-Balkaria. The statement notes that the aim of this attack was to disrupt preparation for the rally of Adyg public planned for December 5 in Nalchik.

Today, at the Tbilisi airport, a group of Russian experts was not allowed to cross the state border. Having spent half an hour in Georgia, they took a return flight and came back to Moscow via Yerevan.

Workers of mass media, authorities and the public took part in the section "Inter-Confessional and Interethnic Dialogue in Media Space" of the forum "Caucasus: Tradition and Modernization", held on November 30, 2009, in Nalchik.

As reported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ingushetia, on November 25 in Karabulak, two suspected militants were killed in a skirmish in their VAZ-2109 car. The casualties were Mustafa Tochiev and Khamzat Uzhakhov. Mustafa was in federal search. However, the eyewitnesses and Uzhakhov's relatives assert that Tochiev was just a passenger in Uzhakhov's taxi car.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Georgia has handed over to Russia its notes of protest related to the murder in Moscow on November 23 of Eduard Gurtskaya, a refugee from Abkhazia, and detention on November 29 of Ramaz Makasarashvili, a citizen of Georgia.