Michelin girl and other news

The MoscowTimes (photo courtesy of Reuters) reports the birth of a 7.75kg (16 pounds?) baby girl to a proud mother in Siberia. She's her twelfth child; apparently all her children were 5 kgs or more. It looks like wee Nadya has a bit of a mouth about her already - you can just see her in 40 year's time not taking any bullshit from anyone. The little child next to her looks, which has ribs, totally stunned!
(for my more sensitive readers - yes, the thoughts of freakshow and invasion of privacy did cross my mind, very briefly).

That blue stuff on her belly button (do they cut them off short in Russia, or what?) is some sort of disinfectant; even in Vilnius you sometimes see children who've had chickenpox and have little blue spots all over their pale little faces.

I was raiding the paper of news about the Lithuanian (...Russian...) politician (semi-ex) Uspazkich who had stormed into parliament a few years ago, but then got into deep trouble corruption-wise, to the degree that he fled to Russia where presumably he has a right to stay, having been of that citizenship. It seems he has returned to Vilnius and been arrested on arrival. Glad I was not on that flight. There is a rumour that his return might have something to do with a by-election in some corner of Lithuania, but surely to God, he wouldn't have the nerve? He probably would....

In the UK politicians tend to get accused of bedroom pecadillos and high-level corruption [in the interests of the nation....], in Lithuania it's personal corruption, bedroom stuff or KGB membership, but in Georgia it's murder and mayhem. A disgusted former defence minister (who was demoted), Okruashvili, has accused the president, Sakaashvili of ordering him to kill the richest man in Georgia, to attack an MP, Valery Gelashvili who spends much of his time in Lithuania (and how can he be an MP in Georgia?), and to have had involvement in the death of Zhvania, the former prime minister, who died mysteriously of gas poisoning one cold spring a year or two ago. All this on the website www.civil.ge - not very civil, no?

In Vilnius Gelashvili has an extremely posh hotel on Pilies Street, the main tourist thoroughfare. This article which says 'he maintains some business interests in Vilnius' is slightly understating that fact....