Whether by words or by her mere appearance, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s July 5 visit to Tbilisi will serve to reassure Georgian officials that Washington still values its strategic partnership with Georgia, analysts say.
Georgia’s journalists have undergone media training for nearly 20 years, but whether or not that instruction is making for better news coverage remains open to debate. Despite the millions of dollars spent on improving the quality of Georgian reporting, no clear way to judge the effectiveness of training programs exists.
American real estate mogul Donald Trump is considering investments in Tbilisi and the Georgian port city of Batumi, a senior executive at The Trump Organization told EurasiaNet.org.
Georgia is granting an early release to a Russian citizen serving a seven-year prison sentence for his part in an attempt to sell highly enriched uranium to undercover Georgian agents, a senior Interior Ministry official in Tbilisi told EurasiaNet.org.
Georgia’s May 30 local elections – the first since its defeat in the 2008 war with Russia – have ended with an apparent victory for President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement. But persistent concerns about abuse of public resources – and an underwhelming turnout in Tbilisi -- have cast a pall on the ruling party’s win.
Georgia’s May 30 local elections are providing an opportunity to gauge the mood of tens of thousands of Internally Displaced Persons, many of who will be voting for the first time since Tbilisi’s disastrous war with Russia in 2008. The governing United National Movement has made some effort to court IDP votes.
More than 30,000 Georgians were displaced by the August 2008 conflict over South Ossetia. Approximately two-thirds have been resettled into 36 new villages or apartment buildings, known as IDP (internally displaced person) settlements.
There is a crowded field for Tbilisi’s mayoral election, which will be held May 30. The vote will serve as the first serious test of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s political strength since Georgia’s disastrous 2008 war with Russia.
The Georgian government is charging an undisclosed number of individuals with criminal conduct in connection with a thwarted attempt to sell highly enriched uranium on the black market in Tbilisi.
Olgha Machitadze, 91, worked as a teacher of Georgian literature in a secondary school. She was married and had a son, but her family died in an accident. She still loves to read. “How I love them all, you don't know. I love to read and I read even now. Now I just have brochures, no books … I can't choose. I am Georgian and I love everything Georgian.”
