This past week saw very important Iranian presidential elections. The coverage on the Georigan news was slight, it was treated like the typical international news: Obama said something about something, big shots meet in Switzerland, people die in Syria, some flood in Paraguay or Bangladesh. There wasn't much context, or what this means for Georgia.

They say that Georgia’s capital city Tbilisi is an elegant conurbation. Would it not be fairer to say as much as it only having a chance to be elegant? Ancient town with beautiful landscape, fairy-tale-kind-of looks by night, river flowing right through it, hills around, and all that sort of thing... but behold - what weird eclecticism in style! Tbilisi is nothing terribly outstanding, speaking architecturally – a couple of attractive avenues aligned with more or less eye-catching and curious buildings with a history of no more than a couple of hundred years, several older shrines of various denominations and mostly, the soviet-type residential buildings, strewn around in the ugliest possible way all over the place.

We began our conversation with the Head of Defense Department with terrorist act in Afghanistan:

‘Kadiev’s pseudo-disappearance was not incidental’

Last week on charges of attempted terrorist act foreign citizens –Michael Kadiev and Rizvan Omarov were detained. After spreading the ominous video, majority of experts didn’t rule out the threat of terrorist acts on the territory of our country. We requested Zaal Kasrelishvili, Chairman of ‘Caucasian Peoples’ Confederation’ to comment on this issue.

Interview with political scientist Nikolai Svanidze

Declarations of Russian President Vladimir Putin with regard to Georgia in which he presents himself as a well-wisher, who wants to improve relations between the two countries, became the topic of discussion of Georgian people. We discussed this and other topical issues with Russian political scientist and publicist Nikolai Svanidze.

GEL 2 336 857.14 was spent on the official visits made by Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia abroad since January 1, 2012 to January 31, 2013, Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), a non-governmental watch-dog closely monitoring governmental expenses, informed on June 5, 2013. The information is based on the data provided by the state chancellery of Georgia. However the provided information does not disclose details of the expenditures such as costs of fuel, tickets, guards, hotels etc. separately as well as the exact number of the delegation accompanying Georgian president in his official voyages costing unreasonably high sum to such a small and poor country like Georgia.

The loopholes in Georgian state procurement law create corruption risks that blemish the otherwise reputable electronic platform of Georgian state procurement, estimated as one of the most transparent phenomenon worldwide. To reduce corruption risks and make the state procurement fully transparent Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia) recommends Georgian government to remove the loopholes so as to reduce corruption risks and save the state coffer.

Inflow of Russian tourists to Georgia may increase if awareness of Georgia’s tourist potential will be promoted in Russia and transportation costs go down – this is the message sent by Russian tour operators visiting Georgia on June 7-11, 2013.

EUR 2 million funding of the EU will improve the competitiveness of the agricultural sector in Georgia by supporting effective policy making. The European Union and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations announce a new three year project that will provide technical assistance to the Georgian Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), office of European Delegation to Georgia informed Georgian Journal on June 11, 2013.

A recommendation package of how to remunerate the deposits dissolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union is offered to Georgian government by Young Lawyers. The non-governmental watchdog believes it is high time to address to solution of this enduring problem at last that deprived many Soviet citizens including Georgians off their lifetime savings after the Soviet regime fell and the rampant hyperinflation had eaten up all deposits.