Pensioners have staged public protests in cities and towns across Russia 's even going so far as to block major streets 's against a new system of cash payments in lieu of free or discounted social benefits. The new system, which affects medicine, electricity, telecommunications and public transportation, took effect on Jan. 1 but was not felt until Jan. 10 due to the extended New Year and Orthodox Christmas holiday. Andrei Makarkin of the Center for Political Technology said that public protests took place on a scale that Russia hadn't seen since coal miners took to blocking Siberian railways and Moscow streets in 1998. Eventually their demands were heard, and Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov promised that travel passes would be sold to pensioners on a discount basis.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters in Washington, D.C., that he was not planning to take part in the 2008 presidential election. He said that he had been asked the question many times and that his answer is "very simple: no." The United Russia party leader and State Duma speaker, Boris Gryzlov, said the following day that his party would support whichever candidate President Vladimir Putin proposed.
The European Commission has announced that it would consider funding a foreign-based information center that provides unbiased coverage of the situation in Belarus. Belapan, a news agency, reported Jan. 13 that Bogdan Klich, a member of the European Parliament from Poland, told a group of Belarusian journalists about the proposal to launch a center that would run a television channel and a radio station broadcasting to Belarus, as well as several Web sites. Klich added that EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has promised to study the project and look for funding possibilities.
At the age of 66, Adriana Iliescu became the world's oldest recorded mother on Jan. 16, giving birth to a baby girl in Bucharest. Doctors performed an emergency cesarean section after the child's twin sister died in the womb. Dr. Bogdan Marinescu, head of Giulesti Maternity Hospital in the Romanian capital, said the surviving baby and her mother were feeling well after their ordeal. "By cesarean surgery, a female [baby] weighing 1,400 grams was born. [She] is behaving normally," Marinescu said. "She needs help breathing and, to my extreme delight, she had her first meal 15 minutes ago 's one milliliter of glucose." Iliescu received fertility treatment for nine years before becoming pregnant. She was artificially inseminated with the sperm of an anonymous donor.
Azerbaijan's opposition media continued to speculate about the whereabouts of President Ilham Aliyev, who departed on a previously unannounced vacation following a stormy meeting on Jan. 3 of the National Security Council. Some papers have suggested that Aliyev is abroad, either in London or Moscow, while others have claimed he is undergoing medical treatment. On Jan. 18, the Turan news agency quoted unnamed government officials as saying that the president would return to work "in the next few days."
