TODAY:  The RA Blog wishes you a very happy new year, Opposition gathers momentum in Georgia, Spain extradites a Chechen to Russia, reactions to the doomsday professor, former North Ossetian Mayor gunned down, Nicaragua wants closer relations with Moscow, and the Czechs prepare to handle a difficult EU presidency.

Celebrating New Year’s Eve is pretty serious business in Russia – making Times Square look like a Disney on Ice – and as such, I’d like to communicate the personal best wishes to all our readers from Robert Amsterdam, Grigory Pasko, and the entire team at this blog. We’re grateful for your interest in this project, and look forward to making the RA blog even better in 2009. We are especially happy that at least one political prisoner, Vasily Alexanyan, will finally be able to spend the holiday with family.  (The only downside of NYE – there is not a tremendous amount of exciting news for us to discuss, so the news blasts may be quite brief today.)