New Delhi, Dec 18: The first session of the Delhi's new Legislative Assembly will begin here today.

Pro-term Speaker Jagdish Mukhi will administer the oath of membership to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, including other elected members of the Assembly.

The election of Speaker will be held on December 19.

Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna will deliver his address on December 22. On the last day of session on December 23, a Motion of Thanks for Lieutenant Governor''s address will be moved in the House.

Tbilisi  - "Georgia would have to be crazy to go to war with Russia, and we are not crazy," President Mikheil Saakashvili told a reporter from Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a May interview.

Saakashvili's analysis - the first half of it at least - was certainly proven accurate by August's South Ossetia War. Russia's army demolished Georgia in a lightning campaign, as the biggest gamble of the Georgian leader's life came up a bust.

The South Ossetians and Georgians had fought once before, in 1991. By the summer of 2008, Saakashvili and the Kremlin were in open conflict over control of South Ossetia, a renegade Georgian province boasting de facto independence with its government defying Tbilisi's right even to set foot in the region.

Washington, Dec 18: A group of scientists have vehemently criticized a recent Associated Press (AP) report on global warming, calling it "irrational hysteria," "horrifically bad" and "incredibly biased."

According to a report by Fox News, the scientists said that the AP report contained sweeping scientific errors and was a one-sided portrayal of a complicated issue.

Riga/Tallinn/Vilnius  - Economists are predicting doom and gloom for the Baltic states throughout 2009 and beyond. with jobless figures rising in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and swingeing public spending cuts already starting to bite.

According to Neil Shearing, a Baltic expert with London-based Capital Economics, the recession in the Baltics looks set to deepen. "We now expect output to contract by 5 per cent next year and by up to 1.5 per cent in 2010," he said.

However, after surviving 50 years of Soviet occupation, which they only threw off in 1991, Balts have a longstanding reputation for stoicism in difficult circumstances.

Bollywood hottest hunk John Abraham turned 36 on December 17, 2008.

According to sources, John Abraham who took birth on December 17, 1972 in Mumbai, has made his noticeable debut in Bollywood in 2003, in the erotic thriller flick ‘Jism.’

In 1999, Bollywood’s meat shop John Abraham had come in limelight when he won the Gladrags Manhunt Contest and went to Singapore for Manhunt International.

This naughty hottie has done his schooling in Bombay Scottish School and graduation in Economics from Jai Hind College, Mumbai.  

Gdansk  - Tourists visiting Poland's Baltic coast often snap photos at the gates of Gdansk's shipyard, famous as the site where Lech Walesa founded the Solidarity trade union and helped topple the country's communist regime.

Today the gates are adorned with plastic flowers, posters of John Paul II and flags bearing the red "Solidarnosc" logo. A kiosk nearby sells postcards of the iconic union leader and t-shirts saying, "God, Honor, Nation."

But past the gates, inside the vast industrial complex of workshops and storehouses, much has remained the same since the 1980s: From the grimy rotary phones in the lobby to the rusty equipment that slows production and forces Polish workers to Norway for better pay.