President Mintimer Shaimiev, for instance, has turned Tatarstan into a kind of mini-state, complete with its own economic policy.
Its leader, Aslan Abashidze, runs an odd and throughly autocratic mini-state, Ajaria, on the Black Sea border with Turkey.
This mini-state guarantees a 15-year tax holiday, an easy promise given the fact that it has no personal or corporate income tax.
With a population of just 650, 000 and a territory the size of Northern Ireland, the mountainous mini-state would be a midget on its own.
It is a helpful go- between in regional disputes, trying, for example, to find a settlement between Moldova and the mini-state of Transdniestria, whereas Russia is quite happy to keep that pot simmering.
The results showed that the people who had higher levels of infection had a 25 percent increase in the risk of a low score on a common test of cognition called the Mini-Mental State Examination.
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Yet for a Social Democratic party traditionally wedded to fortifying the welfare state, they constitute a mini-revolution.
As if to drive home the challenge, the Berlin state government took the opportunity to launch its own mini Tech City initiative, called Login.
Back in the 1970s the people supporting the mini-bottles-only rule got it embedded in the state constitution, any amendment to which requires a two-thirds vote by both houses of the state legislature, as well as approval by a majority of South Carolina's voters in a referendum.
"Most exciting is the basalt signature in the layered cliffs, " said Professor Phil Christensen, of Arizona State University, Tempe, US, and lead scientist for the Mini-Tes.
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