Demagogue

This morning at 8:01 a.m. EST, Reuters News Service released this story about Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister:

Yegor Gaidar, architect of Russia's market reforms, was being treated in a Moscow hospital on Wednesday after coming close to death with a mystery ailment during a visit to Ireland, friends and family said.

Former acting prime minister Gaidar, 50, who unleashed economic shock therapy before the dust had settled on the ruins of the Soviet Union, fell unconscious with unexplained symptoms on November 24 during a visit to Dublin to present his new book, "Death of the Empire."

It's a pretty conventional news story until the 8th paragraph, which reads as follows:

A tubby economist who became reform commissar and acting prime minister for former president Boris Yeltsin, Gaidar provoked awe and antipathy for freeing prices in 1992 and for launching the first wave of privatizations after the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to the dictionary, the word tubby means "pudgy" or "fat."

So why does Reuters consider it newsworthy to inform us that Gaidar is overweight? Why the hell is this relevant to the story? Where are Reuters' copy editors?