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September 6th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Why can’t we subtitle our blogs anymore? I would like to put something other than “just another journalspace….” or whatever. sucks.
It’s simple:
Go to Dashboard -> Settings -> Settings -> Tagline
July 29th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Six people were killed in an automobile accident near the village of Pustotyne (Nosovskyi district of the Chernihiv region) on July 18.
The Emergency Situations Ministry’s main department in the Chernihiv region announced this in a statement, a text of which Ukrainian News obtained.
According to the statement, the 47-year-old driver of a Cherry Tiggo SUV lost control of the automobile at high speed at about 00:30 on July 18 and collided with a tree on the side of the road. The automobile rebounded six meters away from the tree and burst into fire.
The others killed in the accident were the driver’s two sons (24-year-old Ihor and 24-year-old Ruslan), their 19-year-old friend, a 20-year-old woman, and an 18-year-old resident of Pustotyne.
The automobile was found at about 07:00.
An investigation has been launched.
According to witnesses who saw the automobile and its passengers near Pustotyne’s House of Culture, the driver and the passengers came from Kyiv to visit relatives and seemed to be in a state of alcoholic intoxication.
According to the press service of the Emergency Situations Ministry, 17 people were killed and 171 injured in 130 automobile accidents in Ukraine on July 18.
June 24th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
THERE are now four ski resorts in New Zealand following the opening of two new resorts in the North Island and Queenstown.
Turoa ski area, on Mt Ruapehu in the central North Island, opened on the weekend with over 3000 skiers/riders hitting the slopes.
”The upper mountain lift facilities were opened under sunny skies, while over 1000 skiers and riders enjoyed snowy conditions on the lower slopes on Saturday,” Marketing Manager Mike Smith said.
Enlarge Competition: Win a trip to the snow
Turoa skiers and riders can enjoy top to bottom slope action with the opening of The High Noon Express today – the earliest in 30 years.
At The Remarkables ski area, near Queenstown keen skier and riders emerged through the low hanging surrounding cloud to find the ski area bathed in winter sunshine.
“It was an awesome day. Just one of those beautiful days with excellent snow and everything running the way it should be,” the Remarkables ski area manager, Ross Lawrence, said.
”We were able to open all lifts including the shuttle for Homeward Run, which we thought was a pretty good effort for opening day.”
It will be another big weekend ahead for New Zealand’s premier resorts with the scheduled openings of Cardrona (26 June), Whakapapa and Treble Cone (both on 27 June). The 35th anniversary Winterfestival event starts in Queenstown this weekend also. It will continue until 5 July.
Mt Hutt ski area, near Christchurch, was the first ski resort in New Zealand to open. The 30th May opening date was two weeks ahead of schedule due to cold conditions and good snow cover.
June 24th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
In the center of the Chernihiv city builders dug out remains of an ancient cemetery dated to 11-13 centuries. Diggers found 30 tombs of the first Christians – men, women and children. It is only a small part of the big necropolis, which situated then on the territory of the modern city center. Historians assure that the archeological find proves that Chernihiv was very powerful city in the times of Kyiv Rus’.
In accordance with ancient customs, Christians were buried without decoration. But it was dug out a lot of nails – only what remained from wooden coffins of the 11 century. Anthropologists assert that examination of remains of skeletons, which have been lying underground for nine hundred years, can show diseases then citizens suffered.
After the archeological dig finds will be delivered to a museum.
June 23rd, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Ukrainian Journal quoted Naftogaz Ukrayiny said Ukraine and the European Union jointly work on a solution to purchase USD 4.2 billion worth of natural gas to fill Ukrainian underground gas tanks to secure steady gas transit to Europe.
Naftogaz said in a statement that a Naftogaz Ukrayiny team in Brussels met European Commission officials earlier Thursday to discuss two possible ways of solving the problem.
Naftogaz said in the statement that “The first one is to provide Ukraine with a loan of USD 4.2 billion. The second one is letting European companies purchase gas and store it in Ukrainian gas tanks.”
June 22nd, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
The boating season on the Dnipro River is short. But many options are now available, from one-hour jaunts on the spectacular waterway to long excursions that end at the Black Sea.
The Dnipro River made it on the top 10 list of European river cruises by Reuters news agency. It’s hard to argue with the honor.
The ancient waterway has marvelous landscapes along its banks, with Pechersk Lavra and other churches rising majestically from the slopes. Seeing the historical birthplace of Kyivan Rus more than a millennium ago only enhances the splendor of these river excursions on hot summer days.
The opportunities for enjoying the river range from a one-hour trip along Kyiv to 12-day cruises ending in Odesa.
The easiest way to get to the pleasure boats is to go straight to the river station, which is near Poshtova Ploshcha metro station in Podil district. The station is easily distinguished by the cylindrical tower on its roof, with a mast at top, resembling a real ship’s mast.
Tickets are sold on the wharf nearby. If you have trouble finding it, just follow the directions of the gaggle of young men and women trying to point the way to their employers’ ships. “One hour cruise! Enjoy the panorama of Kyiv!” or “An unusual trip to the Kyiv Sea!” they shout, as they give out promotional fliers.
Some offer a free beverage to get you on board, but the prices don’t vary much among rival companies offering short trips. The real prices on the quay are a little bit cheaper than those listed on the website of River passenger excursion agency (www.rpea.com.ua), where a full timetable of trips can also be found, but only in the Russian language.
On clear evenings and holidays, the boats are overcrowded, prompting some to call them “floating marshrutkas” – after the common form of mini-bus public transportation on land.
“I feel like I’m in a marshrutka,” said Olena Pavlova who took a short excursion around Kyiv, after she finally found a seat in the corner of the upper deck of the ship.
She was trying to get as far as possible from the crowd and blaring loud music. Noisy children were going down to the bar for their free glass of juice and young men were loudly ordering pancakes. But the cool air and picturesque hills, seen from the middle of the river, is an unusual treat that keeps passengers coming back for more.
Many find a boat ride to be quite soothing after a long day at work. When the weather is great, one boatload of passengers disembarks as another queue waits impatiently for the next trip.
Panorama of Kyiv is a one-hour trip starting daily, officially at 10 a.m. The ship, however, leaves when at least 40 customers hop aboard. In the same southerly direction are trips to Osokorky. English-speaking guides can be ordered by groups from the river agency by calling 425-1268 or 462-5019.
The trip to Osokorky starts at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. every day, with tickets selling for Hr 40 – 45. But the municipal authorities plan to launch a ferry later this summer that can get you between Podil and Osokorky for less, and more often. The ferry may run daily, starting at 7 a.m. at Osokorky. It is expected to take 1 hour and 40 minutes to complete a trip to Podil, with two five-minute stops on the way, at Bereznyaky and by the Metro Bridge. A single ferry can fit up to 500 passengers, and is expected to cost Hr 7 per trip.
If you would rather go north, you can sail to Obolon, where the Desna River joins the Dnipro and finally to the Kyiv Sea, which is an artificial water pool. Obolon bay can be seen every day, with a trip that lasts from 4 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. (Hr 35 - 40).
Trips to mouth of the Desna River only run on Fridays and weekends. A day-trip lasts two hours (12 – 2 p.m., Hr 40). In the evening, it is one hour longer and more expensive (5 – 8 p.m., Hr 60).
During the longest trip north, a four-hour trip to the Kyiv Sea, the ship goes though the concrete sluice which divides the river and the artificial pool, where the water level is much higher. The trip starts daily from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. (tickets
Hr 70 and 80), there is also a route that is half an hour shorter that runs on Friday and weekends (1 – 4.30 p.m., Hr 70).
The river station has 14 ships left from Soviet times running these tourism routes.
Seven years ago, there were also longer routes to Kaniv, where the tomb of the Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko is located. A faster boat called “raketa,” (meaning rocket) sailed to it, and a number of other destinations. But as these boats rusted away, trips to other cities were cancelled. Currently there are no plans to buy a new boat and create new routes.
But nothing is out of reach for a determined water traveler. If you want to create a private sailing route, you can easily rent a cruise boat, a house on water, a yacht or a motor boat.
Renting a cruiser from the river station for a birthday, corporate or wedding celebration costs Hr 600-2,000 per hour. Kyiv Tourist Inform Center’s website (www.info-kyiv.com.ua) in water transport section has a list of 20 cruisers, 16 yachts and 50 speedboats, complete with telephone numbers where they can be ordered.
For example, Dovzhenko cruiser can be rented for $200 per hour or for $2,400 for 12 hours. To spend a weekend on the “Diva” houseboat, which can accommodate up to 12 people, costs $150 per hour or $1,800 per day and night.
A special option to explore the river is, of course, a yacht. VIP motor yacht can be rented from $300 per hour at www.kievkater.com.ua. Sailing yachts are cheaper.
“We usually don’t dock at the river station because it is overcrowded, like Khreshchatyk Street. We sail off from the Berkovshchyna Bay,” said Andriy Koval, owner and devoted captain of the yacht with the romantic name “Kohana” (“Beloved”). “We usually go south to the wild beaches or a tour of rich houses of Koncha-Zaspa. Foreigners like that.”
Koval rents out his yacht for Hr 400 per hour or Hr 3,000 per day. “Time runs differently on board. One day on the yacht is like a week of vacation.” Thanks to the title “Kohana,” his yacht is often chosen by young couples. “This year one [marriage] proposition has already been made on board,” Koval said with pride. “But usually young women order it for their boyfriends.” The information about “Kohana” in English can be found at the website http://kohana.kiev.ua or by phone 8 (050) 550-0786.
Going down the Dnipro is possible with Chervona Ruta cruise company, which owns three ships: the Dnipro Princess, General Vatutin and the Dnipro Star. They organize 10-12 day tours.
“We have the following routes: Kyiv – Zaporizhya – Kherson – Sevastopol – Odesa and return,” said Lesya Bohuslavska, sales director of the company. “If becomes a 12-day route then Kaniv and Kremenchuk are added.”
In every port, the ship stops for at least seven hours. Large cities like Sevastopol and Odesa have two-day stops. An average 600-800 euro tour includes three meals a day, excursions around cities and lectures on Ukrainian culture, history, language and dress. Passengers also learn to sing Ukrainian songs and to make the national dish varenyky.
“Eighty percent of the tourists are foreigners and they are interested in everything connected with Ukraine,” Bohuslavska explains. This year, however, they have fewer people from the United States and Canada.
“The English language is very rare on our cruisers now. Americans and English-language speakers suffered more from the crisis,” Bohuslavska said. The timetable of the tours and description of the boats can be found at http://ruta-cruise.com/en or 253-9247.
June 15th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Focus magazine has represented the third annual rating “The best 55 cities for living in Ukraine”. Lviv has become the winner in 2009, Podrobnosti reports with reference to Interfax-Ukraine.
Lviv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsy, Yalta, Kharkiv, Odessa, Ilichevsk, Simferopil and Sevastopil have been included into the list of the best cities of Ukraine.
Experts appreciated highly business and educational potential of Lviv and also the level of cultural events and attraction for tourists.
Kolomya has been remained since the previous year the safest city – there is the lowest level of criminality.
Chernihiv has been remained the cleanest city. Also it provides the residents with the nest municipal services.
The most available dwelling is situated in Mariupol. The prices are lower fourfold than in Kyiv.
The highest wages are in Enerhodar, the average salary comes to UAH 3,303. Yalta is a city with the highly developed infrastructure of the city. Odessa is the city with the lowest level of unemployment.
June 15th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Brenda’s son Graeme and his friend David Reed are among the voluntary drivers who will be joining an aid convoy to transport the goods to the Ukraine. Each return journey costs £1,000 and takes about 10 days.
Brenda said: “I collect all kinds of necessities to go out to them including clothes, shoes, bedding, tools and toys and I’ve also got 100 toothbrushes to send.
“It’s little things like that they haven’t got that pulls on my heartstrings, when you think how cheaply you can buy toothbrushes here.
“The only shower they have, for example, is a galvanised bucket with holes in it they pour water through.
“Each week I buy £5 worth of wool for our local volunteers to knit up into warm jumpers for the children – it gets very cold in winter where they are.”
The group supports a 30-bed unit in the village of Chernihiv in the Ukraine where children suffering from leukaemia go for a 21-day course of treatment.
The village is close to Chernobyl where the nuclear reactor blew up in 1986, causing widespread radioactive fall-out. Children, even though born much later, are still suffering from the effects.
Brenda welcomes donations of all kinds and said: “If anyone has unwanted single-bed size duvets and sheets we would very much like to have them to go with the duvet covers and pillowcases I’ve got from charity shops where they save them for me.”
Organisers Pauline Craven and Alan Ailliar of Felsted Aid for Deprived Children will give an illustrated presentation about their work for anyone who is interested at Briggswath and Sleights Methodist Chapel on 20 June starting at 7.30pm. For further information or to make donations call Brenda on (01947) 603356.
June 15th, 2009 in Uncategorized by Ivan
Ukraine’s preparations to co-host the European Football Championship in 2012 have fallen badly behind schedule.
Uefa, Europe’s football governing body, has given the country until 30 November to show significant improvement, or face losing most of the matches to the co-hosts, Poland.
In the eastern city of Donetsk, people are riding high on a tide of football fever.
In May their team, Shakhtar, won the Uefa cup. Thousands came out onto the streets to celebrate and welcome the players home.
The crowd seemed oblivious to the brooding presence of a massive bronze Lenin watching over the proceedings - a reminder of Ukraine’s Soviet past.
But then Lenin too looked unmoved, almost as if he knew that the party could soon be over.
Elusive investors
Shakhtar is building a state-of-the-art new stadium in Donetsk, with a capacity of 50,000.
It is due to open at the end of August, and when it does, it will be the most technologically advanced in the country.
But the new Donbass Arena may never host a match in Euro 2012. Not because there is anything wrong with the stadium itself, but because the other infrastructure simply is not there - the airports, the highways and the hotels.
Alexander Rotov is the president of Gerc, one of Ukraine’s leading construction companies.
He has plans to build a new four-star hotel in Donetsk, in time for the competition.
He has got the land, he got the planning permission. But he is having trouble financing the project.
“We have a letter of support from the government to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the EBRD,” he says. “But the EBRD say they will only invest money if there are already Ukrainian investors on board.”
And Ukrainian investors are proving hard to find, even though the amount of money is relatively small - $30m (£18m).
Mr Rotov blames the economic crisis, which has hit Ukraine hard.
The country’s banking system is under heavy strain, and even those lenders which are not on the brink of collapse are being very cautious with their funds.
And then there are the roads.
Crumbling infrastructure
The 19th Century satirist, Nikolai Gogol, once said that Russia was a country of “fools and bad roads”.
Gogol was a Ukrainian (though he wrote in Russian) and Ukraine was at that time part of the Russian Empire.
The second half of his blunt assessment certainly applies today to many of Ukraine’s highways, which are crumbling and littered with potholes.
The country’s transport infrastructure is in need of massive investment before it can cope with bus-loads of European football fans, let alone coaches full of footballers and their Wives-and-Girlfriends (WAGs.)
In the capital, Kiev, things only get worse.
Twice a day, the main artery from the airport into town turns itself into a vast traffic jam.
Like a metaphor for Ukraine’s preparations for the tournament as a whole, it is paralysed by a combination of economic crisis, political instability, and endemic corruption.
Political interference
Andrei Kapustin is an investigative journalist who runs a website dedicated to tracking Ukraine’s preparations for Euro 2012.
“As soon as it was announced that Ukraine was due to host the competition,” he says, “local officials reached for their giant calculators to work out how they could get their hands on this money.”
There are vast sums of money involved, and important contracts up for grabs to renovate airports, stadiums and other infrastructure.
But with a presidential election due before the end of January, Andrei Kapustin says that politics is getting in the way.
“The whole process is far too politicised. Because in Ukraine, all top managers are also political figures and Euro 2012 has become a political battleground.”
The Ukrainian authorities agree they are playing for high stakes.
“Euro 2012, for the Ukrainian people, is not only a football event,” Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Vasiukyk says.
Mr Vasiunyk is specifically responsible for Ukraine’s preparations to host the competition.
“It’s the biggest political and social project in the 18-year history of independent Ukraine,” he adds. “It is one of the very practical steps for integrating Ukraine into the European community.”
“If we will prepare to the highest standard, it means that we are equal partners, and Ukraine, like Poland, is a European country.”
Delays
When Ukraine and Poland’s joint bid to host the competition was declared the winner in Cardiff in 2007, the plan was that matches would be played in four cities in each country.
But after its latest assessment in May, Uefa said that so far, only Kiev was on track to host any matches at all.
If things stay that way, it will mean more than just a massive embarrassment for the Ukrainian authorities.
Kiev’s Olympic stadium is undergoing a programme of expansion and renovation that has been beset by delays and disagreements over planning permission and land ownership.
Nearby are two football pitches attached to a football academy, where kids hone their ball-skills.
Progress in Ukraine’s preparations for the competition over the next few months will have a direct impact not only on these children’s future sports facilities, but also on the kind of country in which they grow up.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8097725.stm
Are you in Ukraine? Do you think the country will be able to complete its preparations for Euro 2012 in time? Do you think it is worth it, or is it proving too costly? How important is the event to Ukraine? Send us your comments using the form below.
