What to do while in Ukraine

Ukraine’s economy slipped into its third recession since 2008 in the third quarter as industrial production plummeted. Gross domestic product fell 0.4 percent from the previous three months after shrinking 0.5 percent in the second quarter, the state statistics committee, based in the capital, Kiev, said today on its website , citing preliminary data. GDP fell 1.5 percent from a year earlier, worse than the median estimate of 12 economists in a Bloomberg survey for 0.2 percent growth. “The economy is in a protracted stagnation as it moves from one recession to another,” Alexander Valchyshen, head of research at Investment Capital Ukraine in Kiev, said by phone. “The government’s policy to boost economic growth has failed.” Ukraine is struggling amid falling global demand for products such as steel, a widening current-account gap, shrinking foreign reserves and trade restrictions from Russia, its biggest export market. It’s failed to seal a loan from the International Monetary Fu...

Map shows more than 2000 nuclear bombs exploded in last 50 years. The Manhattan Project was set up midway through the Second World War and began work on developing the U.S' nuclear technology. In May 1945 Germany signed a surrender agreement with the Allies to signal the end of the war in Europe, however, the war in the Pacific carried on and the Allies were contemplating invading Japan. They asked Japan to surrender but the Japanese government ignored the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945. By August 1945, the Manhattan Project had developed and tested atomic bombs at its Los Alamos base By August 1945, the Manhattan Project had developed and tested atomic bombs at its Los Alamos base and on 6 August, a Little Boy atomic bomb, left, was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a Fat Man bomb,right, on Nagasaki three days later. The blasts are said to have killed a total of 245,000 deaths by November 1945 and the effects from radiation are still reported to this d...

  Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Olekandr Vilkul has launched of a new pilot grain-handling complex "Brooklyn-Kiev" Ltd in the Odessa commercial sea port, the Information-analytical Bulletin of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine informs. New grain elevator at Androsovsky breakwater is a unique, modern, high-tech handling complex, which is unparalleled at Odessa port both by scope of simultaneous storage and planned annual turnover. Capacity of the terminal is 4 million tons of grain annually. The terminal includes a berth (254 meters length and 12.5 meters depth at the boundary), which can take vessels up to 60 tons of dead weight. The grain terminal (designed for 240 tons of simultaneous grain storage) will be one of the most advanced terminals at the Black Sea. Total project cost is 125 million USD, of which 95 million USD of investments and the rest is ensured by the port. The terminal's startup created 230 jobs for Odessa. Experts s...

Men's basketball team Fenerbahce Ulker of Turkey defeated Ukraine's Budivelnik Kiev 102-84 in the first game of Group A in Turkish Airlines Euroleague.   The match, played in 'Palace of Sport' was refereed by Sreten Radovic from Croatia, Carmelo Paternico from Italy and Apostolas Kalpakas from Sweden. Bo McCalebb with 11, Nemanje Bjelica with 11, Melih with 12, Linas Kleiza with 12, Gasper Vidmar with 9, Luka Zoric with 10, Kenan with 2, Bojan Bogdanovic with 21 and Emir Preldzic with 14 played and scored for Turkey.  Blake Ahearn with 16, Darjus Lavrinovic with 21, Artur Drozdov, Sergiy Gorbenko with 2, Janis Strelnieks with 14, Michailis Anisimov with 3, Andriy Lebedintsev, Oleksandr Tishchenko, Kostiantyn Aniliienko with 2, Micah Downs with 7, Ricky Minard with 7 and Dajuan Summers with 12 played and scored for Ukraine. First period: 15-18 Half time: 43-41 Third period: 77-71

A big boxing show will take place on November 9th at the Palace of Sports in Kiev, Ukraine, promoted by K2 Promotions Ukraine . Local light-heavyweight star Vyacheslav “Steel Power” Uzelkov (29-3, 18 KOs) will dispute vacant IBO International light heavyweight title against American KO-artist Jaidon “The Don” Сodrington (21-3, 17 KOs) in the main event. The 34-year-old Uzelkov is a former World (WBA) and European (EBU) title challenger who has couple of decent victories in his record including 6th round KO win over former WBA World champion Gabriel Campillo and a UD win over two-time WBO contender Alejandro Lakatos. Codrington,29, is known as a runner-up of reality boxing show “The Contender,” where he stopped previously unbeaten Texas brawler Brian Vera and met current WBC world champ Sakio Bika in a 2007 Fight of the Year candidate. A special attraction of upcoming show will be pro debut of the international amateur-boxing superstar and 2012 London Olympic Gold ...

Ukraine’s navy flagship, the Hetman Sahaidachny frigate , started patrolling naval routes off the African coast on Saturday as part of NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield, Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency said. "The Ukrainian ship has already covered several hundred nautical miles in the Gulf of Aden and started its patrolling round together with warships of the US, Danish and Dutch navies,” the agency quoted Ukraine’s Navy command as saying. Global powers, including NATO, the European Union and Russia, have launched anti-piracy missions in response to a rising amount of piracy off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean. Operation Ocean Shield aims to deter and disrupt pirate attacks, protect vessels and help increase overall security in the region since 2008. In March 2012, the North Atlantic Council extended the operation until the end of 2014. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian parliament has approved a presidential decree to join the international anti-piracy effo...

In Kiev, 18.5% of female students work part-time as prostitutes to earn money for their education. The reason behind this trend is the high cost of a good education in private universities and the low income of their families. There is strong reaction from some social groups and student groups against this trend, but this trend is spreading like a virus among poor students who see this as a means to paying for their expensive costs of higher education. Euro 2012, which Ukraine co-hosted with Poland, encouraged youth into prostitution, because this event provided a big chance for female students to start their career successfully, and they managed to establish good contacts in Europe for their future business. Westernization of the Ukrainian society without providing social security to people is playing havoc with the social fabric of this Eastern European country where the government is withdrawing support to people in all important sectors including education and healt...

After a high profile year, during which the country co-hosted the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship (with Poland), Ukraine’s air transport industry suffered the potentially disastrous loss of one of its two main carriers, AeroSvit . Passenger numbers across the country’s main airports had passed the 13 million mark in 2012, with Kiev’s two airports (Borispol and Zhulyany) handling almost 9.4 million on their own. Since 2012, Kiev Zhulyany (the original airport serving Kiev) has been growing rapidly, and promoting itself as a more efficient alternative to Kiev Borispol. In the first half of 2013 its passenger numbers have more than doubled to over 800,000 passengers.  Given that the country is bigger than Spain (but smaller than France) and has a population of well over 40 million people, there is clearly considerable scope for air traffic demand to grow, as the country’s economic prosperity rises thanks to its energy industries. UIA grows rapidly to fill Ae...