The Central Bank of Ukraine has established that the official hryvnia’s value may differ by no more than 2% from the average hryvnias value at the interbank market.

According to c.bank’s resolution (#264 dated April 30, 2009), posted at its official web site, the spread between the official hryvnia/dollar exchange rate and the interbank rate is restricted to no more than 2%.

According to the resolution, the restriction is a part of the financial policy memorandum, which was approved in line with Ukraine`s stand-by arrangement with the IMF.

The official exchange rate between the Ukraine’s hryvnia and the U.S. dollar will now be set based on the weighted-average buy and sell rate on the interbank currency exchange, plus or minus 2%. The c.bank previously set the official rate based on the interbank rate, but it had not established limit on the spread between them.

Ukraine`s Interior Ministry hit back Thursday at German police allegations that its minister had been prevented from boarding a plane because of drunken behaviour, saying he was innocent and entitled to his privacy, Reuters reported.

The opposition said Minister Yuri Lutsenko was an embarrassment and demanded his resignation.

A Frankfurt police spokesman said Wednesday Lutsenko had been kept off a flight to Seoul after becoming enraged at suggestions that he and his son were drunk. He said four officers, three men and a woman, were injured in the altercation.

The Interior Ministry said accounts of the confrontation at Frankfurt airport were mainly based on media reports and untrue.

"This totally innocent occurrence prompted by the late arrival of the Ukrainian delegation for the flight was blown out of proportion by invented details and groundless accusations about the `severe inebriation` of a minor...," it said.

Allegations of injuries to police, it ... Read more »

The government has commissioned the Finance Ministry and local governments to suspend licenses for gambling business for a month, in order to carry out a thorough fire and sanitary inspection of gambling institutions.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, the respective decision was made at an extraordinary session of government on Thursday.

“The accident that happened in the gambling hall in Dnipropetrovsk, I’m afraid, the majority of country’s gambling halls are in the same condition, because they opened gambling halls everywhere”, Yulia Tymoshenko stressed speaking about the necessity to suspend the licenses.

“During this period, law-enforcement agencies and the State Fire Safety Department of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine should carry out a complex inspection of fire safety and labor protection in all gambling houses, and guarantee a constant monitoring of their working regime”, the Prime Minister emphasized.

Besides, the government commissioned the Fu ... Read more »

Late last year, a tire repair factory in the Donetsk area of eastern Ukraine decided to bury smoking rubber waste in the ground not far from its building. The stench lingered in the air, drifting out over nearby villages. Upset inhabitants finally had enough, and, in December, arranged a mass protest near the tire factory`s gates. The press came and a scandal broke. In just a few days, the situation in Donetsk was known throughout the country.

Anyone, however, who had hoped that the case would draw attention to the wretched state of the environment in Ukraine and improve the situation has been brought back to earth since then. The factory received a fine, and the controversy quickly quieted down. Despite factories in Donetsk and elsewhere in Ukraine continuing to break laws on waste disposal and management, prosecutors and lawmakers have been slow to react.

"They constantly br ... Read more »

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) criticized President Barack Obama on Monday for looking “weak” over his administration’s handling of Iran and North Korea.

“Recently, Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad announced that his nation has successfully mastered every step necessary to enrich uranium, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed,” Romney wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “And North Korea's Kim Jong Il launched a long-range missile on the very day President Obama addressed the world about the peril of nuclear proliferation.”

“In both instances, the world's equation for peace and security was altered, and the Obama administration chose inaction.”

The former Republican presidential candidate conceded that it is “still very early in the Obama years,” but said that he is “hoping for a stronger foreign policy” from the president ... Read more »

For Democrats pushing an investigation into potential criminal wrongdoing in the war on terrorism, the GOP now has a two-word response: Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans say new revelations about a CIA briefing Pelosi received in 2002 have given them their best shot yet at blocking a sprawling probe into Bush a ... Read more »

I've been living with Windows 7 for some time now. Indeed, I've been using it since the first public release last fall.

At work, it has been my main machine for several months and I frequently bring it home and take it on the road. However, I have relied on my CNET-issued Windows XP machine for a number of key tasks, such as using the desktop version of Outlook and when I needed to access the Internet using a Sprint modem. (Our newsroom USB modem didn't work with the beta of Windows 7.)

With the release candidate, I was finally able to take the complete plunge. Since Tuesday, I have been using nothing else--at work and at home.

And I must say, despite one hiccup that I'll get to in a minute, Windows 7 is shaping up quite well. There's a lot to like about Windows 7 for those using Windows XP or ... Read more »

Climate change isn’t only bad for the Earth, it may be bad for your health — especially if you have allergies or asthma.

Global warming is making pollen seasons last longer, creating more ozone in the air, and even expanding the areas where insects flourish, putting more people with bee allergies at greater risk, experts say.

“Climate change will cause impacts in every area. Wet areas will get wetter, and drier climates are getting drier,” said Dr. Jeffrey Demain, director of the Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Center of Alaska, and a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington.

Those changes will mean more people with allergies and asthma will suffer. In wet areas, ... Read more »

Dogs share the same basic functional abilities as 2-year-old kids, at least when it comes to figuring out where older humans have hidden a treat.

So says a team of Hungarian researchers, who also found that 3-year-olds surpass their canine companions when confronted with the task.

At age 3, kids can locate a hidden toy by “reading” a pointed index finger, but younger children and dogs take their cues from the posture or direction of the hand, arm and torso — even if an index finger is pointing in the opposite direction, the researchers found.

“Dogs are following the general direction that a body is extended,” explained Bonnie Beaver, a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University. “This helps tighten up specifically what are the things that trigger the dog to look. Wolves don’t look [at ... Read more »

Children can experience troubling health effects if they come into contact with topical testosterone gels used by some American men, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced that two of these preparations would now carry boxed warnings to highlight the risk.

Accidental pediatric exposures to the gels can occur when the “consumer forgets to wash their hands or forgets to cover a treated area, and then has close contact with the child, or may have not waited for their skin to dry and then picks up a child,” Dr. Dianne Murphy, the FDA’s director of the Office of Pediatric Therapeutics within the Office of the Commissioner, said during a Thursday afternoon press conference.

Over time, these exposures can lead to premature and/or abnormal development ... Read more »

The number of confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu in the United States was approaching 1,900, federal health officials said Thursday, with most new cases now caused by person-to-person transmission and not some link to Mexico, as was the case when the outbreak began nearly two weeks ago.

“Only about 10 percent of confirmed cases have a travel history for Mexico,” which is believed to be the source of the outbreak, Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during an afternoon teleconference. “This indicates ongoing transmission in communities. We would expect that as this [virus] travels more around the country that we are going to see that number go down. While there may have been introduction from travel to Mexico, the spread that’s ongoing does not re ... Read more »

People with a hammer only see nails. This well-worn maxim aptly describes the United States' relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past several decades. As early as 1954, when Pakistan received its first substantial tranche of American military and economic aid, the United States identified the country as a bulwark against regional encroachment by the Soviet Union.

When President Barack Obama announced the new "AfPak" (Afghanistan-Pakistan) policy last month, there were hopes that the hammer-and-nails approach — which saw unaccounted billions in military aid showered on the Pakistan army with the assumption that it alone could bring stability — would be shelved. It will take time to assess whether a shift in policy has been actualized.

The new AfPak policy promises a more focused approach in a number of ways.

The most obvious is the shift in attentio ... Read more »

In an earlier article I indicated that, contrary to worldwide expectations — especially in Africa— President Barack Obama would spend a considerable portion of his first term in office addressing domestic economic problems. In the same article, I maintained that Obama could make his mark on Africa by taking specific steps to address the continent's development needs. One of the most intriguing possibilities for the Obama administration is the unlimited potential to mobilize and engage Africans in the Diaspora for that purpose. 
Who are Africans in the Diaspora?
This is not a trivial question. Considerable controversy exists over the definition of Africans in the Diaspora However, the African Union, through an independent continental meeting of experts, concluded that: "The African Diaspora consists of peoples of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their c ... Read more »

Washington — Goods and services purchased by Americans make up one-fifth of the global economy, but the third quarter of 2008 saw the largest drop in consumer spending since 1980.

As the financial-market turbulence prompts U.S. households to cut back spending, economies around the globe feel repercussions.

“The U.S. consumer is a voracious consumer of goods and services,” said Scott Talbott, a senior vice president at the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents large financial institutions. “We [are] at the heart of the recession. That’s why we’re going to have to be at the heart of the recovery.”

Historically, Americans have spent a greater share of gross domestic product (GDP) — a measure of a nation’s economic size — than citizens of other countries have. Those expenditures translate into jobs and economic growth around the worl ... Read more »

Canada — CBC.ca (May 4): Two more cases of swine flu confirmed in Toronto on Sunday, bring the total in the province to 16. ... None of the 16 reported so far are believed to be serious, said Dr. David Williams, Ontario's acting chief medical officer of health. All of the cases reported so far in Ontario are in the Greater Toronto Area: six in Toronto, six in Durham, three in York and one in Peel. There are 10 women suffering from the swine flu and six men, ranging in age from 21 to 49. Until Sunday's two new cases were reported all of the people suffering from swine flu had visited Mexico. More than 100 cases have been reported in Canada.

China — China View (May 4): At a time when the global financial crisis still ravages the world economy, the outbreak of influenza A/H1N1 further adds to the economic woes of a number of countries and regions. How to jointly ... Read more »

Fiji President Ratu Sir Josefa Iloilo announced in a televised address to the nation on April 10 that the country's 1997 Constitution was revoked.

The decision came from the Fiji Court of Appeal on April 9, following more than two years of legal battle between Fiji's interim government and the deposed S.D.L. government of Laisenia Qarase. The Court's ruling overturned the Fiji High Court decision in October 2008 that legitimized the president's reserve power to dismiss an elected government and establish an interim government in January 2007.

The judgment by Fiji Court of Appeal justices Randall Powell, Ian Lloyd and Francis Douglas failed to clarify details of the expressed constitutional authority that allowed the Office of the President to discharge its executive duties and appoint an interim prime minister. Furthermore, immediately after the ruling, state lawyers notified t ... Read more »

Make no mistake, the proliferation of piracy in the Somali coast is a serious problem — not only for the international community but for Somalia in general, and more specifically, for the current Islamist-led unity government. After all, Islamic law has zero tolerance for banditry, whether sea-based or land-based.

That said, piracy in Somalia was not born out of a vacuum — it was initially an act of protestation by local fishermen in response to the illegal hyper-fishing practiced by numerous fishing companies, primarily based in Europe and Asia . The reckless greed of this "fishing mafia" has been dangerously depleting sea life in that part of the world. In due course the local fishermen were joined by others, including some of the profiteering elements of the Somali civil war, for reinforcement.

The partnership described itself as the de facto Somali coast guard. It offer ... Read more »

Those who think that Algerians have been passive victims of their country's political problems need look no further than the Algerian women's movement for a change of mind. Twenty-five years ago, a unique relationship developed between Algeria and the non-profit organization, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (W.L.U.M.L.), which is going strong even today.

W.L.U.M.L. provides assistance to women whose lives are governed by so-called "Islamic" laws or customs. The organization opposes the use of faith to further political causes and builds awareness of women's rights violations committed in the name of Islam.

In 1984, Algerian women watched in amazement as the government passed a law that institutionalized women's legal status as "minors." Women had demonstrated against the ratification of this law for more than two decades, believing it stood in stark opposition to Article 29 o ... Read more »

China — China View (April 18): South Africa's African National Congress (A.N.C.) has spent no less than $20 million on its 2009 election campaign, the party said on Saturday. A.N.C. national executive council member, Nomvula Mokonyane, said most of the money used in the campaign had been raised by the party through selling paraphernalia for example. She was speaking at a briefing ahead of the party's final election rally to be held on Sunday at Coca Cola Park and the Johannesburg Stadium. The rally would "set a precedent" for large-scale events with 400,000 people in total expected to view the event at the two stadiums and via a live satellite link at stadiums in the other eight provinces.

France — Euronews (April 24): Jacob Zuma must wait a little longer for the official declaration, but his supporters are already celebrating. The final votes are being co ... Read more »