President supports Constitutional Assembly
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has signed a decree on supporting former President Leonid Kravchuk’s initiative on creating a Constitutional Assembly that will prepare changes to the Constitution of Ukraine. This decree can be found on the president’s official website. In order to support the initiative of the first president a scientific-expert group was created, which would establish the Constitutional Assembly. According to the decree, the group has to take into consideration Kravchuk’s concept on reforming the Constitution of Ukraine. Yanukovych proposed that the Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine assist the Constitutional Assembly’s scientific-expert group. The decree also discusses analytical support, the organization of correspondent public events to debate prepared propositions and recommendations, and attracting influential scientists and the general public. According to Kravchuk’s address the Cabinet of Ministers has to ensure the necessary conditions for the Constitutional Assembly’s expert group. According to the decree, the Constitutional Assembly’s scientific-expert group includes Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Hubersky, rector of the Shevchenko University and academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, as well as other scholars, professors, scientists from various universities and scientific institutes, national lawmakers of different convocations, and retired Supreme Court of Ukraine judges and lawyers.
Ukraine produces road combine with snow-plow and anti-icing equipment
The holding company AvtoKrAZ from Kremenchuk, Poltava region has produced a road combine car with snow-plows and anti-icing equipment, with the equipment being produced by the Croatian company Rasco, AvtoKrAZ’s CEO Serhii Sazonov told reporters. He stated that the machine has been designed on the platform of the KRAZ-65055 tipper with 6x4 axles. “The KrAZ car’s technical capabilities, together with Rasco’s equipment, provide for efficient clearing and protecting of the Ukrainian roads,” Sazonov said. According to the company’s press release, the AvtoKrAZ-designed “Road Worker” car is intended to clear snow from motorways and urban roads, and to cover pavement with anti-icing agents. “The universality of the road combine car means that with the special equipment removed, it can be used as a tipper or as a platform for watering equipment,” notes the press service. Head of Rasco Mr. Franicevic was quoted by the press service as saying that the first steps of his enterprise’s cooperation with the Kremenchuk-based carmakers are quite successful. He said the new technologies allow for savings of about 30 percent on materials.
Days of Political Critique in Ukraine
The project will last for four days, from February 23 to 26, and will cover three cities – Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa. The Days of Political Critique are organized by the Visual Culture Research Center at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Aca-demy and the intellectual community Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique; Poland). Krytyka Polityczna emerged in Poland at the beginning of the 2000s and brought together Polish intellectuals who are critical of the status quo and actively oppose economic and social exclusion. One of its pillars is an eponymous magazine; its authors include Louis Althusser, Zygmunt Bauman, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Ranciere. Since 2009, Political Critique has an informal center in Kyiv. Its members have created a Ukrainian version of the magazine of the same name. Within the bounds of The Days of Political Critique, a pre-sentation of the Ukrainian version of the publication will take place in Kyiv (February 23), Lviv (February 25) and Odesa (February 26). As “Telekrytyka” informed, the first issue of Ukrainian Political Critique is devoted to drug policy in Ukraine and in the world, and also to systematic correlations between the phenomenon of modern politics and the drug problem. The presentation will be accompanied by the showing of films Catastrophe (2010, a documentary on Polish society after the president’s plane accident) by a Polish director
Artur Zmijewski and The Wall and the Tower (2010) by an Israeli artist Yael
Bartana, which will represent Poland at the Venice Biennale 2011.
