Regional radiation therapy center to be set up in Rivne
Medical equipment worth five million dollars is to be provided to the Rivne regional oncological clinic based on an agreement it signed with Rinat Akhmetov’s charity foundation. Hryhorii Maksymiak, the clinic’s head doctor, said the center will receive an extremely high-performing machine — a linear accelerator. Thus, the regional radiation therapy center will be established in Rivne to care for patients from the region and the neighboring ones. At present western Ukraine has only one such center, in Lviv. The city of Rivne was chosen because of its favorable geographical location and because there was ready space for the new linear accelerator unit. It is actually a nuclear reactor that irradiates patients with fast electrons. Even for European countries this type of treatment is very up-to-date. In Poland, there are 5 such units, and 12 are installed in Germany. The oncological clinic, which is now a municipal institution, is to be transferred under central government control and receive funding from the central budget. Today, its maintenance costs the regional budget more than 11 million hryvnias. It should be added that this year funding for the institution was cut by 700,000 hryvnias.
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko addresses OSCE
The chair of the political council of the party Our Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaichenko appealed the OSCE High Commissioner on national minorities Knut Wollebeck to pay attention to the violations of the Ukrainian community’s rights in Russia. Nalyvaichenko wrote a letter to Wollebeck regarding the violations. In the letter he expressed exceptional concern about the situation with the rights of Ukrainians in Russia, provided specific examples of the oppression, and emphasized that Russia must observe its international obligations, secured by international and bilateral Ukrainian-Russian agreements. Nalyvaichenko also asked that Wollebeck personally address the situation.
A copy of the letter will also be sent to the representation of the EU and Council of Europe. Our Ukraine has repeatedly highlighted the problem of infringement of the rights of Ukrainians in Russia, and the party’s representatives in parliament addressed the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with corresponding inquiries.
Aramaic comments to the Book of Genesis translated in Ostroh
The ancient printed book collection of the Ostroh Academy National University obtained original editions of 17th-18th century theological literature published by Russian, Belarusian and old-time Western European printing-houses. They became objects of interest for fellows at the sacral literature translation center, which was established by the Shevchenko National Prize winner and Ostroh Bible translator, Professor Rafail Torkoniak. According to him, three departments are already functioning at the center — Hebrew studies, Arabic studies and a biblical translations department, Ukrinform reports. Dmytro Tsolin, the Academy’s lecturer, already started working on a Ukrainian version of the comments to the Book of Genesis written in Aramaic (the mother tongue of Jesus Christ). Another member of the same institution, Mykhailo Yakubovych, is working on Arabic-language comments to the Quran. Last year he translated the complete text of the most important Muslim book into Ukrainian. Now his translation is being prepared for publication in Saudi Arabia.
