Elton John may have to battle gay adoption ban in Ukraine

September 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, September 14 (ANI): Elton john may need to overcome legal hurdles before he gets to adopt the Ukranian child he recently said he wishes to take home.

According to the national laws of the country, the ‘Candle in the Wind’ hitmaker and his partner David Furnish are too old to adopt 14-month-old Lev, as the law does not allow parents 45 years older than the child to adopt.

Also, same-sex couples are restricted from adopting a child.

Moreover, it has emerged that even if Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko were to allow the singer to adopt the kid, then he would have to take his brother too.

The singer was unaware of the legalities involved when he expressed the desire to be the child’s guardian.

He had said: “I don’t know what the procedure is to adopt a boy from the Ukraine.”

In case he manages to adopt Lev, then the boy will have his Christian name as his middle name under Ukrainian law.

He may be called Lev Eltonovich John and if the adoption is in the singer’s real name then, Lev Reginaldovich Dwight.

John was impressed with the child when he recently visited an orphanage. (ANI)

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Yushchenko: Ukraine’s economy worsening

May 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Kiev – Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko on Monday said his country’s economic woes were worsening, with GDP contraction accelerating during the first three months of 2009.

Ukraine’s economy shrank by some 14 per cent during the last quarter of 2008, but final tallies of recent performance are likely to show a fall of up to 23 per cent for the first quarter of 2009, Yushchenko said, speaking at economic forum in Kiev.

Key sectors including steel, agriculture, and chemicals manufacturing in the former Soviet republic were doing even worse, and are on track for production value reductions of as much as 29 per cent, Yushchenko said.

The impact of diminishing foreign markets and a massive outflow of foreign capital from Ukraine in the latter half of 2008 caught the Yushchenko administration unawares.

Yushchenko in a national television address in January promised Ukrainians GDP reduction over 2009 would be around 14 per cent.

The actual performance by Ukraine’s economy from January through March 2009 was almost twice as bad, Yushchenko said on Monday.

Yushchenko earlier this month accused Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of concealing unpleasant truth from the Ukrainian people, by restricting regular publication of state-compiled economic data, and releasing only quarterly results.

Data released so far by the Ukrainian State Statistics Committee, an agency answering to Tymoshenko, claimed Ukraine’s economy on aggregate grew during 2008, and shrank “only” 8 per cent during the last quarter of 2009 – roughly half the reality, Yushchenko said.

Tymoshenko on Friday claimed Ukraine’s economy was showing signs of turning around, with production beginning to pick up and recession slowing.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, though technically partners running Ukraine’s government together, are locked in a battle for leadership of the country’s pro-reform movement. Both in recent months have blamed each other for Ukraine’s poor economic state.

Ukraine’s export-dependant economy is one of the world’s hardest-hit by the international financial crisis, according to analysts in part because conflict between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko has stymied most government efforts to deal with the crisis.(dpa)

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Ukraine to extradite Moldovans wanted for violent protests

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Kiev/Chisinau – Ukraine will extradite back home a pair of Moldovans suspected of organising violent anti-government protests, a government official said Wendesday.

Moldovan businessman Gabriel Stati and his associate Auren Marinescu could be returned to Chisinau “as early as tomorrow,” said Oleksander Shinalsky, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s office.

Moldova’s government asked Ukraine last week to detain and extradite the pair last week as they were suspected financing violent demonstrations in Chisinau in early April.

Ukrainian border police detained Stati and Marinescu on April 9, at an airport in the Black Sea port Odessa.

Stati’s father, energy billionaire Anatoly Stati, in a personal letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said his son Gabriel should not be sent back to Moldova, as he would become a victim of Communist questioning using torture, the Infotag news agency reported.

Larisa Stati, Gabriel’s mother, sent a letter to the Europeaan Union Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg alleging the danger of “inhumane treatment” were he returned to Moldova, according to an Interfax news agency report.

The Stati family is one of Moldova’s wealthiest commercial clans, and has been hostile to Moldova’s ruling Communist government for almost a decade.

One person died and more than 250 were injured after demonstrations in the Moldovan capital broke into the parliament and presidential residence buildings on the evening of April 7, setting the former on fire.

The mainly youthful marchers had been upset with the results of an April 5 national election won by Moldova’s ruling Communist party.

The election was fixed in favour of the Communists, who allegedly manipulated voter rolls, protest organisers claimed.

Independent election monitoring groups said the vote was largely free and fair.

Moldova’s President Vladimir Voronin in the wake of the violence accused Romania of colluding with Anatoly Stati to organise the protests in an attempt to force the Communists out of power with an anti-government coup.

Voronin’s government in the last week has shut down Romanian television channels usually viewable in Moldova, thrown most Romanian reporters out of the country, and declared the Romanian ambassador to Moldova persona non grata. (dpa)

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Yushchenko: Eastern Partnership no substitute for EU membership

March 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Prague – Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Tuesday that Ukraine would oppose replacing Kiev’s efforts to join the European Union with EU’s Eastern Partnership plan to bring closer six ex-Soviet states, including Ukraine.

“We do not want this partnership to be an alternative, a substitute for our entrance to the European Union,” he said through an interpreter after meeting his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus.

On Friday, EU leaders approved the plan aimed at drawing closer six former Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. They also agreed to boost EU’s aid for them by another 600 million euros (811 million dollars).

But the plan, which does not offer full membership to the six countries, has a potential to slow down efforts by the states like Ukraine to enter the 27-member bloc.

The programme, to be launched on May 7, was proposed by Sweden and Poland as an Eastern counterweight to France-backed initiative to reinforce EU’s ties in the Mediterranean.

The policy gained further ground after Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008.

In an apparent jibe at France, whose President Nicolas Sarkozy has groomed the so-called Mediterranean Union and has given the Czech EU presidency a hard time, Klaus said that it would be wrong “if the European Union dominantly and exclusively focussed on the southern partnership.” (dpa)

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EU, Ukraine to agree on gas network repairs and reforms

March 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Brussels – The European Union and Ukraine on Monday are set to agree on a programme of political reforms and physical repairs to the former-Soviet state’s giant gas network, EU officials said.

One fifth of all the natural gas consumed in the EU flows through Ukraine’s 13,500-kilometre network of gas pipelines, but experts say that that network will need some 2.5 billion euros (3.4 billion dollars) in investment over the next six years just to keep pipes and pumping stations in running order.

Analysts say that Ukrainian monopoly Naftogaz, which runs the pipeline system, finds it hard to attract the necessary investment because of a perceived lack of transparency and accountability both in its management and in Ukraine’s top political leadership.

On Monday, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko – currently feuding ahead of presidential elections – are set to meet the head of the EU’s executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, and officials from the World Bank, European Investment Bank and energy companies in Brussels.

At the meeting, they are expected to sign a joint declaration committing Ukraine to reforming the rules by which it operates its gas network.

That should pave the way for Western and Russian donors to invest in the renovation of the network, EU diplomats told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The question of Ukraine’s gas transit system has been a highly-charged one ever since a row with Russia in 2005-06 provoked Russian gas monopoly Gazprom to shut supplies off to Ukraine, causing severe shortfalls in Europe.

The drama was repeated in January in an ill-tempered spat that crippled gas supplies to the EU for two weeks.

The EU is now keen to reduce its dependency on both Russia and Ukraine as energy suppliers. On Thursday, EU leaders agreed to give 200 million euros to the “Nabucco” pipeline project, which is meant to bypass both countries and bring gas direct from the Caspian Sea to Europe. (dpa)

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