Rail Travel news.

The Caninet of Ministers gave the permission to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to continue providing foreign passports to the citizens of Ukraine leaving for abroad using the old form of the passports up to the full realization of the old
forms. This project was initiated by the Ministry of internal affairs.
This decision was motivated with the necessity to computerize the system of the foreign passport system in the regions of Ukraine where up to now there no the
Computer-aided state system for passport support. The other reason for such a decision was to save the state money for printing new forms of foreign passports, informed “Ukraine Noviny”
We would like to remind that in December 2004 Leonid Kuchma signed the Order to renovate the Ukraine foreign passport form which entered the force since the 1st January 2005.

The new concept of the State special program of introduction the high speed passenger transfer for 2005-2015.
The corresponding government direction dated 31 December 2004 N979-p has arrived on the Ukraine Supreme Rada site.
And particularly this document includes such forecast directions of the high speed international transfers as Kiev-Poltava, Poltava-Kharkov, Poltava-Dnepropetrovsk (together with the building of the riding round 195 railway lines of 33 km long around Krasnograd), Poltava-Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk-Sinelnikovo-Simpheropol, Kiev-Odessa, Tzmerinka-Lvov. On the line Gorlovka-Lugansk (which will not be included in the net of the high speed main line) it is planned to start the transfer passenger trains with higher (up to 140 km/hour) speed.
As it is mentioned in this concept, the transfer to the speed up to 200 km/hour suppose the obligatory complete reconstruction and introduction of automatic , telemechanical and communication devices as well as energy resources. All the work connected with the introduction of the high speed transfer on the lines of 2593 km long is planned to be realized step by step in the period of 2005-2015.
The very first step suppose to realize the set of works on the Kiev railway net, the second step – on the line Kiev-Kharkov, Poltava-Donestk, Poltava-Dnepropetrovsk, on the third step – on the line Dnepropetrovsk-Simpheropol, Kiev-Odessa, Kiev-Lvov.
For the realization of this program the investments will be directed for the building and reconstruction of the objects  of the high speed line of the Kiev railway net, as well as the objects of the railway transfers including
the secondary lines, nets, depots and the technical service objects required for the high speed train transfer, electrical communication and etc. Besides this it is necessary to purchase the foreign high speed cars and at the same time think about the production lines of the native high speed cars.
The total volume of investment to fulfill this program, according to the present document, is equal to 27345.7 million grivna.
It was also mentioned in this document that in future it is necessary to solve  the task of  further introduction of the high speed passenger trains with the speed up to 350 km/hour.
As it was mentioned in the resume of the present concept, the realization of all the tasks put by the current program will provide the possibility to interconnect the capital of Ukraine with the majority of regions and big industrial centres and to increase the passenger train speed up to 200 km/hour thus decreasing the passenger transfer time from 6-10 up to 3-5 hours; to increase the passenger transfer volume in 1.5-1.8 times thus decreasing the  number of passenger trains due to the decreasing of their operation on lines and the increasing their volume  capacity.  

Ukraine tour operators count the losses connected with tsunami in the South-East Asia and do their best to return back at least  some money  which were paid beforehand for rest as well as they try to convince the clients in the fact that  there are still a lot of resorts not suffered  of  natural calamity. However holiday makers strongly object to go even to the places far, very far from the disaster areas.
By the way the specialists declare that it is hardly possible to receive back even any copecks. The owners of many Tailand and Indonesia hotels do not want to return money as they are ready to realize the agreements signed.
Yaroslav Itskovsky, director of the tourist agency:
“We still continue the negotiations with the transfer agencies and the receiving companies. We hope that the maximum we can return we’ll compensate to clients. But in any case we would not like to increase and our financial losses at the same time”.

According to the statement of the Crimea specialists of the Ministry of Extreme Situations, each year in the resort regions of the peninsula the beach territory is being decreased by 50 hectare. The reason for it are landslides (in 2004 there were more than 1. 5 thousand) and the lack of money for the beach fortification lines. More than that the leadership of Ukraine MES of Crimea is extremely worry about the safety of swimming people, According to the statistics of the last year, there were160 drowned men, however non of the leaders, special public- service institutions responsible for this including sanatoriums, rest-homes, holiday hotels, life-saving services and etc.
were made answerable for it.
In the process of the control of the life-saving services there were found a lot of different kinds of violations in the process of the life-saving in the places for rest of tourists, as it was informed by “New Region”. Among them – the absence of the license for the life-saving service, low level of qualification of the life-saving personal and the technique used without the required technical control.

A new green-house has arrived in Kiev which is the second in Europe according to its size and even it is a little bit les than the British one. As a result the collection of flowers of the Kiev botanic garden NANU named after Grishko
has been transferred into the new green-house complex, as it was informed by the Information Agency “News-Ukraine”.
The total area of the green-house is 8 thousands sq.m. , the cupola part of it is 1`460 sq.m, its height is 28 m.
Each flower of this green-house will be provided with the climate required. Side by side with the green-house there is a pool for water-flowing flowers which, the perimeter of it is surrounded with aquarium with exotic fishes