Aleksandr Lukashenko on Tuesday signed a presidential edict that a state university should be established in Baranovichi, a city of 170,000 in the Brest region.
The edict followed a government conference where the proposal was studied with the participation of all those concerned, said the Belarusian ruler's press office. The future institution would mainly train engineers, educators, financial lawyers and foreign language experts for the region.
Those enrolled would be redistributed among the specializations most requested by the region's enterprises and organizations, with more major courses added as necessary for flexibility. The university will be housed by the premises of Baranovichi State Teachers' Training College, the now-defunct branches of Belarusian National Technical University and Brest State University, and the closed Baranovichi Police College.
The students of the above-mentioned institutions will be transferred to schools across the country or the new university if they wish.
More than 100 operators of fixed-route minibus taxies in Brest have signed a petition to Konstantin Sumar, head of the Brest regional government, to annul the requirement that all minibuses
used as fixed-route taxies should be equipped with cash registers.
As one of the petitioners, Viktor Chumachenko, told BelaPAN, the operators of minibus taxies, each having a daily ridership of 200 to 250 people, will be required to operate cash registers issuing tickets to
all passengers, which will be a serious distraction factor putting the vehicles at risk of road accidents.
In addition, the sole proprietors operating minibus taxies will have to hire people for accounting and taking proceeds to a bank on a daily basis. The petitioners hope that the regional government will accept their arguments and reverse its decision. If the petition is ignored, they threaten to stage a walkout, which would dramatically hit the
city's public transit system.
In Brest, there are currently 18 routes on which a total of 300 private minibuses are operated. At their recent general meeting, minibus operators decided to offer free service to veterans of the Great Patriotic War starting June 22. There are some 2,000 veterans of the war currently residing in the city. In addition, the entrepreneurs bought 100 tickets for war veterans to a concert to be staged by the Presidential Orchestra in Brest on Tuesday.
Aleksandr Lukashenko is expected to make a speech at a session of the Belarusian-Russian Parliamentary Assembly that will be held in Brest on June 25, Natalya Petkevich, the Belarusian leader's press secretary, told BelaPAN.
According to the press office of the Parliamentary Assembly, the session will focus on the progress under a joint action program toward implementation of the Belarusian-Russian Treaty on the Formation
of the Union State, and measures to increase the efficiency of efforts to build the Union State. In addition, the gathering is to adopt changes in the Assembly and its standing committees. The Assembly also will consider changes and additions to procedures for building up and
implementing the Union State's budget and hear a report from the Union State's Council of Ministers on the implementation of the 2002 Union State budget.
The Assembly is to adopt a statement on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from the Nazi occupation.
The chambers of commerce and industry of Belarus' Brest and Russia's Far East region signed an agreement on cooperation on Saturday.
The document provides for a regular exchange of business missions, commercial offers, opportunities and data. Its main objective is to foster integration on the interregional level and establish direct ties between companies.
Talks in Brest between local managers and the members of a mission from Russia's Khabarovsk province that visited in the city yielded specific results, according to Mikhail Kruglikov, head of the Far
Eastern Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We are interested in knitted goods, meat and dairy products made in Brest and electric and gas cookers manufactured by Brestgazoapparat," he told BelaPAN. "We've been making inquiries as to the exact amounts of products that could be purchased and working on the commercial peculiarities of contracts. But I believe that the trade amount, which was just $400,000 last year, will rise substantially in the near future."
As a result of the talks, tours to exotic eastern countries will soon be available to Belarusian travelers and the residents of Khabarovsk will be offered tours to Western Europe.
While in Brest on Friday and Saturday, the mission was received by local officials, took part in a round-table conference, and visited the Brest Integrated Dairy Plant, resident enterprises of the local free
economic zone, the Brest Fortress WWII memorial and the Belovezhskaya Pushcha national park.
The Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park in western Belarus saw a nearly 100-percent increase in the number of tourists this year, Director Nikolai Bambiza told BelaPAN.
The park attracted just over 60,000 visitors last year as against 53,000 from 33 countries in the first five months of 2004.
Mr. Bambiza attributed the increase to infrastructure improvements. Most tourists want to see Belarusian Father Frost's residence, which opened last year, he said. The management renovated a hotel
in Kamenyuki, is converting a former office building into a hotel with 50 two-bed rooms and refurbishing the local restaurant.
Additional camp sites will be opened for eco-tourists, hunters and fishers. The management hopes to attract at least 100,000 tourists this year and increase that number to 200,000 in years to come, Mr. Bambiza said.
Some 250 bodies of Central Asian tortoises were discovered in the basement of an unfinished garage near Brest's old airport.
The reptiles were apparently left to die by smugglers who were not allowed to take the shipment across the Belarusian border.
The turtles must have been dumped in the pit last fall, Viktor Demyanchik of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences told BelaPAN. According to him, the animals, which attempted to find a
shelter under a narrow slab, stood no chance of survival because of cold and damp weather.
Wildlife trafficking enters the world's top five most profitable illegal activities, the zoologist said. The authorities in Kazakhstan, which is home to most of the turtle's population, banned the export of
the species. Smugglers had previously released Central Asian tortoises indowntown city, and most of the animals became pets of Brest residents.
The removal of contaminated soil from a former uranium transshipment facility has gotten underway in Brest.
Facility 802, located near Brest's heat and power plant, was used in the Soviet era for reloading uranium coming from East Germany into wider-track train cars, in which it was transported to destinations in the former Soviet Union, Oleg Zhemchuzhny, chief of the city's Inspectorate for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, told BelaPAN.
The ground is believed to have a one-meter deep layer of heavily contaminated soil.
The removal project was launched despite the authorities' claims that the contaminated soil represents no serious threat to human health.
The soil is transported to a burial ground near the village of Struga, Malorita district. The authorities found the waste dumped at the site to have no impact on the health of the village's residents.
The bodies and trailers of trucks carrying the waste have been hermetically sealed, and all the equipment involved is cleaned with a special solution, according to Mr. Zhemchuzhny.
Experts have found radiation at the site to be below the maximum admissible level, but there are places where radiation levels exceed the threshold by ten times to one.
As much as 21,000 cubic meters of soil is to be removed from the facility before the end of the year. The authorities have provided two billion rubels for this purpose. Mr. Zhemchuzhny noted that the site would be clean enough following the soil removal to become a
residential area. Another uranium handling facility in Brest, Zapadny, also will have its contaminated soil removed in the future.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has directed that the city government earmark three million rubles (around $100,000) for renovations of the Brest Fortress Memorial.
Some two billion rubels ($900,000) has been provided by the Belarusian government for the project this year.
Renovations of the monuments "Muzhestvo" (Courage) and "Zhazhda" (Thirst), the entrance to the World War II memorial, known as "Zvezda" (Star), are expected to be completed by July 3, the 60th anniversary of Belarus' liberation from Nazi occupation.
Four people were fatally injured on Sunday morning when a Baranovichi-Brest commuter electric train smashed into a minibus at a rail crossing near the village of Kabaki in the Brest region.
The impact killed instantly the driver and three women aged between 65 and 78 years who were traveling to a local village to attend a Holy Trinity service, a source with the regional transport police told
BelaPAN.
The vehicle, a Volkswagen Transporter, reportedly attempted to cross the track despite visual and audio warning signals. Rail traffic along the route was held up for almost ninety minutes as a result of the accident.
KGB officers have recently arrested two departmental chiefs with the Brest Electromechanical Equipment Plant (BEMZ) suspected of using fraudulent export schemes.
The two executives are believed to have shipped BEMZ electric and gas meters, and irons to a dummy firm in Moscow in exchange for promissory notes issued by Brestenergo and other Belarusian
electricity suppliers, the press center of the KGB regional office told BelaPAN.
The goods were in fact sold to other companies at a price that was by five to eight percent higher than those indicated in invoices.
The scheme is said to have involved a commercial firm in Brest, whose director so far has not been charged.
As much as $18,000 was reportedly found on one of the suspects who was arrested while returning from a business trip to Russia.
Both executives are currently held in police custody and investigators work to estimate the damage that they caused to the BEMZ, the press center said.
30 June 2004