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Thirty-five of 85 medical students of the Osun State University who were sent to Ukraine University for medical studies by Governor Rauf Aregbesolas administration have returned to Osun.

The medical doctors checkout at the Arrival post of the Muritala Muhammed Airport, Lagos few minutes past9pmon Saturdaynight and were received by a state government delegation led by the Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology, Engr Remi Omowaiye and Special Adviser to the governor on Higher Education, Bursary and Scholarship, Prof Grace Akinola.

They returned home after graduating from the the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkov, Ukraine and certified as medical doctors.

About 15 of the medical students stayed back in Ukraine for future pursuit.

It would be recalled that 50 of the 85 UNIOSUN students recently graduated and were inducted as qualified medical doctors after passing the 2017 KROK 2 Ukraine National Medical Exams June this year.

The UNIOSUN students were sent to Ukraine by the Aregbesolas administration to complete their medical studies in Ukraine in 2013 as a result of non-availability of teaching hospital for their clinical studies.

One of the medical students, Miss Latifat Abiola Oyeleye was declared the over best medical student of the Karazin Kharkiv National University as well as the 2017 overall best students in the entire Ukraine with an outstanding score of 95.6% in KROK 2 Exams.

Receiving the young doctors at the Government House, Osogbo, Aregbesola welcomed them and urged them to let their skills, knowledge and education speak for them.

Aregbesola explained that sending the students to Ukraine was not about nationalism but about justice and fairness, stating that the students were admitted for medicine and it behoved the university and government to fulfill their obligations.

He said: We had advertised the medical course and admitted the students, it is the obligation of the government to see the students through the program. Human being will only succeed when he upholds justice and fairness. So, what informed our decision on this students is justice and fairness.

Aregbesola who said education is not about one discipline but about having skills, motivation and knowledge, said he was happy and proud for the success in their academic program.

The governor urged the young doctors to be professional, humane and Godly in discharging their duties in hospitals and everywhere they find themselves.

In their remarks, the students attributed their academic success Aregbesolas commitment to promoting functional education and concern on their plights when they were stranded in UNIOSUN.

They promised to embark on service to humanity and give back to the community, particular Osun state in appreciation of their free medical studies.

Oyeleye, the overall best students said: I am one of the beneficiaries of Aregbesolas gesture, I am one of the 85 medical students sponsored by his administration to one of the best universities in the world.

We have studied and graduated. We thank God that today, we have been made medical doctors through the support of Osun Government. It is a dream comes true for me and my family.

Osun Government has made history through this, Governor Aregbesola has done excellently well in our lives to attain this giant feat in academic because if not for him, we might not be celebrated like this today.

Another beneficiary, Dr. Oluwasayo Motunrayo said, I will forever be grateful to Aregbesola for making our dreams come to pass. He has done well to ensure that we did not fail in meeting up with our medical carrier in life.

Ezekoye Maria, an indigene of Anambra state, who is part of the medical students, said: We had lost hope when there was no teaching hospital to proceed to for out medical studies at UNIOSUN, we were all stranded.

But Governor Aregbesola restored our hope, he made us realise our dreams by sending us to one of the best universities in Ukraine for medical studies free of charge. Today, we are certified medical doctors. We are all proud of Osun government.

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UNIOSUN medical students return from Ukraine, become medical doctors - Vanguard

Crimea features Russian soldiers, tanks and planes and what the director calls a Romeo and Juliet tale. Photograph: YouTube

This is the kind of decision that is only taken once a century, says a voice on the trailer for Crimea, a high-budget Russian film that dramatises the 2014 Russian takeover of the peninsula.

The film, which will premiere across Russia next month, features Russian soldiers, tanks, planes and a love story the director describes as a Romeo and Juliet tale.

The Russian annexation of the territory from Ukraine, which led to sanctions and a fallout between Moscow and the west, was denounced internationally as illegal. In Russia, however, the annexation has been portrayed as the event which showed that the country is again a global power, after a long period of humiliation following the Soviet collapse.

Crimea, the movie, brings that pride to the screen. The film follows a romantic liaison between a young woman from Kiev, who is a supporter of the pro-European Maidan uprising, and a man from Sevastopol who joins the pro-Russian resistance in the aftermath of Maidans success in Kiev.

The director, Alexei Pimanov, said the film is dedicated to the Ukrainian and Russian officers who did not shoot at each other and avoided large-scale bloodshed during the Russian takeover. We wanted to make a film about how we have to love each other and not kill each other, he said.

Pimanov said after helping his daughter-in-laws family to evacuate from Luhansk, which has been hit by fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces, he wanted to make a film about how the Russian intervention in Crimea prevented bloodshed there.

In Ukraine and elsewhere, however, the film is likely to be viewed as a glorification of the Russian annexation. Critics of Russia would say that the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine occurred primarily because Russia funnelled weapons and troops across the border.

The film will not be shown in Ukraine, where Pimanov has been persona non grata since 2014, placed on a sanctions list that includes Russian journalists and artists who Kiev believes to be propagandists. Indeed, the film is unlikely to be released anywhere outside Russia except for Belarus. The Ukrainian embassy in that country sent a note of protest to the Belarusian foreign ministry earlier this month after trailers for the film were shown in cinemas in the country.

Pimanov insisted that the film is not crude propaganda, and said the female heroine was a sympathetic character and a genuine supporter of the goals of the Maidan protests in Kiev. However, it is clear that the film takes a Russian perspective on the events of March 2014, with some of the funding coming from Russias ministry of defence. Indeed, Pimanov knows the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, personally, and said the initial idea for the film was his.

We were talking in March 2014 and realised these events were globally important. He said: Try to make a film about this. Shoigu helped by providing planes and other military hardware used in the film, he said.

After the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putins approval ratings, which had been flagging, soared to an all-time high of 86% as the country was consumed by a wave of nationalistic fervour. Krym nash (Crimea is ours) became a frequently repeated slogan, and the return of Crimea, as it is referred to in Russia, has been used to show that the country can stand up for its interests on the international stage.

Next years presidential elections, in which Putin is expected to stand and win a new six-year term, have been moved to 18 March, the fourth anniversary of the official Kremlin ceremony marking the annexation of Crimea. The Kremlin hopes linking the election day to the Crimea anniversary will help create a patriotic wave of support for Putin and boost turnout.

Crimea had been part of the Russian republic inside the Soviet Union until Nikita Khrushchev approved the transfer of it to Ukraine in 1954, and many Crimeans had always considered themselves more Russian than Ukrainian.

Not everyone in Crimea supported the annexation, however, with the majority of the peninsulas indigenous Crimean Tatars opposing the move. Some of them are now on trial over violence that broke out between Crimean Tatars and pro-Russians during the annexation, while others report harassment and persecution.

Crimean prosecutors are seeking eight years in jail for Akhtem Chiigoz, a leading Crimean Tatar politician. In his closing speech to the court earlier this week, his lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said Russia was behaving like a fascist state and compared the takeover of Crimea to Nazi Germanys Anschluss with Austria.

Pimanov, however, has no time for such comparisons: A lot of people in the west dont understand what happened in Crimea. It was the will of the people, he said.

Read more from the original source:
Crimea the big budget Russian blockbuster the world will never see - The Guardian

The National Bank of Ukraine, the country's central bank, has indicated it may soonseek to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies.

While a clear outline for the initiative is still absent, in its latest announcement, the central bank said the legal implications of cryptocurrencies will be discussed at the next Financial Stability Board of Ukraine meeting at the end of August.

The decision comes at a time when Ukraine is seeing increased bitcoin activity, from payments to mining to blockchain development, but also when regulatory uncertainty hasled its law enforcementto take steps to reprimand bitcoin users.

Just days ago, Ukrainian police arrested several suspects who allegedly set up 200 computers to mine bitcoins at an abandoned swimming pool withina state institute in Kiev.

According to local media Kyiv Post, the court documentaccused the suspectsof illegally taking advantage of state property, and producing a currency, which is currently a function only the National Bank is legally allowed to do. Further, the law also states that no other currency besides theUkrainian Hryvnia can be treated as legal payment in Ukraine.

Citing the different approaches taken by other countries in defining cryptocurrencies, the banking authority will now begin itsdiscussion withthe Ministry of Finance, State Fiscal Service, the State Financial Monitoring Service, Securities and Stock Market State Commission and the National Commission for the State Regulation of Financial Services Markets.

Ukraine imagevia Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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Ukraine's Central Bank Moves Closer to Cryptocurrency Regulation - CoinDesk

Ukrainian police have arrested an individual accused of spreading the NotPetya malware, used in a cyberattack that knocked thousands of companies offline earlier this year.

An unnamed 51-year-old from the southern city of Nikopol was detained by the state cyber-police last week after a raid was carried out at the alleged attacker's home.

In a brief statement (translated for ZDNet), police say they seized computers that were used to spread the malware in the cyberattack.

The statement said that the person of interest told police he had uploaded the malware to a file-sharing account and shared a link on his blog with instructions on how to launch the malware.

The malware was downloaded about 400 times, police say.

Several companies downloaded the malware intentionally to "conceal criminal activity" and to "evade payments" to the state, police say.

But it's not clear if police have declared the person of interest a formal suspect in the cyberattack that spread to more than 60 countries.

News of the outbreak began in late June, when predominantly Ukrainian systems were hit by a new strain of ransomware -- just a month after a similar cyberattack that leveraged leaked NSA hacking tools to spread the WannaCry ransomware.

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Ukraine police make arrest in NotPetya ransomware case - ZDNet

We carry our tragedy inside

The 2017 Participatory Assessment Report for refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons in Ukraine

Acknowledgements

This report is based on dialogues with refugees asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and persons at risk of displacement conducted in Ukraine between February and March 2017. UNHCR is grateful for the extensive involvement and support of UNHCRs partners, local authorities, free legal aid centres, civil society, and international organizations. Finally, UNHCR would like to acknowledge the refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and persons at risk of displacement whose participation demonstrates a commitment to engage pro-actively in decision-making concerning their protection and finding solutions to their needs despite the challenges and difficulties faced in their current situation.

Executive Summary

The 2017 Ukraine participatory assessment involved 167 focus group discussions conducted by UNHCR and its partners across the country, supported by local authorities, free legal aid centres, civil society and international organizations, with women, men, girls and boys of different ages and backgrounds. This report presents the specific protection risks and their underlying causes faced by refugees, internally displaced persons (IDP), and persons at risk of displacement. It provides details of their capacities, and their proposed solutions. The previous participatory assessment exercise in Ukraine took place in 2015.

The overarching concerns of participants from all target groups relate to discrimination, administrative and bureaucratic obstacles to the exercise of their rights, and housing. All target groups called for assistance from the Government, international organizations, civil society, and local communities, to support their integration in a tolerant and inclusive society.

Specific concerns of refugee and asylum seeker participants relate to xenophobia, challenges in accessing asylum procedures and flaws in these procedures, as well as lack of local integration prospects, and a preoccupation with identifying durable solutions.

Many feel a sense of hopelessness and exclusion despite having spent years in Ukraine, and a belief that there are few opportunities for resettlement. For those granted refugee status or complementary protection, concerns focus on possibilities for naturalisation and a more stable presence in Ukraine. For IDPs and persons at risk of displacement, concerns include high rents, lack of employment prospects, and difficulty accessing state subsidies to offset high utility costs in the context of adapting to the challenges of life since displacement, and the realisation that return to their prior place of residence is increasingly unlikely in the near future. They perceive administrative and procedural barriers as the main underlying causes of their problems, together with a lack of political will, coordination and understanding from the authorities. Many IDPs feel discriminated against by Ukrainian society and conclude that the authorities do not make sufficient efforts to ensure that they have full access to their rights.

The participatory assessment presents recommendations for each target group, and by rights group. The findings will influence the design of UNHCRs programmatic responses in Ukraine.

See original here:
Ukraine 2017 Participatory Assessment - Reliefweb