Multifunctional medical center opens in Beslan.

VLADIKAVKAZ, October 28 (Itar-Tass) - A multifunctional medical center fitted out with top-notch equipment received first patients in Beslan, the region of North Ossetia, Tuesday.

The center will help raise the standards of healthcare not only in
North Ossetia but in all other parts of North Caucasus as well, its head
doctor Alexander Reutov said.
The official name of the new institution is the North Caucasian
Multifunctional Medical Center of the Federal Agency for Healthcare and
Social Development. Its compound includes an outpatient clinic with a
capacity for 300 patients daily and a hospital for 270 patients, Reutov
said.
"At this moment, the center is only gaining operational pace, as the
admission of first hospital patients will begin in the next few days, but
we'll be using all of our technological capabilities as of 2010, including
high-tech medical tests," he said.
Physical examination and treatment will be offered to people from all
the territories and republics of North Caucasus but special attention will
be given to the residents of Beslan who survived the barbaric
hostage-taking at a local school in September 2004, when a group of
Chechen and international terrorists seized more a thousand grownups and
children on the school compound.
The tragedy resulted in a loss of more than 330 human lives.
The center has a 1,080-strong staff, including 200 physicians. Some of
them have moved to Beslan form the leading medical centers of Moscow and
St Petersburg.

.Russia, Japan discussing prospects for cooperation in transport.

TOKYO, October 28 (Itar-Tass) - Modernization of Russian railways, and
the Trans-Siberian railway in the first place, along with the setting up
of economic incentives for investors will dominate the agenda of the 2nd
meeting of a Russian-Japanese workgroup in the field of transport that
opened here Wednesday.
The Russian delegation is led by Alexander Podlesov, a deputy chairman
of foreign policy committee in the upper house of Russian parliament.
Officials at the Japanese Foreign Ministry told Itar-Tass
representatives of various governmental agencies and departments on both
sides will exchange information and discuss the most immediate prospects
for the joint efforts to modernize Russia's transportation system and
improve the management of cargo haulage.
According to the officials, the Russian side also plans to fill
Japanese businessmen and regional officials in on the special aspects of
Russian customs formalities and the methods of regulating railway haulage
tariffs.
A decision to set up this workgroup was taken in November 2007 during
a regular round of the Russian-Japanese upon the results of a bilateral
conference on cooperation in the field railways.
The group had its first meeting in Moscow in March 2008.

.Ukraine marking Day of Liberation from Nazi Aggressors.

KIEV, October 28 (Itar-Tass) - Ukraine is for the first time
officially marking the Day of Liberation from Nazi Aggressors.
Exactly on this day 65 years ago, the last Nazi soldier was driven out
of the territory of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Although people's memory has always kept recollection of this event,
it was somehow overlooked by the official calendar of commemorative dates.
President Viktor Yushchenko, who is running for a second term of
office in the January presidential election, rectified the situation and
made October 28 a new holiday, Liberation Day.
Following a decades-long tradition, flowers will be laid Wednesday at
numerous monuments heroes of World War II and at the Unknown Soldier's
Tomb in Kiev.
A gala party will be held in the Ukraina state palace in honor of war
veterans and festive fireworks will light up skies over the cities of
Kerch, Kiev, Odessa, and Sebastopol at nighttime.
Soviet troops paid a dire price for Ukraine's liberation from the
Nazis and their accomplices.
President Yushchenko is going to spend the day in Ukraine's
trans-Carpathian region of the country where he will lay flowers at the
Ukraine to Liberators monument and will take part in the ceremony of
passing the baton of the All-Ukraine public action 'Glory to Ukraine's
Liberators'.
Also, he is expected to address a public gathering dedicated to the
date, the presidential press secretary Irina Vannikoca said.
The presidential decree on establishing the date said that the
glorification of Ukraine's freedom from aggressors "pursues the goal of a
nationwide praise for the liberator soldiers and the maintenance of memory
about the millions of people of different nationalities who paid their
lives on the occupied territories, in concentration camps and in fascist
slavery."
Ukraine and Belarus were the first two former Soviet republic to
experience the pounding of Hitlerite forces in June 1941.
Soviet authorities managed to evacuate urgently more than 550 large
industrial facilities and 3.5 million people in the very first week of
hostilities on the frontline.
Hitler's troops occupied all of the country's territory in the summer
of 1942 and its liberation began after the famous Battle of Stalingrad at
the beginning of 1943.
The capital Kiev was liberated November 6, 1943, and the rest of the
country was freed after months of fierce fighting in October 1944.
-0-kle