Ukraine

Position No. 6128: White to play and win. From the game Shane Matthews-Pradeep Seegolam, 39th Olympiad, Khanty-Mansiysk 2010. Solution to Position No. 6127: White wins with 1 Bxf7!, as 1?Rxh1 allows 2 Bxe6! Qxe6 3 Qc7 mate. Ukraine, the second seed, won the 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The five-man team went undefeated, winning eight matches and drawing three in the 148-team competition. Ukraine was led by Vassily Ivanchuk, whose 8-2 score (a 2890 performance)

The boys of "The Big Bang Theory" are slowly but stalwartly taking down the Death Star. The CBS sitcom, now in its fifth season, knocked off Fox's long-dominant "American Idol" for the second week in a row Thursday night among viewers in the 18-to-49 age range that many advertisers target. The geek comedy also pulled in more viewers overall, according to early figures from Nielsen, drawing 15.96 million viewers in the 8-8:30 slot compared with "Idol's" 15.46 million. "Idol" did better in its second half hour and wound up averaging nearly 17 million viewers for the broadcast — still good, but down markedly from a year ago. —Yvonne Villarreal ABBA reissue has new track Mamma Mia, here they go again.

When it comes to messy politics -- and old-fashioned entertainment -- it's hard to top the theatrics of the relatively young democracy in Ukraine. Here are a few choice moments from the presidential campaign that ended with Sunday's runoff election: While on a campaign stop in the western city of Lviv -- an area typically unreceptive to his historically pro-Russia politics -- candidate Viktor Yanukovich had an embarrassing slip of the tongue, Ukrainian...

The writer A.J. Liebling famously called boxing "the sweet science," but it doesn't always play out that way in fight films, where boxers often come off as lacking in personality, intelligence or both. When it comes to the subjects of "Klitschko," however, there is a lot more to the story than we are used to getting — twice as much, in fact. That's because this fascinating documentary is the story of two Ukrainian brothers, Vitali and Wladimir, who have done something unprecedented in their sport: They're both world heavyweight champions, simultaneously holding between them the titles of all five boxing federations.

The presidents of Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement Wednesday that would leave Russia's Black Sea Fleet in its historical base on the coast of neighboring Ukraine for decades to come. The deal is a blunt signal of Ukraine's return to Moscow's good graces since the inauguration in February of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, squashing the longtime rallying cry of the country's pro-Western politicians to evict the Russian naval base. "This document symbolizes our friendship," Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters after meeting Yanukovich in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko's conviction on money-laundering and conspiracy charges was upheld by a federal appeals court Friday, a judgment that will keep the long-incarcerated politician in U.S. prisons for at least several more years. Lazarenko, 56, was head of the Ukrainian government from May 1996 to June 1997, during which, prosecutors said, he siphoned at least $200 million from the nation's coffers through elaborate schemes of extortion, cronyism and kickbacks.

Re "Ukraine Leaning West in Vote," Dec. 27: Hooray for Viktor Yushchenko and his supporters! Ukraine, with a population of only 48 million and a burgeoning democracy of only a decade, has illustrated to the United States how to conduct an efficient, legitimate and orderly revote for the presidency. Perhaps we could learn a valuable lesson from this example. Tania Anderson Reseda

Day 7 of the Mongol Rally, the 10,000-mile road trip from Britain to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, started off as badly as Day 6 ended. I couldn't seem to shake the curse of the Slovakian Burger, which kept me in bed all of Day 6 in a Croatian hotel room. I was planning another quiet day in bed until friend, cameraman and travel companion Steven Priovolos came in with some rather worrying calculations. We had to be in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, in less than three days, about 1,400 miles from my sick bed in Croatia, all to be driven on very second-rate roads.

A ransom has been delivered to Somali pirates who seized a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks, heavy weapons and about 20 crew members, a spokesman for the ship's owners said Wednesday. Mikhail Voitenko did not say how much was paid, but Russia's Itar-Tass news agency put it at $3.2 million. The pirates originally demanded $20 million. The Faina was seized in September off Somalia. "The ransom has been delivered to the Faina.

Viktor Yanukovich, the burly former mechanic ousted by popular revolt just five years ago, salvaged himself to claim top place among contenders for the Ukrainian presidency Sunday, exit polls indicated. His longtime rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, will be a close second, the survey predicted. The exit poll results, if borne out by the slow counting of ballots, mean that the contentious pair will battle for the presidency in a runoff next month. The choice of a new leader marks a milestone in Ukraine's post-Soviet evolution, and many voters appeared disillusioned and hungry for change -- if wary of fresh rounds of infighting and scrapping for power among the Ukrainian elite.

Ukraine's former prime minister and leading opposition figure was found guilty of abuse of power and sentenced to seven years in prison Tuesday in a widely expected verdict that underscored the country's deep political divisions. Yulia Tymoshenko, who more than once during her trial accused the judge of acting on behalf of her rival, President Viktor Yanukovich, was convicted of exceeding her powers in signing a gas deal with Russia in January 2009 that the judge said had cost the state-owned gas company about $200 million.

Chatting with women on websites for surrogate mothers, Melissa Todd stumbled upon an unusual opportunity. It required foreign travel — a quick trip to the Ukrainian city of Lviv to be impregnated using embryos created in vitro from sperm and eggs of donors. The pay was $38,000, nearly double what she had made the one previous time she had been a surrogate. Most uncommon was the arrangement itself. Typically, a couple hires a surrogate to carry and deliver a child for them, but in this case Todd would become pregnant first.

A prominent San Diego attorney pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to being part of what U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy labeled a "baby-selling ring. " Theresa Erickson, a lawyer specializing in reproductive law, pleaded guilty to wire fraud for transmitting phony documents to deceive both the San Diego County Superior Court and couples seeking to become parents. Two other people in the ring have also pleaded guilty. According to court documents, Erickson hired women in San Diego to go to Ukraine to be implanted with embryos created from the sperm and eggs of donors.

Day 7 of the Mongol Rally, the 10,000-mile road trip from Britain to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, started off as badly as Day 6 ended. I couldn't seem to shake the curse of the Slovakian Burger, which kept me in bed all of Day 6 in a Croatian hotel room. I was planning another quiet day in bed until friend, cameraman and travel companion Steven Priovolos came in with some rather worrying calculations. We had to be in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, in less than three days, about 1,400 miles from my sick bed in Croatia, all to be driven on very second-rate roads.

Reporting from Moscow -- The abuse-of-power trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko slid into chaos Wednesday when the Western-leaning politician was tossed from a Kiev courtroom after calling the judge a "monster" and her prosecution a "farce. " The former princess of the so-called Orange Revolution, which in late 2004 and early 2005 loosened Ukraine's ties to Russia, is also under investigation, government officials said, on possible charges of high treason and the alleged attempted embezzlement of $405 million while she and her colleagues were in power.

Barcelona, playing the type of stylish soccer that has made it a fan favorite worldwide, swept past Shakhtar Donetsk of Ukraine, 5-1, on Tuesday to virtually guarantee its place in the semifinals of the European Champions League. Manchester United also made its passage to the semifinals considerably less complicated by defeating Chelsea, 1-0, in London on a well-taken goal by Wayne Rooney that was created by superlative passes from Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs. With Real Madrid and Schalke '04 of Germany also having won by healthy margins Tuesday, it appears that the semifinals will feature Manchester United against Schalke and Barcelona against Real Madrid.

Reporting from Moscow -- The abuse-of-power trial of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko slid into chaos Wednesday when the Western-leaning politician was tossed from a Kiev courtroom after calling the judge a "monster" and her prosecution a "farce. " The former princess of the so-called Orange Revolution, which in late 2004 and early 2005 loosened Ukraine's ties to Russia, is also under investigation, government officials said, on possible charges of high treason and the alleged attempted embezzlement of $405 million while she and her colleagues were in power.

Five years after he was discounted as Moscow's stooge and shunted to the margins of Ukrainian politics, Viktor Yanukovich has regained his lost prestige -- and then some. To the surprise of many, the towering, plain-spoken politician has emerged as the clear front-runner in the presidential vote to be held Sunday. His popularity represents a remarkable reversal of fortunes: In 2004, Ukraine's presidential election dissolved into massive street protests and widespread outrage when the Supreme Court ruled that Yanukovich, then the prime minister, had won the election fraudulently.

As far as I could tell from the advertising at the hotel where I stayed in Kiev last year, Ukraine's chief export these days is brides. But it wasn't always that way. Twenty-five years ago this month, Ukraine's best-known export was a whole lot of radiation. After Reactor No. 4 blew up at Chernobyl power station on April 26, 1986, the resulting disaster took two years and 650,000 people to clean up. Except it will never really be cleaned up. Nuclear fallout and waste can be moved and sequestered, but not deactivated.

To be honest, I was less enthusiastic than my husband about tacking a jaunt to Kiev onto our already packed 18-day European vacation last summer. But David is a serious amateur historian of World War II and the Soviet Union, a man who has not met a 500-page tome on Joseph Stalin or the Eastern Front campaign that he hasn't devoured. So the invitation from friends spending a year in the Ukrainian capital on a Fulbright Fellowship was irresistible to him, a chance to see firsthand what remains of the Soviet empire as well as the emergence of one of its former satellites.