Primorye buzzes with news, from tricks to tragedy. On the eve of university entrance exams, students perfect cheat sheets. A village youth dies in a blast near a former artillery shell depot. July 14-18 Residents peeved by messy neighbor The problems started after a car ran into Yevdokia Dmitriyevna last April. ..."Yevdokia Dmitriyevna didn't keep her apartment clean before, and when she was unable to walk it got so dirty we had to pour a thick layer of bleach powder and pesticides over the communal corridor because cockroaches and rats had become outrageously impudent," neighbors say. "And the stink. You'll smell it." An array of services visited her: social security and sanitary and epidemic monitoring officials. The police tried to help her. She was offered a room in a house for seniors, but she consistently declined. Novosty, July 14 Students face squeeze for university spots Institutions of higher education will start entrance exams the day after tomorrow. Meanwhile, applicants are feverishly studying school textbooks, writing up cheat sheets and weighing their chances of getting a student ID this autumn. ...According to preliminary data, the Far Eastern State University can be called the leader -- the average competition at prestigious departments there is five people per seat. The Vladivostok, July 14 Old-timers say drought severest in memory The water crisis that has been affecting the south of Primorye over the past 12 months has proved so severe that even old residents can't recall such a long drought. ...Local climate experts say we'll wait till August and then typhoons from the south will fill the city's reservoirs to the brink. ...However, the national paper Izvestia wrote July 8 that, "Mysterious things are going on in the Pacific where a climatic record has been set -- not a single typhoon has originated there since last December." "For the first time in 107 years of observations we've encountered two years in a row of severe drought. And there's no relief ahead," says Valery Tunegolovets, director of department for tropical cyclones at the Far Eastern Regional Hydrometeorological Research Institute. The Vladivostok, July 15 Vladivostok belle goes to Clinton's inaugural ball Our very own city is home to Olga Lopanchuk, the youngest person at the inaugural ball of this millennium's last U.S. president , William Jefferson Clinton.... Not yet suspecting what a gift destiny had in store for their daughter, the Lopanchuks saved money for Olga, who dreamed of being a translator, to go to America and mingle with native speakers. "On the student exchange program I was sent to Washington-based Falls Church High School," says Olga. "The family where I lived was friends with Marion Slacha, a White House official. ...Somewhere around the end of January of 1997 Marion told me I was going to the inauguration with her." Novosty, July 16 Down-and-out take up fishing tackle His mother, Vasily said, died of drinking. He didn't know his father. ...Now he and his posse hang out in the Sportivnaya Gavan beach area which this season has turned into a big, crowded, moneyed out-door café. ...They don't steal. They practically don't beg. They try to earn money. Now they sit all day long on a pier fishing determinedly. The Vladivostok, July 16 Metal firm director turns up tea-time treasure It's a regular-looking samovar if you ignore the date it was made -- 1850 -- and the inscription saying it was made by a supplier to the court of the Russian emperor. This samovar has 11 brothers of different volume and age. ...Altogether they constitute the collection of one of the directors of the Ost-Sumet firm. The firm deals in purchase and sale of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. In addition to deformed metal pieces, people sometimes bring the most unexpected things. Novosty, July 17 Chinese sweets tempt local taste buds "The Sweet World," the first such specialty store in Vladivostok, has opened in the new trading complex at the Lazo tram stop. It is said to be the only place to buy biscuit cakes made with ingredients and technology from southern China. Zolotoi Rog, July 17 Boy dies in blast near former shell depot An explosion in the area of the former artillery shell depot near Talovoye village one recent July evening killed 15-year-old Alexei Maluka, a ninth-grader at Baranovsk High School. ... "When examining the locality, a commission found a great number of unexploded shells. After the tragedy three years ago they were just buried rather than taken away and destroyed," comments V. Shilikhin, head of Pogranichny County Headquarters for Civil Defense and Emergencies. The Vladivostok, July 18 © copyright 1998 the Vladivostok News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any form. [Back to Front page]  [Write to us]