.Putin to chair conference on federal high-tech medical centers.

MOSCOW, August 17 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
is expected to make a one-day trip to the city of Tver, 170 kilometers to
the northwest of Moscow, Tuesday and to visit a new regional perinatal
medicine center there.
This medical facility carries the name of Yekaterina Bakunina /b.
1810, d. 1894/, one of the first sisters of charity in Russia and a
participant in the Crimean War.
In 1860 and 1861, she invested her own money in the construction of
the first free hospital in the Tver region.
The Russian government's press service said Putin is due to hold a
conference on the construction and commissioning of federal
high-technology medical centers and perinatal clinics.
Apart from a number of government officials who will attend the
conference personally, including Public Health and Social Development
Minister Tatiana Golikova, governors of the regions where perinatal and
high-tech medical centers are being built will take part in it by
teleconferencing.
Golikova and the Director General of Russia's State Corporation for
Technologies, Sergei Chemezov, are supposed to make reports.
Construction of high-tech medical centers is part and parcel of the
National Project 'Health', which pursues the goal of providing quality
medical aid to rank-and-file patients.
A decision was taken earlier to make emphasis on building such centers
in different parts of Russia so as to make high-tech medicine available to
the patients as close to the places of their permanent residence .
The project envisions construction of fourteen high-tech centers -
seven of them specializing in cardiac surgery, five in trauma treatment,
orthopedics and prosthetics, and two in neurosurgery.
In 2008 and 2009, high-tech medical centers were commissioned in the
cities of Penza, Cheboksary and Astrakhan. This brought about a sharp
increase in the numbers of patients who got access to top-notch medical
assistance - to 254,000 in 2009 from a mere 60,000 in 2005.

.Aug 17 marks one year since disaster at Siberian power plant.

MOSCOW, August 17 (Itar-Tass) - A tragic industrial accident at the
Sayano-Shushenkaya hydropower plant in Eastern Siberia, the largest hydro
plant in Russia and one of the biggest in the world, carried away 75 human
lives exactly on this day a year ago.
A special remembrance litany will be held at the Uisky cemetery in the
region of Khakassia where most victims of the tragedy are buried.
A commemorative chapel built at the cemetery is dedicated to the Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus, as the accident occurred on the day when the Russian
Orthodox Church venerates the memory of these early Christian saints.
One more chapel dedicated to the victims of the tragedy will be
consecrated in the town of Cheryomushki. Liturgical lamps will be lit on
its steps in memory of the hydropower plant's workers who lost their lives
a year ago.
All in all, about 300 members of the personnel were on duty at the
moment of the disaster.
In the meantime, investigation of a criminal case over the
Sayano-Shushenskaya plant tragedy is still in progress. The Investigations
Committee reporting to the Office of the Prosecutor General has prolonged
investigative actions through to December, although previously it was
supposed to name the first suspects back at the end of August.
Investigation Committee officials say they need conclusions on three
more expert studies.
Another two state bodies that conducted their own investigations - a
commission of the Russian state technological supervision watchdog agency
Rostekhnadzor and a commission of the State Duma - presented their
findings at the end of 2009.
The parliamentary commission said the causes of the accident were
"systemic and multifactor" and included among other things "an
inadmissibly low level of responsibility of the operating personnel, an
inadmissibly low level of responsibility and professional standards of the
power plant's management, and occupational abuses on the part of top
management.
The conclusions drawn by Rostekhnadzor sounded much more narrowly
focused on technology. The immediate cause of the accident was "the
fatigue breakdown of mounting studs of the hydro unit's lead, which led up
to its ripping off and the flooding of the turbine room," the watchdog
said.
Noteworthy, the mounting studs' service life and replacement
procedures were not specified in any of the technology regulatory acts, it
indicated.
Prior to August 17, 2009, the installed power generating capacity of
the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant totaled 15% of all electric generation in
Russia.

.Ceremony in Baltic Sea to mark wreckage of Soviet sub in 1940.

MARIENHAMN, Finland (August 17) - A commemorative wreath with a sailor'
s peakless hat attached to it will be descended into the waters of the
Baltic Sea Tuesday off the shores of Aland, an autonomous region under
Finland's sovereignty.
The action will commemorate the wreckage of the Soviet submarine S-2
there in the winter of 1940.
The incident carried away the lives of the 50-strong crew of the sub
that was assigned to the Soviet Baltic Fleet.
The causes of the wreckage are not known exactly even now. What is
known is that it wrecked January 3, 1940, in the course of the
Soviet-Finnish war supposedly after tripping a Finnish mine.
A group of fourteen Russians, relatives of the S-2's crewmembers and
representatives of the St Petersburg Club of Submarine Fleet Servicemen,
which organized this international event, as well as diplomats of the
Russian embassy in Finland and officials of the Aland autonomy government
are expected to participate.
"A naval ship of the Finnish Border Guard will make a cruise from
Marienhamn, the Aland region capital to the spot of the S-2 incident,"
Igor Kudrin, the president of the St Petersburg club told Itar-Tass.
"In line with the Ship Regulations, a ceremony in memory of the
submarine's crew will be held," he said. "A wreath will be descended into
the seawater after a brief meeting. A Russian priest, the Reverend Alexei
Krylov, who is the father superior of the St John the Baptist's Church at
Chesme Place in St Petersburg will chant a remembrance service."
Finnish and Swedish divers are also expected to take part in the
ceremony. It was they who identified the remnants of submarine on the
seafloor last year.
The divers will fasten a memorial plaque to the submarine's hull and
the ship will make three long sirens in memory of the Soviet seamen.
The St Petersburg Club of Submarine Fleet Servicemen has managed to
locate the seamen's family members now living in Moscow, St Petersburg,
Kiev, and Krasnodar.
"The Russian delegation will spend three days in Aland," Kudrin said.
"Quite possibly, this meeting will help consolidate Russian-Finnish
friendship, on the one hand, and will shed more light on the circumstances
of the S-2 wreckage, on the other."
-0-kle


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