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The World Boxing Council (WBC) has named Vitali Klitschko among the world’s best all-time heavyweight boxers, taking the eighth spot in the rankings. The news was posted to the klitschko-brothers.com website on April 8. The list is topped by Muhammad Ali, followed by Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston and Ken Norton. Lewis (Great Britain) and Klitschko (Ukraine) were the only non-American boxers on the list.

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Soccer

• Dynamo Kyiv, ranked 12th in the list of top UEFA teams based on performance in the UEFA European Cup (1955-1991) and in its updated format since 1991, the UEFA Champions League.  With 231 matches played, Dynamo won 97 of them, drawn 51 and lost 83 for a coefficient of 245 points. Shakhtar Donetsk, in 31st place with 127 points, played 124 matches, with 51 wins, 25 draws and 28 losses. The ranking included 513 European clubs and the top-10 included Real Madrid (spain), Bayern Munich (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Manchester United (England), Juventus (Italy), Benifica (Portugal), Porto (Portugal), Liverpool (England) and Ajax (the Netherlands).

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Soccer

• Ukraine lost 0-2 against Iceland on September 5 in Reykjavik as part of the World Cup qualifiers for Europe. In the previous match against Turkey on September 2, Andriy Yarmolenko scored a brace of goals for Ukraine at Metalist Stadium in Kharkiv. Ukraine won the match 2-0 with Yarmolenko scoring in the 18th minute and then again in the 42nd minute. The head coach for Turkey was Mircea Lucescu, a Romanian and former coach for Shakhtar Donetsk. Ukraine is in fourth place in Group I after eight matches played (four wins, two draws and two losses) with 14 points (tied with Turkey).

Ukraine

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Boxing

• Junior lightweight (super featherweight), Vasyl Lomachenko (6-1-0, 4 KO) added the WBO title to his collection after a fifth-round KO of Roman Martinez (29-3-2, 17 KO) of Puerto Rico on June 11 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lomachenko, 28, landed a series of hits followed by an uppercut that stunned Martinez, and he followed it up with a right hand that sent the Puerto Rican to the canvas. The Ukrainian national anthem was sung by 16-year-old Ania Kosachevich, a member of Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization and dance with Iskra Ukrainian Dance Academy of Whippany, N.J.

• Cruiserweight Dmytro Kucher (24-1-1, 17 KO) won by first-round TKO against Enzo Maccarinelli (41-8-0, 33 KO) of Great Britain on June 10 at York Hall in London. Kucher claimed the EDU title with the win in a fight that was scheduled to go 12 rounds. Tennis

• The International Tennis Federation (ITF) says it has banned a Ukrainian doctor from sports for four years for administering a banned substance to a tennis player, reported RFE/RL.

Community

After 98 years, Surma store in New York to close in June

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NEW YORK – The end of an era, some have called it, but then again nothing stays the same forever. Whatever we tell ourselves, the closing of the Surma Book & Music Company “The Ukrainian Shop” on Seventh Street is a tough one to process. Markian Surmach, the third-generation owner of the store and grandson of the store’s founder, Myron Surmach Sr., spoke with The Ukrainian Weekly on June 3, to break the news directly to the readers. We began our conversation where the last one left off, in April 2015, when Mike Buryk wrote in The Weekly: “I asked Markian how long Surma would last. ‘As long as my personal interest in Ukraine continues and evolves,’ he said, ‘Surma will be here.’”

Referring to that 2015 statement from just over a year ago, this writer asked: What has changed and why?

US

U.N. marks 30th anniversary of Chornobyl with special session

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UNITED NATIONS – The 30th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster was commemorated during the opening of the 92nd plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on April 26 by Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark, president of the General Assembly, representatives of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, and speakers representing other regions of the world. Mr. Lykketoft said: “Many of us remember the horror and the fear we felt 30 years ago, when the nuclear accident happened at Chornobyl, in what is now Ukraine. The most severe accident in the history of nuclear power industry. The accident caused the huge release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere over large swathes of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine – devastated the region’s mostly rural economy and uprooted more than 300,000 people. Livelihoods of those people 30 years ago have yet to recover fully, and many are still struggling to overcome poverty, exclusion and stigma of contaminated regions.”

He continued: “Today we remember the human cost of the disaster.

Community Chronicle

The Ukrainian Museum in New York celebrates its 40th anniversary

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NEW YORK – Approximately 200 people attended the 40th anniversary banquet celebration for The Ukrainian Museum in New York on April 17 at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. They came to honor an institution that has served not only the Ukrainian community, but the arts community at large, with its high-quality and expansive exhibits and collections. Among the honored guests were: Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Nations Volodymyr Yelchenko and his wife, Iryna; Consul General of Ukraine in New York Igor Sybiga and his wife, Natalia; Bohdan Kurczak, CEO, and Stefan Kaczaraj, chairman of the board, from SelfReliance New York Federal Credit Union; Marianna Zajac, president of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (and a vice-president of The Ukrainian Museum); and Treasurer Roma Lisovich from the Ukrainian National Association. Following a cocktail reception, as guests found their seating assignments, the celebratory program was opened with a welcome to guests by Xenia Ferencevych, director of communications at The Storm King School, who served as mistress of ceremonies. The Rev. Volodymyr Muzychka of St.

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Soccer 

• In the UEFA Champions League, Dynamo Kyiv lost 1-3 against Manchester City in Kyiv on February 24 in the first-leg match of the Round of 16.  Man City opened the scoring in the 15th minute by Sergio Aguero, in the 40th minute by David Silva; Ukraine’s Vitaliy Buyalskiy scored the lone goal for Ukraine in the 59th minute, but Manchester City’s Yaya Toure capped the match with a goal in the 90th minute. The second-leg match will be played on March 15. The final is to be held on May 28 in Milan, Italy. • In the UEFA Europa League, Shakhtar Donetsk tied 0-0 with Schalke on February 18 in Lviv, and won 3-0 in the second-leg match in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on February 25. Scoring for Shakhtar were Marlos Romero Bonfim (27th minute), Facundo Ferreyra (63rd minute) and Viktor Kovalenko (77th minute) Shakhtar faces Belgium’s Anderlecht on March 10 in Lviv and 17 in Belgium.

Holodomor

Follow-up: HOLODOMOR MEMORIAL DEDICATION

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More than 1,000 march to White House

WASHINGTON – More than 1,000 activists took part in an early evening march on November 7 from Union Station, the location near the recently unveiled Holodomor monument, to the White House. Marchers, who carried blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine and many dressed in Ukrainian embroidery, snaked through the streets of Washington as D.C. Metro police directed marchers and held traffic for the marchers as they passed by. As the procession started to arrive, people lit the votive candles that were sold by the organizers. Some sang the Ukrainian national anthem prior to the arrival of Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. When the crowd finally arrived at the White House, Patriarch Sviatoslav, joined by area clergy and Catholic hierarchs, offered a prayer service for the millions who died as a result of the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

Sports

Ukraine finishes in 8th place at Universiade in South Korea

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PARSIPPANY, N.J. – Ukraine finished in eighth place in the medal standings with 31 medals – eight gold, 17 silver and six bronze – at the 2015 Gwangju Summer Universiade (student youth games) on July 3-14 in Gwangju, South Korea. Artistic gymnast Oleg Verniaiev won six medals – gold medals in the individual all-around, men’s rings and parallel bars; silver in the men’s floor exercise; and bronze medals in the men’s vault plus the men’s team event (with Igor Radivilov, Mykyta Yermak, Arseniev and Volodymyr Okachev). Gymnast Igor Radivilov won silver medals in men’s rings and men’s vault.

Verniaiev’s six-medal tally was the highest for any individual competitor

In judo, Dmytro Kanivets (73 kg) won silver and Tetiana Lvytska (52 kg) won bronze; the men’s judo team (Bogdan Iadov, Mykhailo Iltchuk, Dmytro Kanivets, Denys Tolkach, Artem Gulyayev, Dmytro Luchyn, Fedir Panko and Anton Rudnyk) won bronze. Ukraine’s women’s coxless four-man rowing team (Daryna Verkhogliad, Ievgennia Nimchenko, Nataliia Kovalova and Nataliia Dovgodko) won gold. Ukraine also won silver in women’s double sculls (Verkhogliad and Nimchenko) and women’s singles sculls (Dovgodko).