A HEBREW ULPAN is ... an intensive course in Hebrew.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/ulpan.htm
"However, there is a great deal of variation between ulpans, such as how
often they meet, whether their focus is on spoken Hebrew or academic Hebrew,
and how much Jewish content (if any) is part of the program.
http://www.jr.co.il/aliyah/hebrew.htm for links to many ulpans.
... For tourists, the cost for a full time (5-days a week, 4 hours per day)
program is standard at about $200 a month. ... Most will allow you to sit in
for a day to see if the level and style are suitable.
"Ulpans are organized by level using the
Hebrew alphabet, the Aleph-Bet. Aleph: starting with no Hebrew skills through
limited reading ability with no comprehension (many American Jews fit in
here). Students learn the Aleph-Bet, how to write, basic vocabulary
with an emphasis on what you need to get around. This includes the
ever popular "Excuse me, how do I get to the Post Office/Central Bus
Station," even though there's no chance in hell you'll understand the answer
before level Gimel, unless they point. ... Singing in class is popular. Course length is
eight to ten weeks, or combined with Bet and Gimel in a five-month
program. ..."
CHERNOBYL
Radioactive contamination of the
environment has affected "the lives of more than 7 million
people, including more than 3 million children,"
in Belarus, the Russian Federation and
Ukraine, according to the UN press conference marking 15 years
since the accident. Minutes of the press conference of April 26,
2001, are available in the extensive listing of online documents at:
http://www.un.org/search/ under a
search for "Chernobyl and health."
Highlights:
-- Constant medical care is required by "some" of the 2.5 million affected
people in the Ukraine;
-- "About 300,000 children" are included in the 1.8 million people who live
in contaminated areas of Russia;
-- Other forms of cancer [besides thyroid cancer] could ... "start to show
20 years after the accident;"
-- An ecologically safe zone around the exploded reactor had not yet been
created in 1998, when the Ukraine's UN representative pointed out that the
existing sarcophagus "was not 100 percent proof."
More than 12,500 recovery workers who took part in cleaning up after the
accident have since died, according to "the most recent figures released by
the Ukrainian Health Ministry," said Hennadiy Udovenko, a Ukrainian, who was
President of the General Assembly at the time of his message on the 12th anniversary
[1998] of the accident. "Many people displaced by Chernobyl may never be
able to return to their homes," he said. Their homes "will remain
dangerously contaminated ... for decades to come."
In October, 2000, Ukraine representative to the UN Volodymyr
Krokhmal complained, and was echoed by Belarus representative Sergei Ling,
about "the lack of appropriate scientific accuracy and objectivity" of the
UN committee's latest report on the Chernobyl situation.
"Nowhere in the report," said Belarus representative Ling,
"could one find the annual dose of radiation received by the population
living in contaminated areas close to the accident in Belarus, Russian
Federation, and Ukraine." Two thirds of the fallout from the Chernobyl
accident was in the territory of Belarus, he said, and the rate of thyroid
cancer in children there was at 280 percent its pre-Chernobyl rate.
The plant was closed in 2000. However, "the 200 tons
of nuclear fuel in the destroyed fourth reactor remain," Ukraine
representative Krokhmal said, "a potentially disastrous radiation threat."
