Kiev - Ukraine's parliament has rammed through legislation directly challenging President Viktor Yushchenko, placing the country's pro-West ruling coalition in jeopardy, local media reported on Wednesday.

A parliamentary faction led by Yushchenko's erstwhile ally, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshehnko, switched sides during a stormy Monday evening session to join with the pro-Russia Regions Party to approve a package of bills directly aimed at reducing the presidency to the status of mere figurehead.

Kiev - A massive army munitions depot fire and exploding ammunition forced the evacuation of thousands of villagers in east Ukraine, Channel 5 television reported Thursday.

The nighttime blaze near the town Lozova in Ukraine's Kharkiv province had produced hundreds of detonations so far, threatening firefighters with shrapnel and making quick control of the fire impossible, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said.

Two storage buildings the Soviet-era artillery shell and rocket dump were burning, and 120-millimetre mortar rounds were detonating "almost every minute" said Viktor Baloga, a government spokesman.

Kiev- Top Ukrainian politicians were split on Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev's recognition of the independance of the Georgian breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Pro-Russia politician Viktor Yanukovich, head of Ukraine's opposition Regions party, supported Medvedev's move, saying "Ukraine should respect the will of the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

In an Interfax news agency interview, Yanukovich said the status of the two regions was similar to Kosovo's separation from Serbia, and argued Ukraine should recognise the independence of both renegade Georgian provinces.

Kiev- Ukraine will for the foreseeable future not deliver any more weapons shipments to Georgia, engaged in hostilities with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax news agency reported Monday.

"In this phase we will examine the possibility of giving political and humanitarian help to Tbilisi," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Konstantin Yeliseyev said in Kiev.

He justified earlier arms shipments to Georgia from Ukraine as not violating any international norms.

Prague  - A Polish woman, a Ukrainian man and three Czechs were among the seven victims of Friday's train accident in eastern Czech Republic, the worst in 13 years, police said Saturday.

Revising its earlier reports, police said that four young women and two men, one young and one middle-aged, died when a speeding international train with some 400 passengers onboard rammed into a collapsed bridge in the north-eastern town of Studenka.