Kiev - Seven persons died in a bloody Ukrainian auto smashup on a highway near the Crimean city of Simferopol, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.

The accident took place when a small four-seat car with seven people left its lane and collided with a lorry travelling in the opposite direction.

The heavy freight vehicle tore off the left side and roof of the smaller Soviet-era VAZ passenger car, which ended in a ditch.

All seven occupants of the VAZ - including three children, one a 6-month-old baby - died. The lorry driver suffered light injuries.

The seven people were members of two families heading to the Black Sea for a summer holiday, according to the report.

Kiev - Ukrainian Communists used their bodies to block a landings by marines and armoured vehicles participating in a NATO exercise, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.

The incident took place in Ukraine's southern Crimea province as naval infantry units from Ukraine, Georgia, and Macedonia attempted an amphibious landing on a beach of Donuzlav lake.

Some three dozen Communist activists despite the early 5am hour were on hand on the lake's shore waving red banners, the Russian naval ensign, and the Russian tricolour.

Kiev- Jewish community leaders in southern Ukraine have protested to the central government over a real estate project planned on a Holocaust grave site, the Interfax news agency reported Wednesday.

The Jewish Council of Odessa, a Black Sea port city, in an open letter to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said plans to revamp the town's Tolbukhin Square should be stopped out of respect to possibly tens of thousands of persons killed and buried there during the Second World War.

Kiev - Ten Communist rowboats blocked the exit of a squadron of NATO warships from a Ukrainian harbour, Channel 5 television reported Monday.

Demonstrators manning the craft had set up a patrol line in Odessa bay between the vessels and the open Black Sea, preventing NATO combat vessels from departing to participate in the US-led Sea Breeze 2008 international naval exercise.

Port officials had taken three boats into custody by mid-morning, but the blockade was continuing as Ukrainian police attempted to convince the protestors to move out of the way.

The anti-NATO activists were members of three extreme left-wing groups opposed to Ukrainian cooperation with the Western alliance.

Kiev- Ukrainian police confiscated videotape shot by a Russian television crew for a programme about a dispute within the Orthodox Christian church, Korrespondent magazine reported Friday.

The incident took place at Borispil airport in the Ukrainian capital Kiev after Artem Shirokov, a reporter for the Moscow-based TVTs television channel, attempted to board an aircraft home.

Ukrainian customs officers searching Shirokov's effects took into custody five videotapes shot by the Russian journalist and his crew of interviews with leaders of Ukraine's Orthodox Christian church.

Kiev  - The World Bank on Friday revised upwards Ukraine's predicted inflation rate for 2008 to 21.5 per cent, the Interfax news agency reported.

The bank had been predicting 17 per cent inflation, but galloping food and energy prices made that expectation unrealistic, said Ruslan Piontovsky, a bank spokesman.

The bank also suggested overall Ukrainian GDP growth will be at a relatively strong 6 per cent on the strength of demand for key Ukrainian export products such as steel, foodstuffs, and chemicals.

But growth would fall to between 4 and 5 per cent during 2009 and 2010, Pointkovsky said.