Archive of articles - August 1999, page 7

Jobless number almost half million in June

Letter to the Editor: Deodorant slurs wide of the mark

Roma minority unrest boils over

When Slovak Romanies began to stream out of the country to seek asylum in June, Slovak government officials went on the offensive. The Roma, they told the press, are stealing from the social benefit system. They don't want to work. They do not face discrimination.Politically divided and morally downtrodden, Slovakia's estimated 350,000 Romanies have seldom been strong enough to force the Slovak majority to take their problems seriously. But with their social benefits cut back significantly as of July 1, and few jobs open to them, Slovak Romanies have begun to show their discontent openly. Some are voting with their feet, fleeing to countries such as Finland where they imagine life will be better. And for the first time that Roma leaders here can remember, some are beginning to raise their voices in organised protests at home.

State budget revenues to fall to 20.8% of GDP next year

Letter to the Editor: Openness the key to eliminating corruption

UN Secretary General concludes his Slovak visit

Community Grapevine

Honorary Slovak Consul named in Ohio

Small and medium businesses in Slovakia stagnated in 1998

Dora Restaurant: Cool Balkan food for a hot summer

Restaurant DoraAddress: Plátenícka 22 (near the corner of Prievozská ulica and Košická ulica)Tel.: 534 18 946 or 0903-349-342

Tire maker Matador's H1 pretax earnings 328 million Sk

Slovak premier league football kicks off season

The seventh season of the Slovak Mars Superliga, the country's premier football division, began with a full slate of matches over the July 23-25 weekend.The 1999-2000 football season promises to be a bitterly contested one, as the league plans to pare its roster down from the current 16 teams to 10 sides. Clubs not finishing in the top nine will thus be relegated to the Slovak second division, with one lower echelon team being elevated next year.The four top-ranked teams - Spartak Trnava, 1FC Košice, Inter Bratislava and defending champions Slovak Bratislava - started well, with two wins and a draw among them. Košice scored an easy 4-1 victory away at Žilina, while rivals Trnava kept pace with a 2-1 victory in Banská Bystrica. Slovan was held to a 1-1 draw with Tatran Prešov, while its cross city rivals Inter lost a 3-2 shocker to perennial patsies SCP Ružomberok in a game featuring two red cards and a 90th minute goal by Ružomberok.

Billa bomb blackmail

Lexa released from jail; Mečiar to be questioned

The release of former Slovak secret service boss Ivan Lexa from pre-trial custody on July 19 was a case of the mice playing while the cat was away, according to some members of the Slovak cabinet.Lexa, who was jailed on April 15 on charges that he had orchestrated the 1995 kidnapping of Michal Kováč Jr. to Austria, had been remanded in pre-trial custody because prosecutors feared he would try to influence witnesses in the case, including senior members of Lexa's former Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) staff.However, the Bratislava Regional Court decided last week that since all important witnesses had already been interrogated, there was no reason to prolong Lexa's stay in jail.

CHYBA

Getting a court to rule clearly on the amnesties granted in connection with the 1995 kidnapping of the former president's son Michal Kováč Jr. and the 1997 marred referendum on NATO entry and direct presidential elections is beginning to look like an impossible task.The Constitutional Court has been asked several times to decide if Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda was acting correctly last December when he annulled an amnesty issued in the referendum and Kováč Jr. cases by his predecessor, former Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar. Although the power of amnesty normally belongs to the president, both Dzurinda and Mečiar were wielding presidential powers they inherited in the absence of a sitting head of state.

Irish Pub murder investigation continues

Letter to the Editor: Car theft epidemic

Letter to the Editor: Roma's plight needs a closer look

Nature man leads wild life in the Veľká Fatra mountains

Miroslav Saniga loves birds. A field researcher for the Slovak Academy of Science's Institute of Forest Ecology in Staré Hory, Saniga cares so much about birds that he claims to be married to them, and says he has dedicated his life, by the command of God, to their protection.In the process, the 35-year-old has become a minor Slovak nature celebrity, quoted in hundreds of newspaper articles as a source of pithy and interesting wilderness information. He has become a key source of information about what is going on in the forest, on everzthing from when the bears are waking up to bird mating schedules.

Semtex smugglers nabbed