Archive of articles - June 2001, page 4

Review: English is easy: Teaching the Mafia a foreign tongue

Hollywood keen on Slovaks

Spanish movie set designer Benjamin Fernandez has worked on scores of Hollywood films. He designed the kilometre-long tunnel in the Sylvester Stallone film Daylight, and one of the coliseums in the drama Gladiator. But the set he says he is most proud of is the 7,000 square metre Warsaw ghetto he and his mostly Slovak team built this winter on the bank of the Danube River south of Starý most (Old Bridge) in Bratislava.The set - including four-storey facades, a large square, lamp posts, cobblestone streets, mock store fronts, brick walls and barbed wire - is believed by Slovak film crews to be the largest ever built in Slovakia, and one of the largest in the history of filmmaking in central Europe. Started in January, it was constructed in just two and a half months for the film Uprising, currently being shot in the capital.Uprising is part of a growing trend - since 1994, six big-budget Hollywood films have been shot in Slovakia.

Census 2001: Form and substance

Foreign residents of Slovakia may quickly get tired of filling out the endless forms that seem essential to life here. And there's now yet another office that wants to know who we are and what we're doing - the Statistical Office, which is conducting the first census in independent Slovakia. We're all required to complete it, even those of us who have been here less than 30 days and don't intend to stay. Here's how.Wherever you live, you should by now have been given two forms - the list obyvateľa, or Resident's Form, and either the bytový list (Apartment Dweller's Form) or domový list (House Dweller's Form), depending on what kind of luxury you call home.Nothing will happen to you if you ignore these requests for information. You may not even get one, if reports about Census 2001 confusion are true (Eva Kelemenová, spokeswoman of the Statistical Office itself, complained on May 30 that she hadn't yet been issued a census form).

Business Briefs

NBS revises monetary targets after deficit jumpNew industrial park in works for east SlovakiaEnergy regulator expected as of August 2001Financial Controls Law opens door to new EU chapterNew pipeline may come through Slovakia after allIRB bosses recalled under cloudSE split gets go-ahead from creditorsPoor business environment, says think tank survey

Census 2001 nears end, with a few hitches

Amid complaints and reports of delays and tampering, officials at the Slovak Statistics Office said that the country's 2001 census, which began May 19, was being administered "without major problems"."In all censuses around the world, small delays occur, mistakes are made, differences of opinions are voiced. But we aren't having any major problems," said Marián Horecký of the Statistics Office.Some 2,500 census workers began distributing two forms to every home and apartment in Slovakia almost two weeks ago. One form requests personal information, the other information on each individual's dwelling. The census is the first in the history of independent Slovakia, and has been planned, says Horecký, along standard European models.

University reform bill to have profs compete

In an effort to increase job competition and thus performance among Slovak academics, a recent proposal was added to the government's draft university reform bill which would reward university teaching excellence by giving both money and increased status to top-rated professors.The Education Ministry - which has been working on the reform since March 2001 - said the proposed title of funkčný docent (awarded to the best professor in each university department, as judged by school administrators) would motivate educators to 'be the best' in their department. Recipients of the title would hold it for the following five years, over which time they would receive an undetermined salary bonus.

Community Corner

Spanish Embassy film festivalItalian Institute Film FestivalAustrian Culture Forum seminar and exhibitionGoethe InstituteFrench Institute exhibitionsOrganised RunsBratislava Town GallerySpanish exhibition at DanubianaBahá'í Community

SPaP shipper bought for a song

The new owners of shipping firm Slovenská plavba a prístavy (Slovak Shipping and Ports - SPaP) on May 28 became the little-known firm Dunajservis Slovensko. The decision - a controversial one, for many observers - had been made by a privatisation commission, and was confirmed by members of the FNM state privatisation agency after a tender in which other bidders had offered far more money than Dunajservis' 311 million crowns ($6.1 million).The Slovak firm Emteco had offered 1.1 billion crowns for SPaP, reported FNM spokeswoman Tatjana Lesajová, although payments were to be structured over 11 years; Charles Capital of Prague had bid 385 million crowns, but said it would pay only one million now, and make up its mind how much of the remaining millions to turn over after doing a thorough audit of the shipper.Other interested buyers were the German firm Gerhard Meyer, the Russian Lukoil Arktik Tanker, and the Slovak Konzorcium and Penta Group firms.

News Briefs

Dzurinda wants more NATO support by year's endCabinet approves debt solution for Slovak TelecomNový Čas is most-trusted daily paperSNS's Malíková calls for meeting with MečiarSchuster also dissatisfied with his own performanceSuspected Kováč Jr. kidnapper detained in Trenčín

Students may soon be grading teachers

Accusing schools of overloading them with an excess of theory and a dearth of creative practice, Slovak university students have called on the Education Ministry to force professors to change their teaching methods."We have some professors who just read out the 45-minute lectures they prepared 10 or more years ago and have been using ever since," said Peter Milík, a student at Bratislava's Comenius University. "They never even try to open the floor to questions, because it just might force them to face a discussion."Student groups are hoping the ministry will act on their demands during preparation of a university reform bill that is to be submitted to parliament this fall. The ministry appears to be listening - the university reform bill currently includes a clause which would give students the right to evaluate their professors' work by filling out an "anonymous questionnaire concerning the quality of their education".