Archive of articles - November 2001, page 9

Industrial production up moderately

Slovaks economically fittest in almost 2 years

Imuna to end in bankruptcy

Crown strengthens on ratings increase

Parliament cuts corporate and personal tax

New Transpetrol headache

Construction still in doldrums

Census indicates black market in housing

Matsushita pulls in more investors

Hungarian puzzle only surprise in new census

The typical Slovak is white, female and Catholic, according to the results of the May 2001 census released last week.But despite an inexplicable decline in the number of ethnic Hungarians the survey contained few surprises."No remarkable changes took place in the country over the last 10 years," said Peter Mach, head of the Slovak Statistics Office at an October 30 presentation of the census results.According to the figures Slovakia has a total population of 5.38 million - a 2% increase since the last national census in 1991. Women account for 51.4% of inhabitants.

Easterners forced to leave for the west

VRANOV NAD TOPĽOU - Seventeen-year-old Lenka dreams of becoming a physicist, getting a well-paid job, perhaps teaching in university someday.But if those ambitions are to be realised, she says, it is not going to happen in eastern Slovakia."There's no future here, nothing works. I want to move west to study physics in the Czech Republic," she said."And when I move to Prague, nobody will ever force me to come back here."This is the eastern Slovakia maxim: no jobs, no money, no hope. Saddled with the country's highest unemployment rates, including 25% in Vranov nad Topľou, many young people say their only hope for a good life is in the west.

MP claims police intimidation

Quote of the Week

Ministry moves to stop energy sale flop

The Economy Ministry has appealed to a regional court in an attempt to stop the privatisation of one of Slovakia's key energy companies being derailed.Economy Minister Ľubomír Harach announced October 31 his ministry was appealing an earlier "scandalous" ruling by a court in the east Slovak town of Humenné to a higher regional court in Prešov.A judge ruled October 15 that shares in state pipeline operator Transpetrol could not be traded because of an unresolved dispute over tax payments between a private firm and the Finance Ministry.

Slovak Post retains monopoly

E-signatures draft sent back

The Bratislava View: Hats off to a tough cookie

The Lore of Running, an encyclopedic work on the sport written by South African doctor and ultramarathoner Tim Noakes, contains some entertaining glimpses of how early 20th century athletes trained.One man trained for his six-day races by doing half an hour of jumping jacks, three times a week. Another did the occasional 100-yard dash to keep himself in marathon trim. The US men's marathon team, at the Helsinki Olympics in 1920, set out to run the entire course at top speed as a training exercise for the Olympic Marathon, held two days later (they performed poorly). As late as the 1950's, running great Arthur Newton was still writing of the benefits of drinking brandy in the later stages of an ultramarathon, a run of longer than the 42.2k standard marathon distance.

A Spanish village: Slovak enshrines nations

Although you wouldn't know it by the name Reynolds, the blood coursing through my veins goes back to Italy, France, Germany, England, Ireland, Holland and France. There is a dash of Native American in here, too. All this in a Catholic from a small agricultural town in the US.Because none of the categories I fall into has ever caused me the slightest discomfort, the crusade to banish hurtful racial terms from everyday American speech has always seemed to me like a cause for good-hearted but bored liberals. In my lifetime, Orientals have become Asians, and Indians Native Americans. My Grandma says coloured, my parents say black, I waver between black and African American.One casualty of this crusade has been humorous sayings that play on racial stereotypes. You still hear racial slurs of course - at dinner tables and in good-old-boy bars - but those lack the innocence of widespread cultural phenomena.

Budget draft under threat