Archive of articles - May 2002, page 3

Slovak opera in Germany

Around Slovakia

Slovak 'Don Quixote' diesCut off in mid-protestTeenager takes life in Satanist suicideHooligan stripper arrestedBeer keg bench presser sets new Guinness record

Reader feedback: Longing for Slovakia

Reader feedback: No wake-up call

Reader feedback: Need to write about corruption

Government warned to avoid populism

Reader feedback: Congratulations to Slovak hockey

I'll huff and I'll puff: Home safe for Meeiar and the piggies

BEFORE the Slovak police huff and puff and blow Vladimír Meeiar's door down (again) to ask him where he got the money to refurbish his villa, someone should remind them that the little pigs - Meeiar era criminals - have little to fear from the big bad wolf until he grows some real teeth.Pardon the fairytale allusion, but the fraud squad's 'discovery' this month that Meeiar may have spent as much as Sk41 million ($860,000) on his post-1998 Elektra residence has all the elements of a twisted Aesop fable, complete with the moral at the end.

Countrywide Events

BRATISLAVAWESTERN SLOVAKIACENTRAL SLOVAKIAEASTERN SLOVAKIA

Sendrei investigation finished

Bank note forgery a mystery

Cabinet approves energy distributor sales

THE CABINET has approved the Sk25 billion ($530 million) sale of minority stakes in three state energy distributors, launching a wider move to take the energy sector out of state hands and put it under the control of market forces.The government elected on May 22 to accept privatisation committee recommendations that the German utility E.ON, French utility Electricité de France and German RWE Plus be declared the winners of 49 per cent stakes in the western Slovak ZSE, the central SSE and eastern VSE, respectively.The decision ended several weeks of political infighting that analysts ascribed to pre-election jostling among rival parties.

Holocaust victims' names still being collected

KOŠICE commemorated the deaths of almost 15,000 of its Jews in Nazi concentration camps by reading aloud the names of the eastern Slovak city's known Holocaust victims on May 19.Of the 15,000 Košice Jews who were taken to their deaths at the end of the second world war in 1944, only around 300 survived the camps.

Top Pick: Dried flower artist launches Košice exhibit

WHILE waiting at the Ukraine-Slovak border last November, Ukraine national Natalya Palotash began sorting through a bag of leaves of the Jordan flower that she had picked in her home country, removing unwanted greenery and throwing it into a garbage can.Customs officials, their suspicions aroused, called her in for questioning."They were surprised to discover someone collecting leaves in the winter," Palotash says. "But when I explained that I create pictures out of leaves, and that at this time of year they have a slightly different colour than usual, they seemed to understand."

Slovak-American poet returns for first reading

"I BECAME aware of the role I have to play as a poet on the world stage when reading poetry with Bob Dylan to Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. At that moment I just didn't feel local any more," says James Ragan, an American poet of Slovak origin, of the experience that changed his life.Ragan, 58, had been asked to read in front of 8,000 people at Moscow's first International Poetry Forum. Invited for his interest in global issues such as racism, oppression and religion, he joined other internationally known poets such as the American Robert Bly, the Russian Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Irish Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney.

Reader feedback: Taking a closer look

Crown continues to weaken

Dzurinda disgusted with media

Why are we watching this?

IN DRAGONFLY (2002), the world of the dead mingles with the world of the living. The result, unfortunately, is less thrilling than the film's backers may have intended.Paediatrician Emily Darrow (Susanna Thompson) works at the same hospital as her husband Joe (Kevin Costner), who is the head of the emergency ward. In an attempt to relive the ideals of her youth, the altruistic - and eight-month pregnant - Emily joins a Red Cross mission to help the poor in Venezuela. She dies when her bus plunges into a canyon.