Archive of articles - June 2002, page 17

Macro data draw darts & defence

AS THE September vote nears, financial experts are warning that, despite considerable progress in the current election term, the Slovak economy is still in a fragile state.

Mud on the champions: The limits on the truth

THE WEEKLY paper Domino fórum this week issued a challenge to Slovak national hockey team coach Ján Filc to respond to a story the paper had run about corruption and money-laundering in the nation's hockey leagues.Domino editor Štefan Hríb reported that Filc had hung up on him when he called to ask for an interview, after saying the Domino story had "hurt Slovak hockey".In a story entitled "Mud on the nation of champions", Domino had written that despite the gold medal performance of the national side in the recent World Hockey Championships in Sweden, domestic hockey was being corroded by bribery from parents to have their less-skilled sons accepted to hockey programmes, and wholesale game-fixing by players and coaches to profit from bets that teams would draw, the highest-odds result with betting shops.

Plan to increase Roma enrolment attacked

A RECENT plan using positive discrimination to give more Roma students a chance to study at the prestigious Medical Faculty in Bratislava has drawn few positive reactions from experts or the general public.The faculty's dean, Pavol Traubner, announced on May 21 that his school would this fall be setting individual acceptance criteria for Roma med school applicants. Roma students will be required to score only 50 per cent on regular entrance tests, and their results will be listed separately from those of other students.From this special list, the three top scores will be accepted to the faculty on top of the 330 students that the faculty plans to accept this year from the main application procedure. The faculty, part of Bratislava's Comenius University, annually turns down hundreds of applicants for lack of space.

Quote of the Week

Currency drop no prelude to crisis, say dealers

THE VALUE of the Slovak crown has recently retreated to 2001 levels, but despite public fears of a currency crisis, analysts emphasise that the currency remains stable and that the central bank can smooth any unwanted deviations.Over April and May 2002, the Slovak currency dropped around 2.5 crowns against its euro benchmark, an intense loss in a short period that sparked alarm in the Slovak media of an Argentina-like breakdown, but which analysts have called a 'correction', in line with trade and fiscal deficit warnings."The exchange rate went from Sk41.30 to the euro in mid-April to almost Sk44.00 in recent days, but I would not dramatize the temporary weakening; it was just the influence of a certain sentiment. A different sentiment could reversely strengthen the crown any time," said Istrobanka analyst Marek Senkovič.

Mikloš attacks Fico for HZDS sympathies

More Lexa cases abandoned

Child murderer charged

Religious fanatic arrested

Horizont finally in bankruptcy

OECD: Slovakia must rein in spending

SE profit halved in 1Q02

Police: Afghans not terrorists

SLOVAK officials have rejected claims by a German newspaper that almost 30 Al Qaida and Taliban fighters escaped in early March from a refugee camp in Slovakia and fled west across the border.The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on May 22 that the group of suspected terrorists had been intercepted on March 7 by Slovak police on the country's southern border with Hungary, but after requesting asylum had been interned in the unguarded Adamov refugee camp near the Czech and Austrian borders.By the time Slovak police received information the group might include terrorists and raided the camp on March 12 to arrest them, the Afghans were no longer there, the paper wrote.

Euro survey indicates disinterest

Mikloš fires back at cabinet's economic critics

DEPUTY Prime Minister for Economy Ivan Mikloš has fought back against critics of the government's economic policy, rejecting claims that the economy in the fourth year of the Dzurinda government's tenure resembles the crisis-wracked economy it inherited in 1998.In a lengthy piece printed in the Sme daily on May 23, Mikloš traced the improvements the Dzurinda government had encouraged in the financial sector, the energy industry, the business environment and privatisation.Regarding Slovakia's serious trade and fiscal deficits, which he said "form the basis of most analyses that conclude that the economy is in a similar state to that in 1998", Mikloš identified differences in both the structure and context of the current and former deficits.

Reader feedback: Tragedy of insufficient education

Review: The goose has been shot, but not the golden egg

THE SUSPENSE has ended for fans of the vanished Krym pub near Comenius University, who for weeks waited to see what would take the place of the fabled student hangout and alternate classroom for expat English teachers.The opening of the Trafená Hus (shot goose) restaurant in early May, part of a well-known Czech franchise of Prague breweries, is little short of a disappointment.The facility is above all so lacking in local character that it could be found in any city in the world (banks of televisions, cute duck footprints on the walls, uniformed, and uniform, wait staff).

Detva workers see first of wage arrears

SPP money goes to domestic debt