SLOVAKS who make mistakes when using their own language could face financial penalties from next year. The Culture Ministry has proposed an amendment to the existing language law which would impose fines of €100…
FRANTIŠEK Blanárik, the head of Slovakia’s National Security Office (NBÚ), probably informed on an army colleague during the communist era, documents unearthed from the former Czechoslovak Army Counter-intelligence…
FORMER General Prosecutor Milan Hanzel, who led investigations into crimes allegedly committed by Ivan Lexa, Slovakia’s intelligence chief under former prime minister Vladimír Mečiar, was killed in an accident on…
THE WINNING ticket from the eight-year dispute between Tipos, Slovakia’s national lottery company, and another lottery company, Športka, is now in the hands of a Czech businessman to whom Slovakia will have to pay…
PRIME Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány emerged from talks in the town of Komárno on November 15 having made a number of lofty promises but little progress in resolving the disputes…
AS THOUSANDS of people across Slovakia observed the 19th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on November 17, Prime Minister Robert Fico let it be known that he was treating it like any other day. And polls…
Slovenská Pospolitosť (Slovak Solidarity) THIS ultra–right civic association, which was a political party until it was outlawed in 2006, was dissolved by the Interior Ministry shortly before the talks between…
POLITICIANS and political observers in Hungary and Slovakia have welcomed a decision by the prime minister of Hungary and Slovakia to meet on November 15 (after The Slovak Spectator went to press). Ferenc Gyurcsány…
SLOVAKIA will mark the 19th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which signalled the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, in two ways. It will contemplate to what extent parliamentary democracy has taken root since…
PARLIAMENT passed on November 6 an amendment to the Penal Code that imposes prison sentences of up to 12 years on businesses found to have raised prices without justification during the lead–up to euro adoption.
THE NATION'S Memory Institute (ÚPN) has published on its website a list of 2,223 Jewish businesses, which were ‘aryanised’ during the Second World War. Since Jews were banned by law from owning any property between…
POLITICAL analysts in Slovakia have welcomed the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. They expect the domestic political situation in the US to improve during his presidency and international…
SPEAKING during a visit to Bratislava on October 28, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff confirmed that Slovaks will be able to travel to the U.S. without a visa as of November 17. The…
JOZEF Roháč, who has been on the run from Slovak and Hungarian police for nearly a decade, was arrested in Prague on October 26 on charges of driving under the influence.
U.S. President George W. Bush announced on October 17 that the United States is rescinding visa requirements for the citizens of six formerly communist European countries and South Korea.
SEVERAL hundred children from the community of Lomnička and surrounding areas in eastern Slovakia are now recovering after being hit by a hepatitis virus type A (VHA) epidemic in mid-October.
THE ANNOUNCEMENT by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 17 that the United States is rescinding the visa requirement for Slovakia and six other countries as of next month was the culmination of years of tough…