Zlatá Idka
Robber goes postal
AN UNKNOWN robber stole from a post office in Zlatá Idka, in the Košice district, on the night between April 13 and April 14 by cutting a hole into the building's wall.
The robbery caused damages of Sk51,000 (€1,280), Košice police spokeswoman Oľga Lukáčová told the state-run TASR news agency.
After entering the local post office through the hole in the wall, the robber pulled out two fireproof boxes fixed to the floor. Altogether, the boxes contained a portable cash box with stamps, rubber stamps, lottery tickets, and Sk400 (€10) in cash.
IT CAN be as dangerous to put a bear to sleep as it is to wake one up.photo: TASR
Košice
Bear family broken up
THE BEARS in the Košice zoo underwent a tough move recently.
A mating couple has been separated from their five two-year-old cubs. A third section of the new living area belongs to a pair of older siblings.
The state-run TASR news agency wrote that the move was marked by complications.
The four older bears were moved while sleeping, but the father bear suffered an unexpected collapse and had to be resuscitated from the anaesthesia by the zoo's employees.
The new bear quarters will remain divided into two parts for another year or two, until the young cubs are neutered and get used to living with the older bears.
The construction of the new living area cost Sk3.5 million (€87,300), Sk1.5 million (€37,400) of which came from the city of Košice; the remaining sum came from sponsors and the Košice zoo's own pocket.
Považská Bystrica
Young vandals get suspended sentences
THREE teenagers received suspended sentences for vandalising a Jewish cemetery last October in the northern Slovak town of Púchov.
Brothers Marek and Tomáš Hofierek, 15 and 17, respectively, and Radovan Miček, 17, were sentenced to four months with one year respite by a district court in Považská Bystrica. Another three culprits escaped punishment because at the time of the crime they were under 15, Slovakia's minimum age for criminal responsibility.
The youngest of the culprits was 13 at the time, the state-run news agency TASR wrote.
The boys kicked down and destroyed 22 tombstones in the old Jewish cemetery in Púchov. According to an expert appraisal, the damages reached Sk17,000 (€425). A police investigation did not reveal any racial motive for the crime.
A total of three Jewish cemeteries were vandalised last year in the western Slovak region of Trenčín. In one of the cases, a cemetery in Bánovce nad Bebravou fell victim to five young culprits in January.
The vandals received suspended sentences of four to seven months. They kicked over 33 tombstones in the cemetery and painted a swastika in the snow.
Police are still looking for those responsible for damaging 19 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, also in October of last year.
Vajkovce
Copper and robber
THREE kilometres of copperplate cables and copper reels were stolen by an unknown thief from the agricultural cooperative in Vajkovce in the eastern Slovak district of Košice.
Košice police spokeswoman Oľga Lukáčová told the state-run TASR news agency that the theft took place over the Easter holiday.
The thief entered the farm's estate and stole the items from a high-voltage transformer that was in the yard. The thief then broke the door of the farm's central building, where the copperplate cables were stored.
TOY trucks: They are not just for kids anymore.photo: TASR
Soroška
A model protest
IN A SYMBOLIC protest against an insurance firm that refused to pay for the recovery of a totalled truck, a wooden dummy truck was thrown into a 200-metre gorge at the Soroška mountain pass in southeastern Slovakia on the accident's one-year anniversary.
A truck from Belarus carrying enamel bathtubs had an accident in Soroška on March 28 of last year, falling down the gorge and breaking into three pieces. The driver escaped with no major injuries and a recovery team worked two straight days to collect the remains of the truck and the load it carried.
According to the Slovak daily SME, the trouble began when the insurer Allianz-Slovenská poisťo-vňa refused to pay restitution of Sk1 million (€25,000), only agreeing to Sk7,236 (€180) for the discharge of fuel and the truck's removal from the accident scene, which was close to the local drinking water reserve called Eveteš.
In the re-enactment, the employees of the rescue firm Jefta SOS Truck Slovakia ultimately only threw down the model.
"We don't want to pollute the environment," Jefta's director, Marián Ürge, said to SME.
Bratislava
Grenades found in park
POLICE discovered 124 rusty grenades in a park in Bratislava's Nové Mesto district on April 13.
Explosives experts said that some of the ammunition was still dangerous, despite being 60 years old.
According to the Slovak daily Pravda, the discovered underground site may not be the only of its kind in the park because metal detectors signalled other suspicious objects in the ground.
Peter Pleva, the spokesman of the Bratislava city police, said that an unidentified man reported the ammunition; one day later, police experts arrived on the scene and searched the area.
"The first discovery included about 10 grenades that were made in Czechoslovakia between 1921 and 1925. They were covered with a 30-centimetre thick layer of earth," said Pleva.
The police then found more ammunition one metre under the earth. Some of the grenades still had safety devices on.
Police also found German-made bullets and cartridge cases that were produced in 1938.
"The grenades are probably only a fraction of the ammunition that the retreating German troops left in 1945," Pleva said.
To prevent possible accidents, police will guard the forest area. Pleva would not specify the locality, but said that it was close to Bratislava's popular tourist destination, the Železná studienka.
Nitra
A dangerous garden
AN IVECO truck landed in a private garden in the western city of Nitra on April 14 after crashing with an approaching car that failed to yield right of way.
The truck landed a mere metre from the homeowners' bedroom. The driver suffered no injuries, but a 55-year-old passenger in the colliding car suffered a complicated pelvis fracture, the Slovak daily SME wrote.
Renáta Čuháková from the Nitra regional police headquarters said to the daily that the damages to the cars and the private house's fence combined were Sk350,000 (€8,750).
The family living in the house said that this sort of accident was not unusual.
"We have such crashes regularly here. A few years ago a truck landed in our yard, and a utility vehicle [ran into the yard] two years ago. About a week before the Easter holidays a car caught fire close to our [house]. We are considering moving," the house lady Zlatica Nosáľová said to SME.
