News Archive - December 2012

Crash investigators suspect faulty brakes may have been to blame for a Russian airliner skidding off the runway and careering onto a motorway near Moscow.

President Borut Pahor underlined the importance of solidarity in fighting the effects of the economic crisis at his visit to a homeless shelter in Maribor on Sunday. "Maintaining the dignity of everyone is our common task," he stressed.

Newly elected President Borut Pahor officially took over duties from his predecessor Danilo Türk on Sunday. Pahor, who was already sworn in by parliament yesterday, was received with military honours at the presidential palace in Ljubljana.

2013 will be a crucial year for the French economy and the government which targets a public deficit of under three percent of GDP in 12 month’s time.

Russia is in the icy grip of its coldest December on record.

Slovenia will have an estimated 114,000 people registered as unemployed at the end of the year, and the joblessness is expected to increase further next year. A moderate economic recovery forecast for 2014 is not expected to reflect favourably on the labour market until 2015.

There is not much left that is recognisable after a bakery has been obliterated a missile.

Support for the cabinet has grown slightly, up from some 19% in November to 20.7%, shows the December vox populi poll. The opposition Social Democrats (SD) remain at the top of party rankings and more than 28% believe it is time for a technical government. 75% expressed support for the protests against the establishment.

The supervisors of flag carrier Adria Airways dismissed on Thursday CEO Klemen Boštjančič for business reasons and appointed Mark Anžur acting CEO. Anžur has so far served as commercial director.

A split US Republican party has failed to unite behind its own “Plan B” to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff”. The proposal would have raised taxes on earnings above one million dollars (758,000 euros), but even that tax hike was too much for conservative members.

The Slovenia Times and Faculty of Economics from Ljubljana presented teh Conclusion Paper from this year´s FDI Summit Slovenia 2012 Conference. The message is very clear: enough talking, time for act now!

French President Francois Hollande had his eyes firmly fixed on the future – not the past – as he began a two-day visit to Algeria.

The years-long investigation by Finnish police into alleged bribery in the 2006 defence deal between Patria and Slovenia has ended with the prosecution bringing charges of aggravated bribery and business espionage against two former CEOs as well as four other employees of the Finnish contractor.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has become the first monarch in more than two centuries to attend a cabinet meeting.

The UN's humanitarian chief has called on Syria to urgently allow fuel imports for aid deliveries and give access to 10 more aid agencies.

The government has adopted confidential decisions about gas terminals planned by Italy in the Gulf of Trieste aiming to protect Slovenia's interest, according to Agriculture and Environment Minister Franc Bogovič.

Public sector unions will hold a general strike on 23 January next year to protest against layoffs in the sector, unionist Branimir Štrukelj announced before New Year holidays.

The United States is not doing enough to protect its children.

A number of events are scheduled this weekend as the 2012 European Capital of Culture comes to a close in Slovenia's second-largest city, which will hand over the title to France's Marseilles and Slovakia's Košice at a special ceremony on Saturday.

The jobs news from Greece continues to be relentlessly bad.

European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget, Janusz Lewandowski, said during a visit to Ljubljana that Slovenia will remain a net beneficiary of EU funds in the next financial framework budget and labelled as realistic Slovenia's wish to keep in place EU safety net funding for areas where the development level has exceeded 75% of the EU average. Lewandowski also touched on the general situation in Slovenia, saying that Slovenians are too pessimistic given the situation in some other EU countries. The true problems lie elsewhere in Europe he said, adding that Slovenia has "imported" the crisis and not the other way around.

After 14 hours of talks European finance ministers have reached a deal to give the European Central Bank new supervisory powers.

Eight out of ten Slovenian innovations presented at the Seoul International Invention Fair (SIIF) were awarded by a special jury. Gold medals went to Jože Stopar of Senovo for an automated hand-held fire extinguisher and to Aleš Zamuda of the Maribor University for a tool for interactive 3D reconstruction of trees.

EU foreign ministers have held talks with the newly-elected head of Syria’s opposition coalition.

The National Council, the upper chamber of parliament, will debate Tuesday a proposal to veto the budget implementation act. The law was passed in parliament last week and outlines a 5% cut to the public sector wage bill.

A continent cursed by world wars has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The head of Slovenia's delegation to the UN climate talks in Doha has welcomed the conference's extension of the Kyoto Protocol as an important success in the fight against climate change.

Tax dodgers cost the coffers of EU governments as much as one trillion euros a year.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti lost substantial parliamentary support on Thursday over a raft of economic measures.

The National Assembly passed on Thursday austerity budgets for the coming two years aiming to reduce the deficit to 2.8% of GDP in 2013 and to 2.5% of GDP in 2014. The budgets also include a cut in the public sector wage bill.

DEMOCRATS say it so often that it has become something of a mantra: there will be no deal to resolve America’s fiscal mess unless Republicans agree to higher tax rates on the richest Americans. But they seldom talk about their side of that bargain: the cost-cutting reforms to such entitlements as Medicare, the government’s health-care scheme for the old, and Social Security, its pension scheme, that they are expected to offer in return. As more and more Republicans grudgingly accept the prospect of higher taxes, the Democrats will soon have to decide what they can stomach on entitlement reform.

Embattled Maribor Mayor Franc Kangler, who has been the target of growing protests in Slovenia's second-largest city, will announce his resignation on Thursday, commercial broadcaster POP TV reported

France’s Pierre Moscovici has emerged as a candidate to become the new chairman of the Eurogroup as Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed he will step down at the end of the year.

The Latvian Cultural Embassy is opening its doors in Maribor on Tuesday as the last one of more than 30 cultural embassies that had been set up during Maribor's stint as European Capital of Culture 2012. Latvia's embassy focuses above all on Art Nouveau architecture in the capital of Riga.

With the French and Italian leaders meeting for a bilateral summit in Lyon it was a perfect opportunity to get them face-to-face to answer a range of questions on Europe’s current preoccupations.

Heavy violence erupted at the protests in Maribor on Monday, as police reacted to a hail of flares and rocks against City Hall with calls for an end to the rally and tear gas. While many protesters left after the eruption of violence, clashes were reported around the city late into the evening. The situation is reportedly calming down.

A group of MEPs have backed plans to give the ECB the task of supervising banks in the European Union.

The Social Democratic former Prime Minister Borut Pahor will be the new president of Slovenia. He won Sunday's presidential run-off in a landslide against the incumbent, Danilo Türk, with early unofficial results showing him winning over 65% of the vote.