Overview of the week's top stories
since 5 January 2002

After two freak incidents in as many weeks, Adria Airways undertook special work on 10 January to ensure the engines on its fleet of passenger planes are in top shape. On 23 December and 8 January, two of the airline’s three Airbus A-320 passenger planes experienced rare engine problems.

While still taxiing on the runway at Ljubljana’s Brnik airport, the left engine of one of the Airbuses failed. The 23 December flight was carrying 141 passengers and six crew, en route to Ohrid. No one was injured and upon inspection, it was apparent that a compressor in the left engine had been damaged.

According to Bojan Jeras, director of Adria’s traffic sector and head of the airline’s team of pilots, there are 370 Airbus A-320s flying around the world and an incident such as this has only ever happened twenty times.

Regardless of the odds, the same problem appeared again on 8 January. Another of Adria’s Airbuses had only been in the air for fifteen minutes en route to Paris when its left engine failed while in Austrian airspace. The pilot was able to return to Brnik safely, and none of that flight’s 54 passengers were injured.

Jeras told Dnevnik: "At Adria, we have had much worse difficulties than this today, but it is truly bizarre that we have had the same exact problem with the same engines in such a short time."

The engines involved in both of the incidents were of the American-made IAE V2500 AI type. Adria Airways maintains three Airbus A-320 passenger planes, but only owns one back-up engine. It was installed in the first plane, which has since passed inspection and returned to its regular flight schedule. A second engine has been ordered for the other plane, which remains grounded.

The country’s Roma community made two significant gains this week, in two different parts of the country. First, on 9 January, representatives of the government’s Nationalities Office opened the new headquarters of the Union of Roma in Murska Sobota. For the past ten years, the Union has worked out of space provided by the city of Murska Sobota, but thanks to the assistance of the Nationalities Office, it now owns its new home.

Also this week, the city council of Krško altered its spatial plan to legalize a Roma settlement at Kerinov Grm. The settlement has been highly controversial since it was established as an illegal squat ten years ago. It is now home to some 249 Roma.

According to the new regulations, 27 Roma families will be able to purchase about four hectares of the land they are using. The settlement will also receive running water, plumbing and electricity. The legal owners of the land are to receive a fair price as well as damages for the illegal use during the past several years. The town council hopes the government will contribute some funds to help out.

Slovenia is home to two autochthonous Roma communities. One lives in Prekmurje, centered on Murska Sobota, while another lives in Bela Krajina and Dolenjska, centered on Novo Mesto. The 1991 census showed 2282 Roma and 2840 declaring Romany their mother tongue, but estimates put the country’s actual Roma population at somewhere between 6500 and 7000.

The news of Marko Oselj’s 3 December 2001 escape from a prison in southern Serbia and subsequent reappearance in his native Slovenia continued to make headlines this week. Oselj was serving a ten-year sentence and was due to be released in 2006.

The 37-year old from Zgornji Brnik, near Ljubljana, spent the past five years in a prison in Sremska Mitrovica, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRJ) after he was convicted of smuggling 190 kilograms of heroin across the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border in a truck full of peppers. Late last month, he and another prisoner escaped to freedom through 21 meter-long ditch.

Since Slovenia gained independence from Yugoslavia, Slovenia and the FRJ have not signed any treaties in the field of justice and so throughout Oselj’s imprisonment, Slovene diplomacy was useless. Now, that fact works to Oselj’s benefit, and, coupled with the fact that extradition of Slovene nationals is forbidden by the country’s constitution, he is now essentially untouchable.

• The United States embassy announced this week that it will distribute grants to Slovene non-governmental organizations from a fund the US established to promote democracy in Eastern Europe. Priority will be given to NGO projects that promote Slovenia as a "mentor" to the region. Last January, the US distributed grants valued at up to USD 22,000 each to seven local NGOs; this second round of grants gives an indication that the program might become a formal annual competition.

• The January 2002 issue of Dun & Bradstreet’s International Risk & Payment Review once again ranked Slovenia’s economy as the soundest in Eastern and Central Europe with a rating of DB2d. Among the important factors pointed out was the lowering of inflation, a lower deficit in the trade balance and the maintenance of high levels of exports despite the global recession, thanks to increased exports to Yugoslavia and Russia.

• On Friday 11 January, Maribor’s Galerija Media Nox opened an exhibit called Obrazi New Yorka (Faces of New York). Photographer, journalist and traveler Gregor Preac shot the 60 featured photographs after the events of 11 September rocked the city, but the exhibit includes no pictures of the World Trade Center ruins. Rather, it documents the two months Preac spent this fall photographing the city’s diverse population, neighborhoods, clubs, theatres, parks and other sites in the wake of the tragedy.