Overview of the week's top stories
since 12 October 2001

Aleš Zalar of the Ljubljana Court signed the order allowing Sova to begin its operation. Responding to the Mladina article, he defended his action by saying that the law allows intelligence-gathering even if the threat to Slovenia is indirect, affecting its strategic interests.

In a closed session on 18 October, the Commission reviewed a report concerning Sova’s activities connected to the prevention of international terrorism. Afterwards, Jerovšek told the STA that the Commission is fully satisfied that Sova and other information-security services are "operating strictly within the law."

The inconsistency between what the government is saying and what it is doing does present a problem. Legislation in force says that Sova is permitted to monitor telecommunications only in the event of a significant probability of a threat to national security. Therefore, if Sova is in fact acting within the boundaries of the law, logically a threat must exist. However, the government publicly insists that no threat exists.

This week, the government’s Office for Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (UMAR) gave new predictions for the GDP growth rate for the year 2001, pegging the figure at somewhere between three and four per cent. Prior to the attacks on the United States, the prediction was 4.4 percent.

The lowered predictions were presented to the government late this week, and will require a recosting of the proposed budget for 2002-2003.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) likewise downgraded 2001 GDP growth rate predictions for most of the world this week. Predictions for the United States have fallen 0.2 percent to 1.3 percent; for Germany 1.1 percent to 0.8 percent. The IMF downgraded predictions for next year as well.

Slovenia has enjoyed strong growth rates in recent years. In 2000, the rate was 4.7 percent, and the year before it hit its post-independence peak at 5.0 percent. The lowest growth rate in the past seven years was recorded in 1996, when it was 3.5 percent. Given the new economic climate, the 2001 rate could mark a new low.

The results of the latest RIS survey show that 100 percent of high schools and 99 percent of elementary schools throughout the country have access to the internet. These promising figures, however, are juxtaposed to the ratio of computers to students: the average is 27 high school students and 29 elementary school students per one computer. Also, only 73 percent of those computers have internet access.

The internet is widely used in Ljubljana and the larger cities but remains unknown elsewhere. To address this problem, the Ministry of Information Society began a promising program this week. The first four e-Schools were opened on 18 October, and 15 more are expected to open by the end of the year.

The e-Schools offer free internet access to the general public. They also have full schedules of training and educational programs, including workshops and lectures.

The program is focused on smaller areas where the internet has yet to make significant headway. The e-Schools will work in cooperation with local authorities, companies and non-governmental organizations.

The strange case of Ladislav Troha returned to the media this week when investigators filed a suit against the 38-year old former major on Monday. Troha is to be charged with lying to authorities when he reported that he had been kidnapped.

Troha alleges that while he was jogging on the evening of 18 January, a group of unknown men abducted him. For five months, he was held in an unknown location. In mid-June, he went on a hunger strike. On the third day, he was bound and blindfolded, and thrown into a van. Somewhere near the village of Strmica, he was thrown from the vehicle and abandoned.

His brother Robert alerted the police to his disappearance on 23 January, and even Interpol was involved in the search.

On 23 June, Troha reappeared and reported the abduction to the authorities. Immediately, he was on the front pages once again. Confirming earlier media speculation, several months of investigation only produced evidence that Troha made the whole story up.

This case in just the latest of several strange scandals the country has seen this year. The most outrageous was the Rogelj case this spring.

In July, Rogelj was convicted in a civil suit for breach of contract, and a criminal suit is still in the works.

The weekly Mladina ran an article this week about the Jerry Springer Show, which Kanal A began airing on 1 October. In her article, Mateja Hrastar stated that airing the show in Slovenia is good for at least three reasons: it will raise the level of media education, it will prove to Slovenes that they are normal after all, and it will encourage them to be more daring.

According to Kanal A’s program director, Branko Čakarmiš, some 528,000 people over the age of 10 tuned in for the first five episodes. Most viewers fall into the female 18-34 demographic, and in the first week, it took a 26% share.

Asked whether he thought it would be possible to stage such a show in Slovenia, he said "no, because in Slovenia there is no critical mass of people who would be prepared to discuss their personal business."

Readers commenting on Mladina’s website had mixed feelings about the Jerry Springer Show. Some marveled at how it reflects on the state of the American people, but as one reader commented, "almost 90% of the Slovene population over 40 watches lame ass Spanish soap operas…we’re the really stupid nation!!!"

Ljubljana hosted the 12^th annual International Colloquium of Film Theory, better known as the Fall Film School, from 17 to 20 October. The focus of this year’s Fall Film School were the socio-cultural aspects of post-colonialism and the cinema of the Third World. Particular attention was paid to films from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Highlights included a retrospective of the films of Iranian director Rakshan Bani-Etemad and the presentation of the Slovene translation of the book Introduction to the History of Film by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (in Slovene, Uvod v zgodovino filma). The schedule was filled out by lectures by academics from not only Slovenia but also from the UK, Belgium and Italy.

The Fall Film School was organized by Slovenska Kinoteka and Ekran magazine, and was hosted by the new Kiberpipa center at Kersnikova 6.

• Ljubljana’s Cankarjev Dom will host the British percussion show Stomp next month. Six performances are planned: 13 and 14 November at 20:00 and 17 and 18 November at 16:00 and 20:00. Tickets run from SIT 2000 to 5000 (roughly USD 8 - 20) and are already on sale at Cankarjev Dom and at Kompas locations throughout the country.