Occupational safety through children's eyes

For the fifth time now an art competition on the theme of safety and health protection at work is being organized by U. S. Steel Kosice Occupational Safety and Hygiene Department. The thirteen best pictures will go to make up a Company calendar for the year 2006, and there will be attractive prizes for the creators of the winning pictures. This competition is intended for the children and grandchildren of employees of U. S. Steel Kosice and its subsidiary companies, aged between six and fifteen years old. The USSK Occupational Safety and Hygiene Department will enter everyone in the competition who sends a colour drawing, by October 10th, 2005 at the latest, which best expresses their idea of how their parents and grandparents work safely at their workplaces. Just as in previous years of this competition, the steel company will be giving prizes to the creators of the best drawings. Every picture will be judged by a group of independent experts, and the prizes will go to the winners in two categories: from 6 to 10 years of age, and from 11 to 15 years of age. USSK will compile a 2006 calendar from the best drawings, and this will be distributed to all employees of the steelworks and its subsidiaries. The calendar will also include a photo gallery of the young artists.

Kosice Summer of Sport 2005 reaches its climax

Thanks especially to generous financial support from U. S. Steel Kosice, in mid-June of this year the Kosice-South city ward was able to inaugurate the reconstructed Children's Sports-Fun Area on Alejova Street. Since then this center, which offers a wide range of opportunities for making use of leisure time, has been the venue for many sporting events and contests in the Kosice Summer of Sport program. In fact Friday of this week, August 26th, sees the culmination of Kosice Summer of Sport 2005, with cycling, in-line skating and scooter races prepared for children. There will be prizes for everyone, and of course there will be an interesting program of entertainment as well.

American Slovaks at USSK

There's no place like home. This is clearly still felt also by thousands of Slovaks who emigrated from this country to the United States of America in one or other of last century's massive waves of emigration. They are happy to return to Slovakia repeatedly, and in their new home country they also try, the older ones especially, to keep up their use of the language, the customs and traditions. We were convinced of this fact last Friday by a group of almost thirty American Slovaks brought together by the First Catholic Slovak Union, who decided to visit the country of their birth this year. Besides returning to the remembered places, they could also discover new ones, and in this sense a visit to the American steel company works in Kosice was also included in their program. They listened most attentively to the words of U. S. Steel Kosice Public Affairs Director Jan Baca, who informed them about the steelworks' activities. The following minutes absolutely resembled a press conference, as the senior visitors inquired about everything concerning the steelworks' operations - the production program, the profit, employment, sales territories, trades union involvement, but also for example which manufacturer's name our products are sold under, whether American or Slovak. The presentation of the company continued with a film showing the steelworks' activities, and it was completed with a plant tour on which the visitors had the chance to see the cokery, blast furnaces, steel plant, both strip mills and the finishing plant.

Post office on Main Street on Friday

The Pony Express, which was the fastest way of sending mail from the East Coast of the United States to the West and back, was set up in April 1860. Its riders used to carry the mail day and night regardless of the weather conditions and the dangers involved. But in October 1861, when the telegraph system started linking the states of the Union, this sounded the death knell for the Pony Express. In honor of those courageous horsemen, who could complete the difficult journey of more than four thousand kilometers in an average of ten days, the idea emerged 21 years ago in the former Czechoslovakia of organizing the delivery of letters and other mail items in an identical way. A new tradition was established, which Slovakia itself joined in later in 1997. In the early evening of last Friday, August 19th, the Main Street in Kosice saw the official departure of the Pony Express, heading off through Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland as far as Haren in Germany. Horse-riders in these four states will be covering the 2630-kilometer distance in stages, so that they can deliver all the mail consignments which they collect from predetermined post offices along the way safe and sound to their addressees.

Metal Inspirations this very week

This week U. S. Steel Kosice has once again become the venue, for the fourth time now, for the international workshop for students and teachers of college design departments called Metal Inspirations. More than twenty participants from universities in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are now creatively active in the metalwork shop of the Metallurgical Apprentice School in Saca. The result of the designers' work will be a range of metal objects, and this year apart from material used in the Kosice steelworks the event's participants will for the first time also have products from the Finow strip mills at their disposal. The objects creaated during the workshop will be displayed successively in the U. S. Steel Kosice Gallery, at the International Engineering Fair in Brno and at the Slovak Technical Museum in Kosice. The international workshop Metal Inspirations 2005 is being organized by U. S. Steel Kosice and the Technical University in Kosice.