All Slovakia takes leave of airplane disaster victims

There was terrible grief and weeping, and tears on the faces of the surviving relatives, but also of the soldiers, the state representatives and many of the thousands of people who came to Presov last Thursday to pay their last respects to the 42 victims of the military airplane disaster. The whole of Slovakia mourned with them. There were nearly four thousand mourners inside the hall, another four thousand watching the requiem on a giant screen outside, and many more watching on television at home.
Apart from this country's highest constitutional and military figures, the ceremony was also attended by a NATO delegation, the President and military representatives of Hungary, military representatives of Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic, and representatives of the Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Greek Catholic churches. Among the guests paying their respects were also U. S. Steel Kosice President David H. Lohr and his wife, other Company top managers, and delegations representing the City of Kosice and the Kosice Self-governing Region.

EDC USSK plays its part in bringing new investment to Kechnec

The Swedish company SWEP is building a new plant worth ten million euro at Kechnec Industrial Park, providing work for one hundred people. The purchase contract for a plot of land measuring three hectares (nearly five soccer pitches) was signed on January 26th by SWEP Slovakia Chief Executive Rikardo Malmback and Kechnec Council Leader Jozef Konkoly.
The new plant will have just one foreign employee - the Chief Executive himself, who says: "We want to give Slovak managers and workers a chance." At his press conference Rikardo Malmback explained that the company had started sensing a lack of production capacity due to increasing demand, and so it was looking for space in the new EU countries. "We chose Slovakia, specifically Kechnec Industrial Park because it has a good location and hinterland, and a new highway is going to be built here. Kosice Airport and the Technical University are also not far away. Major roles have been played in our decision by USSK's Economic Development Center, Council Leader Jozef Konkoly, and by the SARIO agency," said Malmback.
SWEP makes compact heat exchangers, and the company plans to make two million small units yearly at its Kechnec plant, intended mainly for use in household appliances such as air-conditioning units, water heaters and central-heating boilers. So far SWEP has four factories - in the USA, Switzerland, Sweden and Malaysia - so the Kechnec plant is the fifth in the series. The biggest customers for its products include such well-known names as Vaillant, Viessmann and Bosch. The Swedish company SWEP is owned by the American concern Dover, which achieves annual revenues of around six billlion USD and whose shares are quoted on the stock markets.

One-day surgery now reality at Saca Hospital

Single-day out-patient health care, popularly known as one-day surgery, has been reality for several months now at Kosice-Saca Hospital, the first private hospital in Slovakia. Its application for a license to provide this kind of service was in fact approved by the SR Ministry of Health last year. So far the operations in the one-day surgery scheme are performed in the throat, general surgery and gynecology departments, but they will soon be extended to the orthopedic department.
Hospital Director Juraj Vancik explains that these are small-scale surgical operations which do not require patients to be hospitalized for many days. The decision is made by a doctor. In most cases pre-operation treatment in this hospital does not take more than three to four hours. In health-care terms this approach still essentially counts as above-standard, but even so these operations are fully covered by the health-insurance companies.