News roundup - Tuesday, 9 January, until 3pm

Doctors on strike

LJUBLJANA - Doctors and dentists went on strike at 7am today to force the government to honour the commitments it made with the trade unions, and presented their demands at rallies held at individual health organisations. The Government Communication Office (UKOM) said that a round of talks is scheduled for 2pm, but the union said it would not be able to make it by then. The union's interim data shows that the majority of doctors at individual hospitals joined the strike.

No impact assessment needed in C0 sewerage project

LJUBLJANA - The Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy has decided that an environment impact assessment is not needed for a section of the contentious C0 sewerage system built by Ljubljana and two neighbouring municipalities. Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković expects an apology from President Nataša Pirc Musar, who said in the past that an assessment was required.

Calamity and solidarity declared word, gesture of 2023

LJUBLJANA - The top authority on Slovenian language declared calamity (ujma) the word of 2023, while the gesture for solidarity was picked the gesture of the year in sign language, both selected in the wake of devastating floods that hit Slovenia in the summer. This is the second time that natural disasters affected the lives of Slovenians to such a degree as to be reflected in the word of the year. The word of 2022 was firefighter, after thousands had fought the worst wildfire in Slovenia's history that summer.

Drunk driving deputy mayor of Maribor stays on

LJUBLJANA - Gregor Reichenberg, Maribor's deputy mayor, was caught drunk driving on 31 December and offered to resign, but Mayor Saša Arsenovič has decided not to accept his resignation, Večer newspaper reported. "I am not willing to give up an extraordinary deputy mayor and excellent co-worker because of a single mistake," Arsenovič told the paper.

Renowned philosophers lecturing in Cankarjev Dom

LJUBLJANA - A series of lectures by eight renowned philosophers, dubbed Gray on Gray, will start in the Cankarjev Dom centre today, addressing various questions, ranging from topics of contemporary relevance to more elementary philosophical themes. Held in two venues, the Linhart Hall and CD Club, the Gray on Gray series will feature four admission-free evenings with four pairs of lecturers until the end of February.

Slovenian researchers turn soap bubble into laser

LJUBLJANA - While soap bubbles are mostly known for their attention-grabbing effect on small children, Slovenian researchers from the Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS) have now shown that these also have the property of generating colour-tunable laser light. Research has shown that laser light can propagate within a bubble's shell, and this led Matjaž Humar and Zala Korenjak of the country's prime scientific institute to wonder whether a bubble could be used to create laser light.