Olja Stipanovic @ Queens Theatre in the Park

Long Island City Artists @
Queens Theatre in the Park
February 23 to March 31, 2004

Michele Boneli, Cynthia Brown, Erin Butler, Margaret Cherubin, Marilee Cooper,Carol Crawford, Janice DeMartini, Lawrence Dobens, Seena Donneson, Margret Dreikausen, Maris Elman, Eveline Feldmann, Amy Geller, Moira Holohan, Ann Johnston Miller, Bruce Laird, Marla Lipkin, Robert Lobe, Susanne Palagy, Ghiorghita Rusu, Adele Shtern, Dan Silverstein, Maria Spector,Olja Stipanovic, Jeremiah Teipen, Miguel Torres, John Van Praag.

February 23 to March 31, 2004
A reception for the artists will be held on
Saturday, March 6, 2004, from 6 to 8 pm

Queens Theatre in the Park
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
P.O. Box 520069
Flushing, NY 10052
www.queenstheatre.org
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 to 6 pm
By subway: #7 train to Willets Point-Shea Stadium stop.
Exit Shea Stadium side and take the free shuttle, available
that evening beginning at 5:30 pm
By car: Grand Central to exit 9E from Manhattan or exit 9P
from Long Island. Free parking in adjacent lot.
For more information, please call (718) 760-0686
Visit the LIC Artists website at: www.licartists.org

Olja Stipanovic was born in Pula, Croatia where she started her art education. She moved to New York in 1992. She earned her BFA (painting) in 1998, and MFA (painting) in 2000, from Parsons School of Design - Fine Arts Department in New York. For the past 5 years she has been the resident of Long Island City where her studio is located. Her work has been exhibited in many group shows in New York City and abroad.

Contact the artist: OStipanovic@aol.com

Concert and Lecture by Martina Cukrov, pianist

Saturday, March 6, 2004 at 5PM
32 Irving Ave, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632

Martina Cukrov, pianist

Special concert and lecture presentation featuring Croatian musical works.

Information/directions: (201) 242-1718/ Shengf@aol.com

Additional info already posted on CROWN, but as a reminder:

Sunday, March 7, 2004 at 1 PM
Sts. Cyril & Metodious Church
502 W 41st Street (10 and 11 ave)


Jaksa Zlatar (piano professor, Zagreb Music Academy) & Cveto  Kobal (flute, professor of chamber music, Maribor Faculty of  Pedagogy) Program includes works of Croatian copmosers from 1800's to the
present day. The program will begin with a short lecture about the development of piano music through Croatian history. There will be a reception following the program.

Suggested donation: $10

Information: 609.799.2828 Zlatko.bacic@nyu.edu

Professor hopes to help heart patients like her late father
 

The following story appeared on the web page of News 24 Houston, a local
all news television station in Houston, Texas. John Kraljic


Professor hopes to help heart patients like her late father
3/1/2004 6:06:55 PM
By: Kristi Nakamura

Stent grafts can help heart patients.
University of Houston Math Professor Suncica Canic lost her father to an
abdominal aortic aneurysm. That's when a bulge in the abdominal artery bursts, often causing sudden death.

She says he was too old to undergo the surgery that would have saved
him, and at that time in Croatia where he lived, there was no
non-surgical alternative.

"I felt guilty about not learning more, not knowing more about that at
that time," said Canic.

After her father's death, Canic began talking with Dr. Zvonimir Krajcer
at the Texas Heart Institute. He explained to her how stents could be
inserted by catheter to help patients like her father.

A stent is a mesh-like tube inserted at the site of the aneurysm to keep
it from bursting. But Canic soon learned that even treatment with stents
was far from perfect.

"Some of the stent grafts have shown -- over longer periods of time --
certain concerns and problems as far as its durability is concerned, and
some of those were related to design," said Dr. Krajcer.

"I saw that there are very little input from bioengineering, mathematics
or numerical simulations, and I thought that we could help out in
designing cardiovascular procedures and in designing optimal stents,"
said Canic.

Even though it was too late to save her father, Canic saw an opportunity
to help others like him. She formed an interdisciplinary collaborative
with cardiologists from Texas Heart Institute and an engineer from UT
Austin.

"They have helped us in designing a mathematical model to mimic the
functions of certain stent grafts and predict any problems that might
occur just on the basis of structural properties of those stent grafts,"
said Dr. Krajcer.

Canic says through the model they have been able to develop a design for
a mathematically optimal stent. She says an optimal stent should more
closely mimic the pulse of a healthy artery and therefore reduce
complications.

She says hopefully that will save lives, and she'd like to think that
would have made her father proud.

Doctors say stents are also used to treat coronary artery disease. They
are inserted into blocked arteries to keep them open.

Copyright Š 2004 TWEAN d.b.a. News 24 Houston

EU: Is Membership A Bridge Too Far For Western Balkans, Ukraine, Caucasus?
By Eugen Tomiuc

The European Union, which in May undergoes the largest expansion in its history, has reiterated that possible enlargement in future will continue to strictly depend on prospective candidates fulfilling admission criteria. Analysts say a further enlargement of the bloc to include other countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe will depend both on the countries' readiness and on how fast the expanded EU can integrate the 10 new members. But they add that, in the long run, the EU is likely to shift focus from enlargement itself to partnership agreements with its future neighbors.

Prague, 3 March 2004 (RFE/RL) -- On 1 May, the European Union will take in 10 new, mostly Eastern European, members in what is hailed as a historic step toward the reunification of the continent.

The 15-nation EU will grow to 25 members once Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join. The bloc is expected to further expand to 27 countries in 2007, when Bulgaria and Romania are likely to be admitted.

"I think it's perfectly feasible to imagine that in the next five to 10 years, a country like Croatia may join the EU, but whether countries like Bosnia or Albania are going to be ready -- even in the medium run -- is quite unclear."But analysts say general support for enlargement within the EU is dwindling, due to the costs of taking in the first 10 countries and to the slow pace of implementation of the body of EU laws known as the acquis communautaire.

Analyst Joan Hoey, of the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit, told RFE/RL that the EU's executive body, the European Commission, is likely to show even more strictness toward future candidates.

"Although the [European] Commission is saying that negotiations are going to be on the same basis, obviously the whole climate has changed and is about to change [further] after May 2004. There is this enlargement fatigue. Support for enlargement is falling. There's a political backlash that's gathered momentum in some countries. There is growing skepticism about the implementation of the acquis in the eight East European countries that are joining in May, and there's a nervousness about the costs of enlargement," Hoey said.

In a sign that it means business when it comes to enlargement, the EU sent a strong warning to laggard candidate Romania last month, saying it risks missing the 2007 target unless it takes rapid and decisive measures to implement judicial reform, get rid of endemic corruption, and stop pressure on the free media.

A European Parliament report on Romania stopped short of recommending the suspension of accession talks, but issued a tough wake-up call for Bucharest to pursue a complete "reorientation" in the country's strategy for joining the EU.

Bucharest's slow progress toward fulfilling the admission criteria has raised the question of whether prospective candidates could be taken in before they are completely ready.

Analysts point to the example of Greece, which became a successful EU member despite its apparent unpreparedness when it was admitted in 1981, only years after having experienced a military dictatorship.

But analyst Kirsty Hughes, of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) says accepting unprepared members after this year's huge expansion could undermine the EU.

"Obviously, if countries are brought in when they're not fully ready, especially when we're facing such a big enlargement [with] so many new member states, then the more member states you have who aren't acting as they should, who aren't implementing laws as they should, who aren't following the rules as they are, who aren't true democracies, then that is potentially going to undermine the EU unless the EU applies the sanctions it has, that it can use against member states. But the more member states that are breaking the rules, the more difficult it is to apply serious sanctions against them," Hughes said.

Countries in the western Balkans, such as Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Albania or Serbia and Montenegro, have also expressed interest in European integration, with Croatia best positioned to be accepted as a candidate.

Farther east, Moldova, Ukraine, and, more recently, Georgia have made no secret of their European aspirations.

Experts say the way the EU treats Romania's candidacy could become a case study for other, more distant, EU hopefuls.

Political analyst Tom Gallagher, of the University of Bradford in Britain, told RFE/RL that he believes the EU would be taking a risk by accepting Romania before it is fully ready for membership.

"If the accession process regarding Romania went wrong, and Romania turned out to be a huge headache for the EU after it became a full member, I think the motivation and commitment for expanding to the rest of the Balkans would diminish, and people would just shrink from the bigger task of integrating countries in the Caucasus and farther east," Gallagher said.

Hughes of CEPS says any future expansion beyond Bulgaria and Romania will largely depend on how the EU shapes itself over the next several years.

"I think what we have to look very much for [is] what happens in the next three, four, or five years -- how much the EU changes, how difficult it finds it to operate at 25 [members], whether it becomes a rather looser, for instance, sort of organization. All those questions are very much unknown and that, therefore, impacts on what you could say about future candidacies from the western Balkans or even from countries like Georgia or Ukraine. I think it's perfectly feasible to imagine that in the next five to 10 years, a country like Croatia may join the EU, but whether countries like Bosnia or Albania are going to be ready -- even in the medium run -- is quite unclear," Hughes said.

But Hughes also warns that EU membership may remain a bridge too far for many eastern countries. She points to the fact that the current political trend within the EU favors partnership agreements with future neighbors over promises of full-fledged membership.

"When one looks farther east, the EU itself has a political decision to make about whether it is at any point going to say, 'We have borders. We have a point when we stop expanding. We have a point when we try and make good friends and associates with our neighbors rather than members.' And I think what the EU has clearly been trying to do in the last year or so is to say to countries like Ukraine and Moldova, 'You are really not on the agenda of potential candidates for 20 years or more, so please don't even try and talk about it. Let's talk about building good relations.' That may not be what Georgia [for example] wants to hear, but that, for the moment, is current political reality," Hughes said.

Author: Eugen Tomiuc joined RFE/RL in 1996. He previously worked for BBC World Service in London. Eugen has a decade of experience in international broadcast journalism. He is the author of numerous articles on EU and NATO expansion issues and has covered developments in Eastern Europe and the Balkans for several years.


http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/03/dbfea7c2-d968-41db-865d-f7a279247c27.html

Nick Stozic Croatian-American Vet Honored

The following story appeared in today's Concinnatti Post. John Kraljic

Irish to honor former POW
He is featured in 2004 parade

Post staff report

For most of the year Nick Stozic is of Croatian descent, but for St.
Patrick's Day this year the 99-year-old former POW will be a wee bit
Irish.

Stozic, who spent part of World War II as a prisoner of war in a German
camp, has agreed to be the honorary grand marshal of the annual St.
Patrick's Day parade in Cincinnati.

"Yeah, my nephew, Davey, talked me into it," said Stozic, who has lived
in Clermont County since he got out of the service.

That nephew, David Maher, is grand marshal of the March 14 parade, which
over the past 37 years has become one of the largest Irish cultural
celebrations in the region.

The parade's Hometown Heroes theme this year honors those who have
served the country, said parade spokesman Dave Lane.

With the death of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina last year,
Stozic is believed to be the oldest living veteran of the Army's 82nd
Airborne Division.

Stozic "represents the spirit of service and stands as a positive
example of the sacrifices that have been made," said Lane.

Stozic joined the Army after leaving home at age 16 and lying about his
age so he could enlist in the Army.

He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne as a glider pilot.

When he was shot down over Holland, Stozic was hit in the leg by enemy
gunfire and captured by enemy troops.

He spent his captivity in a German concentration camp.

"It happened seven months before the end of the war," he said earlier
this week. "I thought I had it in the bag."

Stozic was awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart and eventually
retired with the rank of warrant officer after a 25-year career.

The local St. Patrick's parade began in 1967 when the local chapter of
the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a group that promotes Irish culture,
staged a loosely organized religious procession downtown.

The event was later changed to Sundays because of it size and evolved
into a full-fledged parade with floats, step-dancers, pipers, marching
bands and Irish families.

This year's parade will begin at 1 p.m. at Eighth and Reedy streets,
just east of downtown.

To learn more or to participate, call the parade committee at (513)
922-2230 or visit www.cincinnatisaintpatrickparade.netfirms.com.
 

Pavkovic: Zasto Bresanu nije palo na pamet snimiti film o Ovcari, Skabrnji, Vocinu, napadu na Dubrovnik...

Cetvrtak, 4. ozujka 2004. . http://www.index.hr/

UDRUGA branitelja "Podravke" iznenadjena je kojom se propagandom prikazuje film Vinka Bresana "Svjedoci", koji govori o navodnim hrvatskim zlocinima u Domovinskome ratu. Predsjednik Udruge branitelja "Podravke" Mladen Pavkovic u danasnjem priopcenju tvrdi kako je taj film dobio "neke marginalne nagrade na Berlinskom festivalu" te da je sve jos jednom "upotrijebljeno u dokazivanje kako su Hrvati bili zlocinci". "Mi osudjujemo svaki zlocin, ali prije svega treba imati na umu da su Srbi, a ne Hrvati, bili agresori", napominje Pavkovic.


Pri tomu pita zasto Vinku Bresanu nije palo na pamet snimiti film o Ovcari, Skabrnji, Vocinu, napadu na Dubrovnik, razorenom Pakracu, o vise od cetiri tisuce hrvatske djece koja su ostala bez roditelja, o stotinama razorenih katolickih crkava? Pavkovic smatra kako, zeli li se prikazati neki film o borbi za slobodu i samostalnost hrvatske drzave, najprije treba poceti od svih onih cetnickih koljaca koji su za sobom ostavili na stotine masovnih grobnica diljem Hrvatske, u kojima su pretezito djeca, starci i zene, koji nisu sudjelovali u ratu, pogotovu ne s puskom u ruci! Njihov je jedini grijeh bio taj sto su bili - Hrvati!, napominje predsjednik Udruge branitelja "Podravke". Hina

Cellphone Pioneer, Wife to Give USC $52 Million

By Peter Y. Hong
Times Staff Writer

March 1, 2004

Andrew J. Viterbi, a renowned engineer and wireless communications
magnate, and his wife, Erna, will donate $52 million
to the University of Southern California, which will name its
engineering school for the couple.

A co-founder of San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., Viterbi pioneered
technology used in cellular telephones throughout the
world. He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at USC in 1962.

The gift enhances USC's effort to be considered among the nation's top
engineering schools, along with such institutions as
Caltech, MIT, Stanford and UC Berkeley. The one-time cash gift, which
will be announced Tuesday in a ceremony on
campus, will go to the engineering school's endowment, which now stands
at $120 million.

Just as important as the boost to the school's endowment is the cachet
of Viterbi's name, said C.L. Max Nikias, dean of the
engineering school. "The name raises our visibility and reputation
instantly. Viterbi is a big name in both academic circles
and industry."

In 1967, Viterbi published the Viterbi algorithm, which allows the rapid
decoding of overlapping signals. In one of its most
successful commercial applications, the algorithm enables numerous
cellular phones to communicate without interfering with
each other. The algorithm is employed in hundreds of millions of
cellular phones today.

Erna Viterbi recalled in an interview with USC officials that her
husband came up with the algorithm in the midst of a
celebration of the Jewish holiday Purim. Their children had just taken
first-prize in a costume contest, but Andrew was
fixated on a scrap of paper on which he had been scribbling.

"I'd made them the costumes and I really had to try to get him out of
this thing he was working on," she said, but her
husband remained focused on his work. "And I said, 'So, did you come up
with something really?' "

Andrew, she said, replied, "Yeah, but I thought about it, it's really
nothing major."

The algorithm and other scientific achievements earned Viterbi numerous
honors including membership in the National
Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Before co-founding Qualcomm in 1985 with Irwin M. Jacobs (for whom UC
San Diego's engineering school is named),
Viterbi was an engineering professor at UCLA and UC San Diego.

He credited much of his success to his teaching experience. "The best
research often comes out when you're thinking about
what you're going to teach your graduate students," he said.

Both Andrew and Erna Viterbi came to the United States as refugees; he
from Italy, she from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Andrew Viterbi arrived at age 4 with his parents in New York. His father
soon opened an ophthalmology practice in
Boston, where Viterbi glimpsed the campus of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology across the Charles River in
Cambridge, and decided at age 10 he would attend the school.

After graduating from Boston Latin School, a storied public high school
founded in 1635, Viterbi enrolled at MIT. He
began work at Raytheon while an MIT student, and earned bachelor's and
master's degrees from the school.

After finishing at MIT in 1957, Viterbi took a job as an engineer at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Viterbi had
hoped to study for a doctorate at Caltech, but that institution would
have required him to enroll full time, he said. USC
allowed him to enroll in its doctoral program and continue to work full
time at JPL.

Viterbi fondly recalled those years as a kind of Golden Age for
engineering in Southern California.

The thriving aerospace industry "recruited the best talent, encouraged
them and treated them professionally," he said.
Andrew also met Erna in Los Angeles through one of her cousins; the
couple's first date was at the Coconut Grove
nightclub.

The Viterbis also are active supporters of MIT and the Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel.

In San Diego, they have contributed generously to private schools
attended by their grandchildren, but have kept their
names off buildings to spare the children any awkwardness. Viterbi said
he had no such reservations about the engineering
school taking the family name. "I'm not that shy," he said.

Andrew Viterbi said that MIT is "recognized pretty generally as No. 1"
but that USC's current momentum as a rising Top
10 school means the couple's gift "will do more to further engineering
and engineering education — goals we have
supported through our entire 48-year marriage — than anywhere else."

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-usc1mar01,1,2176819.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
 

John Michael "Gutch" Kustich

The following appeared in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer. John Kraljic
John Kustich, starred at East Tech

03/01/04

Richard M. Peery
Plain Dealer Reporter

Independence- John Michael "Gutch" Kustich, a 12-letter athlete at East
Technical High School during the 1940s, died Friday at Cleveland Clinic
Hospice.

Kustich played on the football, basketball and baseball teams during his
high school years. He graduated in 1946 and played minor league baseball
for a number of years. At 6 feet 4, he was tall for an athlete of his
era and was known as "Big Wheel."

Kustich later was a supervisor at Republic Steel Corp. until he retired
in the 1980s. Then Kustich, who was of Croatian descent, and his wife,
Caroline, visited Slovenia and Italy.

Kustich, 75, was born in Cleveland. He played first base in the
Cleveland Indi ans farm sys tem. He en tered the Army and played on a
team with Hall of Fame great Willie Mays at Ft. Eustis, Va. After his
discharge, Kustich played with the Brooklyn Dodgers farm team in
Hagerstown, Md., and the Boston Red Sox farm team in Morristown, Tenn.

He kept his hand in athletics as a bowler with a 200 average. He also
volunteered to help his son, John M. Jr., coach baseball at Cleveland
Central Catholic High School.

Kustich lived in Garfield Heights for many years and more recently in
Independence.

Besides his wife and son, who lives in Seven Hills, he is survived by
daughters, Linda O'Neill of Independence, Kathy Pruchnicki of
Strongsville and Karen of Cincinnati; four grandchildren, and two
sisters.

Services will be at 11 a.m. today at St Monica Catholic Church, 13623
Rockside Rd., Garfield Heights.

Ferfolia Funeral Home in Sagamore Hills handled arrangements.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

dpeery@plaind.com, 216-999-4807

Study Abroad in Croatia

Welcome to thewww.StudyAbroad.com   Croatia Home Page!
The Croatia Home Page is the place for students (college, high school and all others) seeking study abroad, language abroad, intern abroad, and volunteer abroad opportunities. Find Croatia study abroad programs! Review the Croatia travel guides! Find fast facts: weather, maps, culture, study abroad info! Expose yourself to the world!

http://www.studyabroad.com/content/portals/Croatia_port.html

http://listings.studyabroad.com/sab_tango/sab_lang.taf?language=Croatian

"Beautiful Bosnia" Croatian Heritage Museum exhibit opening

The Croatian Heritage Museum and Library announces its newest exhibit
"Beautiful Bosnia" featuring artwork by Vladimir Pintaric. Bosnia has long
been the crossroads of many civilizations and cultures. It is these
centuries of cultural diversity that has melded Bosnia into one of the
fascinating, interesting and beautiful countries in Europe.

Please join us on Sunday, March 7th, 2004 from 2 to 5 PM for a wine and
cheese reception. The exhibit will run from March 7th through September 5th.
Our regular hours are Friday evenings from 7 to 10 PM and other hours by
appointment.

The Croatian Heritage Museum is located in the American Croatian Lodge
Complex, 34900 Lakeshore Blvd, Eastlake, Oh. 44095. Also located in this
complex is the Dubrovnik Gardens Restaurant. To arrange group tours, please
call 216-991-2310.

CroNetwork: The Croatian-American Organization for Young Professionals.