ZAGREB, Dec 10, 2020 - Croatia annually loses a town the size of Metkovic, Virovitica or Samobor as 24,000 people are diagnosed with malignant diseases each year and 14,000 die, Dragana Jeckov of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) warned in parliament on Thursday.

Jeckov was speaking during a debate on the proposed national strategy for cancer prevention, which received the undivided support of parliamentary groups and individual MPs. She said that the fight against cancer was not a political or party issue but a safety issue that required a consensus.

Jeckov said she was aware that the proposed framework would not eradicate cancer, but would reduce negative trends, show patients a clear way through the healthcare system and reduce the healthcare system's costs.

Ivan Celic of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) also noted that the national cancer prevention strategy was an above-party issue. He said that today was a big day because cancer patients and their families were being given hope.

"We believe that this document will help in detecting this disease as early as possible and treating it as successfully as possible," Celic said, calling on his fellow lawmakers to support a campaign for free transport of cancer patients launched by the "We Are Not Alone" NGO. "If we support it together, the Croatian Health Insurance Fund will quickly finance free transport for cancer patients," he added.

The Social Democratic Party's (SDP) Renata Sabljar Dracevac and Andreja Maric put emphasis on developing a network of oncology physicians, making it possible for cancer patients to be treated as close to their homes as possible, and on national early cancer detection programmes.

"Croatia is among the five worst countries in the EU in respect of the cancer survival rate, which is why the proposed framework is important," Bridge's Bozo Petrov said, adding that in 2016 the cancer incidence rate was 214 cases per 100,000 people in the EU and 321 in Croatia. He resented the fact that this document had sat in the Health Ministry's drawer for three years.

"We have been waiting for this document for 30 years and Health Minister Vili Beros unquestionably deserves credit for it," said Milan Vrkljan of the Homeland Movement. He said that this document provided a multidisciplinary approach to cancer treatment and that its purpose was to make a diagnosis as early as possible and achieve the best therapy before the disease advanced.

December 10, 2020 – In order to make communication between the city administration and the citizens as simple as possible, the City of Karlovac created a virtual assistant Korana in cooperation with the company bonsai.tech.

With the virtual assistant Korana, symbolically named after one of the four rivers flowing through the city, Karlovac is the first city in Croatia to use a chatbot to inform citizens about a city, county, or municipality.

As Lokalni.hr reports, instructed by positive experiences from the private sector and motivated by the risks of the pandemic and new business circumstances, the City of Karlovac very quickly decided to adopt artificial intelligence technology to use its potential.

Thus, in cooperation with the company bonsai.tech, which recognized the needs of local governments and new business challenges, Korana, a virtual assistant of the City of Karlovac and its residents, was created to make communication between the city administration and citizens easier, faster, and safer.

Offers an answer to the query

A smart city chatbot, i.e., a virtual assistant, is a tool that interactively informs the general public and thus greatly facilitates the work. The advantage of Korana is that at any time, without the need for support experts, it offers an answer to a query.

The City of Karlovac wants to make its services available to citizens at any time, informing them when they need it, without waiting for information by phone or e-mail. Users will thus be able to find out about the topic they are interested in through the Korana virtual assistant before contacting the city administration.

Photo: Screenshot Karlovac.hr

Korana will help the Karlovac citizens find the necessary information related to the city administration and current events, such as details of the winter service's work, events in the city. At the same time, the city administration will facilitate contact and be a reliable support to its citizens by regularly updating the content and insight into the work of the chatbot.

Korana offers a menu with several groups of information; contacts, utilities, construction and housing, financial support, business and investment, tenders, and public calls and forms. Also, Korana has a database of questions and answers regularly updated following the analysis of questions asked by users.

Photo: Screenshot Karlovac.hr

It is currently available on Karlovac's website, and it will soon be available to citizens within the Karlovac City Viber community and on the official Facebook pages of Karlovac.

Despite all the advantages of a virtual assistant, no matter how much one tries to assume what the citizens will be interested in and what their experience will be like, it is impossible to predict everything. Therefore, the City of Karlovac and the company bonsai.tech try to assume in advance a whole series of possible individual conversation series and dialogues to improve the citizens' experience in using a virtual assistant.

An example to other Croatian cities

"Two years ago, we adopted the Smart City Strategy in the City of Karlovac, and the introduction of a virtual assistant is part of the idea of making the work of the city administration as accessible as possible to the citizens. With the virtual assistant Korana, accurate information can be obtained faster and from any digital platform, at any time of the day. The idea is to develop this principle of work overtime through the entire city system," said Damir Mandić, Karlovac Mayor, at the presentation of the virtual assistant.

Virtual assistant Korana is a challenging pilot project and represents a new step forward that will indeed be followed by other cities in Croatia.

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ZAGREB, Dec 10, 2020 - The Arena Zagreb sports hall, which has been serving as an inpatient COVID clinic since November 28, has treated more than 100 patients suffering from coronavirus, the clinic's operating staff said on Thursday.

There are currently 41 patients in Arena and they are being provided with quality health care until full recovery and discharge. These patients have mild to medium grave symptoms that still require treatment.

So far 62 patients have been discharged from Arena. One COVID related fatality has occurred, a patient in the terminal phase of a tumour who had been transferred to Arena to make room for the surgery ward in one of Zagreb's hospitals. He did not have any COVID symptoms and did not die as a result of COVID.

All the patients at the Arena clinic had previously been admitted to one of Zagreb's hospitals.

There are currently 18 doctors and 60 nurses stationed at Arena working in 12-hour shifts so that all patients are monitored and provided with health care 24/7.

ZAGREB, Dec 10, 2020 - Croatia has registered 4,620 new coronavirus cases and 53 related deaths in the last 24 hours, the national coronavirus response team said on Thursday morning.

The number of active cases now stands at 24,851 and among them are 2,754 infected people who are receiving hospital treatment, including 296 who are on ventilators. A total of 62,270 people are currently self-isolating.

Since February 25, when the first case was confirmed in the country, 163,992 people have been infected with the novel virus, of whom 2,420 have died and 136,721 have recovered, including 3,466 in the last 24 hours.

To date, a total of 849,714 people have been tested for coronavirus, including 12,095 in the last 24 hours.

December the 10th, 2020 - ENS, a company owned by Zlatko Canjuga, is set to construct a 25 million kuna Ludbreg shopping centre, but not everyone in the town at the ''centre of the world'' is too pleased about the move, regardless of the numerous economic benefits the centre will bring.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the new Ludbreg shopping centre worth as much as 25 million kuna will be built right next to the already existing Spar and Ludbreg sanctuary, on city land. The piece of land which covers 7732 square metres came with a price tag higher than two million kuna, and the sale of it was approved by the City Council at a recent session which had only the one item on its agenda, local portal Podravski.hr writes.

Although the owners of this new Ludbreg shopping centre will bring about economic relief during these unprecedented times and are as such announcing the opening of 40 employment positions for locals, the people of Ludbreg are not thrilled with the construction of yet another shopping centre.

"Another one? There are too many of them anyway", "Why another one", "Instead of a new factory, we're getting yet another shopping centre"… comment irritated Ludbreg locals who appear sick of the sight of more construction, despite the potential job opportunities such investments bring.

Zlatko Canjuga's investment doesn't seem like a good idea to them and some locals have mentioned that the construction of a library was originally planned on that piece of land which will now be home to ''yet another'' Ludbreg shopping centre.

The background of Zlatko Canjuga, the owner of ENS is otherwise a former HDZ Secretary General and ex advisor to former Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tudjman.

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December the 10th, 2020 - Lea Kosovic decided to take the daunting plunge into entrepreneurial waters and develop the LOL agency during her time as a student. Despite the numerous draconian rules the Croatian state still has in place, she succeeded.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ivan Tominac writes, they say that studying is the most beautiful period of a person's life, a time during which we discover and polish up our interests and dream about the future. Some, however, are so impatient with their dreams that they don't wait for the end of their studies in order to attempt to make them come true, and one such individual is the doggedly determined 26-year-old Lea Kosovic, who started an event organisation agency called LOL during her studies.

She decided to take this step despite trying to cope with the very challenging time swimming in exam deadlines in the 4th year of communication management studies, and today, she has several successful years of business under her belt.

As Lea Kosovic points out, the entrepreneurial world seemed to her to be a natural sequence of activities to take, and her environment contributed to that; her mother, father and boyfriend are all entrepreneurs who additionally motivated her to move forward with her own goals.

On the other hand, the faculty she attended places a lot of emphasis on practical teaching, which also gave her a spring in her step. "The faculty I attended is a big proponent of practical classes, so I had the opportunity from the first year onward to take internships that taught me a lot, that is, where I could apply what I'd learned in theory in college. On top of that, we often had exercises in the classroom where we could hone our skills well,'' said entrepreneur Lea Kosovic.

Although the days of studying and running her own business are a few years behind her today, she still fondly remembers it all. As she explained, she'd do it all again if needed, and the secret of success lies in good organisation.

''I'd deal with everything as soon as I could, so my deadlines were always always free. The most important thing was to properly position my student, private and business obligations, so that none of these three segments suffered, or if they had to suffer, it would be minimally. At first, I planned my commitments day by day, but I soon realised that way didn’t work. So I introduced appointment planning a week in advance and wrote everything down in my calendar. I knew exactly what was waiting for me, so I was able to set positive priorities,'' Lea Kosovic added.

Although the idea of ​​entrepreneurship came to her mind during her very first year of study, several years had passed by the time the first step was taken. Lea started to think more seriously about this venture in the 3rd year of her studies when she did her internship at the Media Val agency. There, she fell in love with organising events and started thinking about the concept of her own company. From that idea came LOL.

She shared her idea with her boyfriend and best friend, and their support gave her yet another spring in her step. Although she felt only excitement at the beginning, from the moment she held the very last administrative paper in her hands, Lea Kosovic admitted that for a short period, fear of the unknown was very much present.

‘‘The biggest challenge for me was proving to people that I know how to do my job. When I opened LOL, I was in business event organisations for four years. I felt I'd done enough to be able to try it out. The main assumption today is that young people have no experience and aren't old enough to start their own businesses. I don't think that's really the case. There's nothing wrong with young people trying to experience the magic of entrepreneurship. The worst thing that can happen is that their job fails and they have to put the key in the lock, but they still achieved more than those who didn't even try,'' Lea pointed out.

LOL opened when she had one safe client; thus securing some income. “I’ve noticed that when finding new clients, it’s important to love what you do. Clients notice when you talk with great passion about their event, when they send new ideas and suggestions, and when they feel that you're not under any pressure. If one client is happy with you, they will recommend you further and so the whole story will be accepted. It was the same in my case, and that gave me additional motivation and self-confidence,'' said LOL's Lea Kosovic.

The very nature of this sort of job presents numerous challenges, but they've only been further exacerbated by the emerging situation caused by the pandemic. Lea was naturally very scared back at the beginning, but even in this situation she managed to pull through. ''Entrepreneurship simply prepares you for a fight", she said.

Lea had learned long ago that there's no time to lose and that empty steps only distract her from her goals. "We all called 2020 'our year', but we were wrong. We were supposed to have eight events this year, and we only had three. I know others in this industry who haven’t managed to do any events this year so I can only be happy because I’ve had at least that much. I was terrified at the beginning of this pandemic. I was afraid that was it and that I might have to put the key in the lock after all. However, it turned out fine. Not the way I planned, but it was still okay. Patience is also something that entrepreneurship teaches you to have,'' concluded LOL's owner, Lea Kosovic.

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December the 10th, 2020 - The new law on the deposit insurance system will significantly strengthen Croatian banks and the Croatian banking system, the State Agency for Deposit Insurance and Bank Rehabilitation (DAB) said.

As Poslovni Dnevnik wrires, as of January the 1st next year, a new law on the deposit insurance system and on the compulsory liquidation of credit institutions will enter into force. It was recently properly harmonised with European directives, which, among other things, will shorten the duration of bankruptcy proceedings of credit institutions and additionally protect citizens and depositors.

Further reform

This new law continues to further reform the banking system of Croatia and the entire European Union, strengthens the ability of banks to withstand financial shocks, which will also include Croatian banks, minimises the cost that taxpayers will bear in the event of problems with banks, and represents a single financial fund that is filled by the payment of credit institutions, not citizens, as was pointed out from the DAB. They also believe that the law will further facilitate the lives of Croatia's residents and offer security when it comes to savings deposits as well as a general increase the stability of the financial system, which is becoming much more resilient to possible financial crises.

The new law, which combines the provisions of the current law on deposit insurance and the law on DAB, seeks to anticipate and regulate situations when a credit institution fails as much as possible, as such a scenario may lead to legal uncertainty regarding the protection of depositors.

In order to protect the financial stability of the system, the new law prescribes the activation of the deposit insurance system when opening a compulsory liquidation procedure against a credit institution.

Additional replenishment

In order to ensure the more efficient use of funds from the deposit insurance system, the new law stipulates that the deposit insurance fund consists of two parts - the basic deposit insurance fund and the additional deposit insurance fund. The purpose of the basic deposit insurance fund, which at any time has 1 percent of insured deposits, is the payment of insured deposits, while the purpose of the additional fund is to replenish the basic fund if its available funds fall below 1 percent of insured deposits.

Furthermore, its task is to support the collection of ex-post premiums, use its funds to take measures to reduce the risk of an insured event, and support the financing of the rehabilitation of credit institutions and the financing of forced liquidation of credit institutions.

Additionally, the new law will harmonise the source of financing according to the acquis communautaire by explicitly stating that the deposit insurance system cannot be financed at the expense of taxpayers, but exclusively at the expense of credit institutions. The entire system is harmonised with European directives and will help to make Croatian banks more resilient to potential future challenges on the country's path to th Eurozone.

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December the 10th, 2020 - Family is one of the most important things of all, and during this challenging year full of unprecedented events, this has been proven to be true yet again. Meet Mudrica, the new Croatian E-Kids card.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, the Central State Office for Demography and Youth (SDUDM) wants to further emphasise the value of family with Mudrica, a friend of every family. This is a Croatian E-Kids's card, a project that the Central Office is developing, considering and ultimately wants to implement in the daily lives of those who need it the most - parents and their children.

Incentive family and population measures are a priority of the activities of the Central State Office for Demography and Youth, which is aimed at long-term improvement of demographic trends and the creation of a favourable and stimulating environment for families and youth.

The Croatian E-Kids card is a measure that, through a system of discounts and benefits for users with children, regardless of their income, enables more favourable access to goods and services, ie the improvement of the general family standard. All parents, guardians and foster parents of at least one child under the age of eighteen can become users of the Croatian E-Kids card.

The need to promote the social and economic rights and interests of families with children has also been recognised across EU countries. In Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary and other countries, there are independent, non-governmental organisations for families with three or more children to support and protect them and strengthen their integrity.

As they pointed out from SDUDM here in Croatia, there is also the Association of Families with Three or More Children "Tri Plus", which provides its members with various benefits through partner companies and organisations. However, Croatia has decided to go one step further than other countries in the implementation of measures and activities related to family and population policy.

The project - a virtual children's card, was conceived back at the end of 2018 by the Ministry of Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policy as a means of offering support and relief to both parents and their children.

The use of the new Croatian E-Kids card will go hand in hand with cooperation with partners from both the public and private sectors who have recognised the need for synergy to improve the demographic picture of Croatia, providing various benefits and discounts on products and services.

Unlike the aforementioned countries, this project would provide benefits for every single child, and when there are more children in the family, the percentage of discounts and benefits on products and services would grow. It's worth remembering that according to the last census carried out in Croatia, 112,830 families have three or more children, 319,658 families have two children, while 435,192 families have only one child.

In the first phase, the Croatian E-Kids card will be available as a free mobile app called "Mudrica" ​​through which parents will receive various discounts, and it will be connected to the e-Citizens system, which will fully ensure the accuracy and security of the data and contribute to today's path towards the goal of digitalisation.

The new Croatian E-Kids card will bring together a wide range of public and private partners from across the cultural, economic, health, educational, sports and other, family-oriented areas. State Secretary for Demography and Youth, Zeljka Josic, explained that in this way, the card will be a kind of symbol of social consensus on Croatian demographic renewal with the aim of promoting families with more children.

A number of benefits and services that will be provided to families with children through the children's card, in addition to improving the family standard, will also contribute to a better disposal of family time in our daily hectic lifestyles.

The Mudrica app will be available for use by the end of the year, and its use will be both easy and affordable. A person who wants to become a Croatian E-Kids card user will need to apply for its use in the e-Citizens system.

Security level 3 credentials will be required to access the e-Baby Card e-service. After submitting the application, the system will check the applicant's data in the Birth Register, the custodian register or the foster parents register and, if the conditions are met, approve the application and send activation data to email and user user box.

Mobile app

After activation, in order to be able to use the benefits of the Croatian E-Kids card, you will need to download and install the mobile app "Mudrica" ​​from the Google Play store or Apple store on your phone. After entering a user ID, activation code and selecting a PIN, you'll be able to start using the benefits provided by Mudrica.

As noted by SDUDM, the partners in the application are divided into categories, and you will be able to search for them via an interactive map depending on your location. By clicking on the selected partner branch, you will be able to see what benefits or discounts are offered to you.

The list of partners and information on benefits and discounts will be available on the Mudrica website, but also within the mobile application on the interactive map with which users will be able to quickly and easily inform themselves better about partners, their locations and the sort of discounts or benefits they offer.

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