A Big Flats company that is literally on the cutting edge is undergoing an expansion that will lead to more jobs — which provides durable coatings for cutting and drilling tools — is a wholly owned subsidiary of CemeCon AG The local affiliate was founded in 1998 in a small space in Horseheads with three employees The company relocated to Airport Corporate Park in 2004 and has expanded several times When the parent company introduced a new state-of-the-art process to coat tools with a thin but extremely resilient diamond surface local CemeCon officials realized they had no more room to expand So they spilled operations over to another suite in the IST Center at Airport Corporate Park Officials held a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house at that facility Wednesday "We've been able to double our capacity going forward There are no limitations right now," said Gary Lake because it will take several months to add new equipment and get the new facility fully functional according to CemeCom Vice President of Operations Marjorie Steed It is also difficult to predict how many new employees will be needed "What this will do is decrease the lead time to our customers "With our expansion and increase in equipment We have added employees every year since 2004 CemeCon provides coating services for all of the major toolmakers Local officials who took part in Wednesday's open house were excited about the prospects "This is what it's all about," said Chemung County Executive Tom Santulli "The best thing we can give out is not a promise to make someone dependent on government We can give you the means to make a difference What I've enjoyed most is trying to keep our manufacturing sector." Follow @SGJeffMurray on Twitter Europe was braced for a sharp turn to the right After Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election and the British vote to leave to leave the EU in 2016 a populist surge seemed imminent ahead of elections across the bloc this year But where did those far-right parties end up And has their popularity in national politics increased Here’s a look back at 2017’s major elections the VVD lost eight seats from the 2012 election Rutte officially started his third term as prime minister on October 26 at the head of a four-party coalition Boyko Borisov took the helm of his third coalition government in May after his center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) emerged as the biggest party in the parliamentary election as did the four other parties that entered parliament as Borisov turned to the UP during coalition talks The deal put a strain on the government’s relations with Brussels at an awkward time — it takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in January Prime Minister Joseph Muscat won a comfortable victory in a June snap election he called amid corruption allegations concerning his wife and some of his political allies a year before the scheduled end of his first term His Labour Party’s victory (with 55 percent of the vote) came close to the level achieved in 2013 when he put an end to an almost unbroken quarter-century of rule by the center-right Nationalist Party The result allowed Muscat to form his second government. The populist Maltese Patriotic Movement, founded in 2016, received just 0.36 percent of the vote U.K. voters went to the polls in June after Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election in a bid to strengthen her Tory Party’s majority in the House of Commons. It didn’t go to plan: While the Conservatives remained the largest single party in terms of seats and votes their parliamentary majority was wafer-thin and they had to get outside support from Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party The anti-EU UKIP stood in fewer constituencies than in the previous election because of a shortage of both money and people. UKIP has imploded since the Brexit referendum and long-time leader Nigel Farage stepping down they lost their one seat in the House of Commons and saw their vote share fall from 12.6 percent in 2015 to 1.8 percent The French went to the polls twice this year, for a presidential election in April and May, followed by a legislative ballot in June. Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen It was the first runoff in history that did not feature either of the traditional big two parties — the Socialists and Les Républicains The National Front was less successful in the legislative election where it failed to reach the 15-seat threshold needed to form a parliamentary group Macron and his allies hold 350 seats in the 577-strong French parliament while their main opposition in the National Assembly — Les Républicains and its allies — have 137 seats Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to have secured a fourth term as Germany’s leader after the September election but her victory was overshadowed by the surge of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) The party gained around 13 percent of the vote to enter parliament for the first time Both Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats recorded their worst post-war results leaving the most likely option a return of the “grand coalition” between the CDU and Social Democrats The right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) finished third with 26 percent of the vote A coalition government made up of the FPÖ and ÖVP took office in December Populist billionaire Andrej Babiš and his ANO movement easily won the October general election whose campaign was based on anti-establishment policies and Euroskepticism is largely down to his plan to fight political corruption putting it way ahead of the center-right Civic Democratic Party The ruling center-left Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) of former Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka picked up just 7 percent of the vote There are more national elections to look out for in 2018 Voters in Hungary and Italy are going to the polls in the spring Slovenian voters will pick their new parliament in the summer and parliamentary elections in Latvia and Sweden are scheduled to take place in the fall Mark Rutte says it not all about France and Germany News comes as Angela Merkel is hoping to get the final sign-off on coalition deal with SPD French MEP claims the Patriots have some 6,500 members.