News
President and PM at loggerheads
The Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek are engaged in a heated dispute over the prime minister's proposal to compensate anti-fascist Sudeten Germans expelled from the country at the end of World War II despite the fact that they had actively opposed the Nazi regime. President Klaus said the prime minister must be "out of his mind to propose a plan that was irresponsible, imprudent and potentially dangerous". The opposition Civic Democratic Party, which Mr. Klaus founded, has also slammed the prime minister for planning to re-open sensitive WWII issues without first reaching broad political consensus on the matter. A senior party official said the prime minister was behaving like a bull in a china shop.
Six years in prison for threats and blackmail
A Prague court has sent three entrepreneurs to six years in prison for threatening a journalist who aired a news report about their firm's suspicious business activities. The Czech TV journalist Jiri Hynek was repeatedly accosted and threatened not to air the programme or he would be maimed. The men had already hired a man to do the job when the police arrested them. The court found that the said entrepreneurs employed similar practices in their daily business activities.
Czech army to buy Tatra trucks
The Czech army is to buy close to a thousand off-road trucks from domestic truck manufacturer Tatra, Defence Minister Karel Kuhnl told journalists on Friday. The order is worth around 5 billion crowns /200 million dollars/. The first Tatras are to be delivered next year and will replace the aging Praga V3Ss and Soviet trucks. A rival company has complained that the contract was awarded without a tender but the army chief of staff Pavel Stefka said that in this case a tender was not necessary. This view was supported by Parliament's Defence a Security committees.
Czechs take too many risks on holiday
Nine Czechs have died while on holiday to Croatia since the beginning of the tourist season. Most of them are young people. The Croat authorities say that Czech tourists are particularly accident prone and are generally inclined to taking risks. Three Czechs drowned in the sea during the last fortnight alone, having swum too far out in spite of the locals' warnings. Two young Czech women are reported to have suffered spontaneous abortions because of staying out too long in the heat of the sun.
Weather:
Saturday is expected to be sunny to partly cloudy with day temperatures between 22 and 26 degrees Celsius. Scattered showers and rainstorms are expected in some parts of the country.
