News of Radio Prague

Senate passes bill on opening StB files

The Czech Senate passed a bill on Friday allowing Czech citizens to look at almost all documents gathered by the former communist secret police the StB. The Senate-proposed bill was passed by the Lower House at the beginning of January and has yet to be signed by the President. StB documents which could harm the state's security interests or threaten human lives will not be made available. Currently people can only see their own StB files.

Czech towns express support for Tibetan people

Ninety-five town halls in Czech and Moravian cities and villages are flying the Tibetan flag this weekend as a show of moral support for the Tibetan people living under Chinese rule. On March 10, 1959 a people's uprising was suppressed in the nation's capital Lhasa and the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama was forced into exile. Town halls in the Czech Republic first joined the global "Flag for Tibet" campaign in 1996 when four towns hoisted the Tibetan flag.

Budapest's mayor offers RFE/RL move to Hungarian capital

The U.S. funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) has turned down an offer made by the mayor of Budapest, Gabor Demszky to move the station's headquarters to the Hungarian capital. Mr Demszky visited RFE/RL, located in Prague's city centre, on Friday to talk about co-operation within the Visegrad Group. Ever since the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, the station has been viewed as a potential terrorist target in Prague. Security was stepped up on September 27th 2001, when the Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross ordered for armoured personnel carriers and elite troops to be deployed outside the building upon the receipt of information of a planned terrorist attack. The Czech government is now in discussion with RFE/RL about a possible move to a less populated area either outside or in the suburbs of the capital.

Czech family demands compensation for burying wrong person

A family from the Moravian town of Jindrich na Bruntalsku has accused a hospital in Prague of having mixed-up the names of two patients and as a result notified the wrong family when one of them died. Last year in October, two men were seriously injured from an explosion at an industrial area close to Prague. They were admitted to the hospital with third degree burns. After one of them died four days later, doctors mistakenly contacted the family of the other man. It spent 80,000 Czech crowns on a funeral just to find out later that the man they thought they had buried was still alive and in hospital. The family now demands compensation but the hospital claims it was not at fault and that the unfortunate mix-up must have been the result of a number of coincidences.

Weather

And finally a quick look at the weather forecast. Saturday night is expected to have overcast skies with occasional rain and some snow in the mountainous parts of the country. Night-time temperatures will range from 0 to 4 degrees Celsius. Sunday will have partially clear skies with temperatures between 7 and 11 degrees Celsius.