News

A policeman who has admitted to selling a photograph of the dead body of a popular composer has been kicked out of the force. The officer, who worked at a station on the outskirts of Prague, sold a picture of the corpse of Karel Svoboda to a tabloid newspaper after the latter committed suicide last weekend. Investigators have recommended the former policeman face charges of abuse of office.

One of the Czech delegates at a major conference on global warming says it could prove important in educating the Czech public on the issue. Speaking after an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Paris, former environment minister Bedrich Moltan said its conclusions could lead to a serious revision of the naïve and uneducated views of those who deny man's responsibility for global warming.

On Friday the spokesman of President Vaclav Klaus, Petr Hajek, described those who believe human civilisation is responsible for global warming as naïve. Mr Klaus has also questioned whether people are responsible for climate change.

A Slovak man was arrested after holding two women hostage in a Prague centre bar and threatening to kill them, police said. At 6 am on Saturday the man phoned the emergency services from the bar saying he would blow it up. Police closed off the street before managing to arrest the man after one of the women escaped. A search revealed he did not have any explosives.

The leader of the Christian Democrats, Jiri Cunek, is ridiculed in new billboards drawing attention to his alleged misdemeanors. The ads feature his photograph and the words "I haven't taken bribes (and I like Gypsies)". Mr Cunek rose to prominence after expelling Romany rent defaulters from a town where he was mayor. He is also under investigation for allegedly taking a bribe from a building company. In the last couple of years several billboards have appeared poking fun at the county's political leaders.