News

Kooky the teddy bear, the hero of Jan Svěrák’s animated film which premiered in Prague in late May has sparked a craze for plush Kooky toys. Twenty-five thousand Kooky toys were put on the market within PR and the original toys are now only available through consumer competitions or at the film’s upcoming international premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The CTK news agency reports that home-made Kooky toys are now being sold on the internet for as much as 1,000 crowns. The film’s Oscar-winning director says he doesn’t mind. If Kooky revived the tradition of home-made toys I can only be happy, he told the daily Lidové noviny. The film tells the story of a boy who imagines that his favorite toy, a red teddy bear named Kooky, goes on an adventurous journey after being tossed out by the boy’s mother.

The emerging centre-right coalition is planning to change the system according to which doctors and nurses are paid. It wants to do away with the system of salary brackets which limit the amount that can be paid to a doctor or nurse depending on time served in the profession. In this way older doctors automatically get higher pay than their younger colleagues, regardless of their skills or hours spent at work. The emerging government wants to give hospital heads a free rein in how much they want to pay an employee depending on how valuable they are for the institution. Hospital heads are pleased with the plan, but the Medical Chamber fears this could bring about a drop in salaries for many people in the profession.

An estimated six hundred people took part in Saturday’s Queer Parade in the Moravian city of Brno. The march for gay rights was accompanied by a massive police operation to protect participants from attacks by over a hundred and fifty ultra-right radicals who were determined to disrupt the event. Six hundred officers, including mounted police and helicopters –were out in force for the parade creating a barrier between the two groups. Six extremists were detained. Many shops in the city centre were closed for the day and traffic was re-routed. Young Christian Democrats held their own march through the city a few hours earlier in support of traditional family values. The organizers of Queer Parade said they wanted to call attention to the fact that gays and lesbians still face discrimination in the Czech Republic. Although they can enter into registered partnerships, such couples cannot adopt children and their rights are not on par with those of heterosexual married couples. The first gay and lesbian march in Brno took place in 2008.

The need to bring water purification facilities up to EU norms is likely to send the price of water in many Czech towns up by as much as 50 percent in the coming months, Saturday’s Lidové noviny reports. A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry has confirmed that around 160 water purification facilities are to be built or reconstructed in the course of this and next year in order to meet EU regulations. Approximately 50 percent of related expenditures can be covered from EU funds, the rest must come from local budgets. The overall cost is being estimated at around 23 billion crowns.